Gammons' Writing Leaves Confused Feeling

After a long weekend, I'm back at work. I'm sick, I'm jetlagged, and I gotta take it out on someone. Then I remembered seeing, a couple weeks ago, Gammons' particularly muddled contribution to the pile of sanctimonious nonsense written after the Mitchell Report came out.

It begins thusly:

When I awoke this morning, I felt as if I had spent a fortnight sleeping underneath the Gandy Bridge.

I take it the Gandy Bridge is in Boston. I refuse to actually look this up, because I am that confident that Gammons would not reference a place outside of Boston, and also because I do not care.

George Mitchell did what he was paid to do, and because baseball's rampant drug culture is as well-sealed as underground weapon silos and stealth bombers at Davis-Monthan AFB, we were left to a sordid tale of associations, hearsay and the witness cooperation of sewer rats.

What a mess. Can a culture be sealed? Why not just stick with the weapons silos -- are the stealth bombers also "well-sealed"? I suppose it would be difficult to steal them, but "sealed" doesn't seem the right adjective. Again, I don't care what or where Davis-Monthan AFB is. Finally, sewer rats? Isn't that a little harsh? These are the people that cooperated. Are you a mob hit man or something?

Also, I didn't read the entire Mitchell Report, because I have better things to do, but it sounded like most of the evidence consisted of "testimony" by a couple of former clubhouse attendants who claim to have actually supplied drugs to some players. This is not "hearsay." The definition of hearsay is easy, because it's implied in the word -- "I heard so-and-so say." If the clubhouse attendant says "I gave Clemens 'roids," this is not "hearsay," because he was there and actually gave Clemens the 'roids. This information might be unreliable for other reasons, but I hate it when people call anything they consider unreliable "hearsay" without paying attention to what the word means.

Not that most owners had enough time to really understand this, which is why it's fortunate that Mitchell did not go back to the period when George W. Bush owned the Texas Rangers -- which Jose Canseco and others have fingered as a performance-enhancing Wal-Mart -- because there is no way Bush had any idea what was alleged in Canseco's book.

I've read this sentence repeatedly, and I do not understand what Gammons is trying to say with this George Bush thing. How is the likely fact that Bush had "no idea" about the steroids a reason why it is "fortunate" that the Report did not "go back" to the period when he owned the Rangers? At most, this fact is a reason why it doesn't matter whether the report discussed that period. Is Gammons concerned about the good name of the sitting president? I doubt it, but even if he is, the fact that Bush didn't know that steroids were used by members of his team isn't particularly damning. It's not good, either. It is just kind of irrelevant. As Gammons himself says, most of the owners probably didn't know what was going on. So what is the point here? Who knows.

Baseball wanted him to look at the period. He did, as best he could, and emptied it like a box of trash, with little differentiation between Roger Clemens and Brian Roberts, whose name was revealed without evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Brian Roberts confessed.

In this era of vigilante journalism, if it's a name, it's got guilt, and the fact that some "news" services ran with a phony report with 76 names Thursday morning puts "news" right there in the culture of the sewer rats.

"If it's a name, it's got guilt." This sentence is, of course, nonsensical. I guess he means, "if a name appears in a document, it means the person named is guilty of the crime discussed in that document." Implied in this (guessed) meaning is, "if a newspaper lists names that are listed in a document, the newspaper must be saying that the people named are guilty of the crime discussed in the document." There, we sure cleared that up!

(By the way, for a great example of "vigilante journalism," Gammons could have linked to his own nasty and completely unjustified undressing of A-Rod.)

Next, take a look at Gammons' own first recommendation to the owners:

1. Demand that every team carefully monitor all employees, including clubhouse kids, grounds crew members, etc. It doesn't matter if the average player makes $3 million a year, there is always an attraction to hangers-on, enablers and gophers. There's always a need for a guy who can get the satellite or stereo system at street prices, someone to pick up a girlfriend at the airport or drive a car north from spring training. The laundry list of problems stemming from guys is virtually endless; the Red Sox once had a spring training clubbie who turned out to be a drug dealer.
[and, redundantly:]
3. Make sure that each team spends the money to oversee each player's offseason conditioning program. Private strength and conditioning trainers and coaches lead to all kinds of issues; just go check out the 3:30 p.m. grunters at most commercial gyms.

As evidenced by this and the numerous "sewer rat" references, the overall theme of this piece is that Gammons actually blames the clubhouse attendants for baseball's drug problem. This is ridiculous and indefensible. These menial (as Gammons would have it) workers are not preying on helpless, desperate souls, but on multi-millionaires looking for an edge. I have never seen it alleged that HGH or steroids are addictive; physically damaging, sure, but not in any way depriving of the user's self-control. The players knew what they were doing, were in control the entire time, and could have easily gotten the drugs no matter whom the teams employed. Gammons seems to be advocating an elitist witch-hunt against everyone at the bottom of the MLB totem pole. He seems to think players are babies who won't get anything not brought to them in their clubhouses and that every "grunter" paid to do menial jobs for them is a scumbag. Lovely. And this is the opinion of a righteous, kind-hearted soul who wants to clean up the "vigilante" media.

2. Have MLB and the players association work out a strict set of guidelines for all player agencies. Mitchell did not mention the role of agents and agencies in the report, but it has long been suspected that there are a few agencies who have helped out their clients. One player told me, off the record, that one agency he interviewed offered limo and escort service in each road city, as well as separate bank accounts to hide money from spouses. The players association has been reluctant to monitor and discipline agents because they need agents to hold the players in line during strikes, but it isn't worth the side affects.

Hey, remember what Gammons said about "vigalante journalism"? Here he relies on what "one" player "told" him, "off the record" (so much for that!), about an agency offering perfectly legal services that have absolutely nothing to do with steroids for an assertion that sports agencies are assisting players in obtaining drugs. Unbelievable. And, by the way, this IS hearsay!

4. Beg the media to re-examine its vigilante world, where names and public figures have no rights. Look, there has been extraordinary journalistic work in this drug culture world done by the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Daily News and, now, with Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn, ESPN.com. But we're not the National Star. Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada are not Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

More of Gammons preaching to, I guess, himself. Gammons fails to explain why it is okay to smear Spears and Hilton, but not Clemens or Tejada. Also, the National Star is not an actual thing that exists. I guess he means Star Magazine?

Finally, has there really been "extraordinary journalistic word done with Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn"? Has there also been negligent editing work done "with" ESPN.com's editors on this article? I'll let you answer the second question.