The great Joe Posnanski has a project where writers are submitting 100 word biographies of their favorite athlete.
I decided to write one:
You missed the show.
The Bad Guy said that in 2001, previewing the first line of
a Hall of Fame induction speech he’d never get to give.
He wore Ruth’s swag. Mays’s
magic. Williams’s surly. And Better than all of them.
All that purple prose about homers for sick kids and stickball
in the street once turned ballplayers into Gods, sold papers like the
Spanish-American War. Mantle was Batman;
his card in your wallet like DC Comics on your shelf.
None of that now. Nope. More homers than Babe? Than the
Hammer of Hank? Nope. Not The Bad Guy. He
ain’t Jeter.
They saw the magic pills and not the 688 intentional
walks. They saw the condescending and
not the 1.994 World Series OPS. They saw
what they wanted. Or not at all. It was an out of town show.
The Bad Guy’s the best who ever lived. You should have watched.
2 comments
Lance Armstrong was a pretty good bike rider too.
Least Bonds gets to keep his records.
Agree. Putting aside the attacks on the people who came out against him all those years, my war against Armstrong is over. The Armstrong who got to host the ESPYs when ESPN was killing Bonds was my target.
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