But you know who isn't bored by the All-Star game and related festivities? Peter Gammons. In fact, they inspire him to bring his claptrap to a whole new level of inanity.
As you know if you read this blog, Peter Gammons is REALLY angry about the steroid scandal. Like, super duper PO'ed. It's not clear, though, whether he's angry about the fact that players actually took steroids, or that everyone found out, or, as we have theorized, that he didn't break the story himself years ago. His latest article only confuses the issue further.
Hamilton an inspiration in so many ways
That's Peter's headline. If you expect Peter to detail many different ways that Josh Hamilton is an inspiration, then, well, you haven't read much Peter Gammons.
One of the best things about baseball is that someone else comes along and
recreates being the hero.
This is actually a difficult article to pick apart, only because it is SO bad, SO far from being written in readable English (even for Gammons), that it's hard to pick out specific problems. Take this first sentence. "Someone else" besides whom? And what does "recreates being the hero" mean? I don't even know how to correct this phrase. It just isn't English. How do you recreate the state of being something? I know, only from reading the rest of the article, that what Gammons is trying to say here is that every so often, a new person comes along and saves the sport in a new way, or from a new problem, or something. This, to Peter, is "one of the best things about baseball." Makes me wonder if Peter really likes baseball all that much.
By the way, if Joe Buck calls that dark, dank, 1970s monstrosity that is Yankee Stadium a "jewel" one more time, I am pressing "mute."
Out of the embers of the Black Sox scandal came Babe Ruth. As a nation regrouped
between World War II and the Korean War, Jackie Robinson bravely changed the
face of sports and American society.
The metaphor in the first sentence is not that bad, by Gammons standards. But I included it because it highlights how little sense the second sentence makes. How did the nation regroup between World War II and the Korean War? Did the nation actually regroup from the Korean War in advance, before it even happened? Now, we can't really expect a sports writer like Gammons to be an astute scholar of U.S. history, but then why doesn't he just shut up about it? Because he's an arrogant old man that wins Peabodys, gosh darn it.
After the strike that canceled the 1994 World Series and led to the coldest
winter, along came Cal Ripken, the dignity and might of the Joe Torre/Derek
Jeter/Mariano Rivera Yankees, and then the summer of '98 with Mark McGwire and
Sammy Sosa. And when that entire era went to black and the waste depository of
the BALCO and aging clinics, Jose Canseco and gopher slimeballs reached the desk
of George Mitchell and millions wondered if they could ever trust the sport
again.
Okay, the metaphors are starting to get crappier with "the coldest winter." But we're still doing okay. Then... uh oh. The entire era "went to black." We've heard this phrase before -- it usually means, like when your TV goes black, that everything has become still and quiet. Is that what happened in baseball when the steroid scandal broke? Isn't it the exact opposite of what happened?
Next comes the dangling phrase "the waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics." Where does this fit in the sentence? It's completely out of place. If we read it literally (always dangerous with Gammons), then Gammons is saying that the "era went to the waste depository of BALCO." That of course makes zero sense. But I have no alternatives. I'm lost. Adrift. Confused and sad. I need a hero to recreate stuff and cheer me up.
But let's forget about putting it all together. Let's just take this phrase and look at it by itself, as it dangles in the void, to see if it at least makes sense internally...
the waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics ...
One sec... okay, no surprise, it doesn't. What is a "waste depository"? It sounds like what they would call a "dump" on a distant planet in a bad Star Trek episode. And the "waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics"? What is an "aging clinic"? And is BALCO a clinic? Or is it called "the BALCO"? And do these clinics have waste depositories? Is that where they threw out the used needles? Okay, I have to move on, my brain hurts.
Why "reached the desk"? Just another bizarre metaphor choice. Awkward, awkward, awkward.
Finally, let's take the "substance" of this paragraph as a whole. Did you notice that Gammons has cited known steroid users Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa as "heroes" while, in the same breath, citing the Mitchell Report as a bleak crisis? How can he, and his editors (if they exist), miss the rank absurdity of this? This paragraph is only NOT contradictory if, as Joist and I have theorized, Gammons is not mad at actual steroid use at all, but at the people who broke the story (surprisingly, Gammons leaves his oft-uses slander "sewer rats" out of this particular article). Now, it all suddenly makes sense -- McGuire was a hero, because when asked by U.S. Congressmen whether he ever used steroids, he pled the fifth and kept his mouth shut. Mark McGuire, on the other hand, belongs in the "waste depository," because he ratted everyone out. Peter Gammons = Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas.
(Another quick note from the All-Star Game -- Yogi Berra just called Joe Buck "Jack." Buck looked a little flustered for a second, but didn't correct him. I don't mention this mockingly, it was actually kind of sweet.)
Every revelation about Roger Clemens' past and every "collusion" noise that
comes out of some parrot's beak has emphasized the need to move forward.
The metaphors are entering surrealist territory (did you notice I used a metaphor to describe the metaphors? good boy). Parrot's beak? I... don't even know what to say.
Also, Peter Gammons again uses language that conveys the exact opposite of what he wants to say. The claims of "collusion" don't "emphasize" the need to move forward; they do the exact opposite, according to Gammons! What Gammons means to say, of course, is that the prevalence of the Clemens and collusion stuff necessitates moving forward. We just want Gammons to say what he means, and to say it clearly. Is that too much to ask? ...Don't answer that.
That is why no team has signed Barry Bonds, who can still impact any
lineup -- owners and general managers understandably don't want to talk about
the past. They want to try to move on into an era with drug testing, in whatever
form the morphed sport takes.
What does it mean to say that drug testing will take whatever form the sport takes? How can drug testing and the sport take the same form? These are trick questions. That's not really what Gammons is saying at all. He just misplaced a modifying phrase.
By now, Hamilton's story of overcoming demons is two blocks from Hollywood. Oh,
it's easy to give it a Nancy Reagan "he made a choice" and so on and so on and
so on and so on, but the fact is that millions of people in this country get
addicted to drugs and ruin their lives.
Oh no, more metaphors. "Too blocks from Hollywood"? I have no flipping clue what that means. The next sentence is just flabbergasting. Why does he say "Nancy Reagan"? Is this a reference to something the first lady said in 1982 that I don't know about? And why does Gammons say "and so on" four times? Why oh why oh why oh why? Isn't that annoying?
Finally, how does the "fact" that millions get addicted to drugs make it less their fault? I'm not making the argument that it is their fault; unlike Gammons, I don't use my sports-themed blog to make hackneyed political points. But Gammons' opposition in this sentence makes no sense.
After that, the article starts talking about Hamilton's addiction and his efforts to help others, and that stuff is too serious to mock. Besides, that part is not as badly written, perhaps because Gammons is putting aside his tortured attempts at wit and satire to talk about something serious.
But then he gets back into Grump Mode and rambles back into incoherence:
Baseball is not about corporate boxes and extracting licensing pennies from poor
kids or taxpayer dollars donated to construct ballparks to help billionaires
make millions. It is about Babe Ruth changing the sports culture, Jackie
Robinson changing America and Cal Ripken changing lives.
Here Gammons also slips back into one of his annoying habits -- saying "it" is "about" stuff. Just vague, lousy writing.
And how on God's green earth is baseball "extracting licensing pennies from poor kids"? Don't they extract licensing fees from companies wanting to make money off of baseball's intellectual property? Where do the poor kids fit in? If people who run merchandizing companies can be referred to as "poor kids," than society has come very far indeed.
And I'll grant, arguendo, that Cal Ripken's streak was an impressive accomplishment, even though I never found it particularly exciting. But how did Cal Ripken showing up to a lot of games in a row change people's lives??? That is some wacky hyperbole.
Finally, that sentence is just grammatically a complete mess. But I'm getting tired, so I won't get into the details of that. Let's just finish this up...
Baseball has always been able to turn the page because of someone and
something always grew up out of the rubble, and Josh Hamilton began the process
of turning the page on Monday night.
This is one of those times where I wonder if Gammons isn't just getting a little senile and if perhaps we should just let him be. He clearly just lost track of this sentence in the middle. He wrote "because of someone," then forgot about the "of" and wrote, effectively, "because of something always grew up." This is also one of those times where Gammons just needed an editor to give it one lousy proofread.
Okay, let's skip to the last sentence:
We are reminded that baseball can help us remember what we stand for, not against, what we believe, not what we fear, and that while we learn from the past, what we all want is to open the door to the future.
And we come back to my original comment, that this article is so bad that there's nothing to correct. This sentence is just totally incoherent. It just contains a lot of cliches thrown together in one mess of a sentence. And lord knows what it all has to do with Josh Hamilton.
Okay, the All-Star game just got less boring again. Some jerk from the Team That Just Won't Go Away just tied the game up for the AL...
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