CHEATED

Some say it’s Willie Mays.  Others argue it was Mickey Mantle.  Ted Williams certainly grabs some votes.  While Babe Ruth might only get a few scant memories, he certainly deserves consideration.  Today?  Who knows.

Whenever new statistical feats are achieved, fans of baseball constantly go back to compare players of yesterday to today’s superstars.  My difficulty is, can anyone who played during my generation be considered an all-time great anymore?  With performance enhancing drugs dominating Major League Baseball, most recently tarnishing two of the greatest hitters I have ever seen in Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, who is left from my generation of stars to compete with Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and Joe DiMaggio?

The phrase that is often used is “he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.”  With the way that steroids have clouded everyone’s views since Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa transformed themselves into the greatest home run hitters of their (and my) time, the best players I’ve ever seen were fake, built up on steroids to the point where they looked like comic book heroes.  So now we’re forced to guess who the greatest CLEAN players of this generation are.  Many renounce any thought that Ken Griffey, Jr. took steroids.  That’s fine with me, but unfortuantely, he’s not the best I’ve ever seen.  I’ve seen better, they just happened to be cheating.

And that’s how I feel now; that I’ve been cheated.  I can’t argue with my children one day that “back in my day, Alex Rodriguez was the best player I had ever seen,” because he was a phoney.  That’s what everyone seems to be forgetting; the fans have been cheated their right to argue for the players of their generation.  I didn’t grow up watching Ruth, Mantle or Aaron.  I never saw Lou Gehrig, Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax.  But I did see Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez.  And for that, I am cheated.