Sunday diversion has questions / baseball questions, but still questions

a confession is required, another is merely requested
The confessions is required is from me, though the question is whether a likely Hall of Fame catcher needs to confess. My confession is that I clicked on the Tom Verducci piece from Sports Illustrated because of the guilty pleasure of reading (more) about (more of) Bobby Valentine’s problems and (additional) dysfunction in The Nation. But the gem of the piece is the bottom bit about Pudge Rodriguez.

I am long past the point at which I think it is unfair to wonder and rude to ask questions about player performance in the Great PED Era of ‘Great’ Players. I remembered how Pudge shrunk, but had not tied that to Canseco; I forgot about Pudge’s bizarre no-answer answer to a direct question. Innocent until proven guilty is a bedrock right against government criminal conviction; in real life we use common sense and are free to doubt. Especially someone who refuses to answer questions when there are obvious open questions.

I am not so hopelessly naive that I expect we will get answers about the many ‘great’ players whose numbers would qualify them for Cooperstown (those in the large group beyond the beyond-a-reasonable doubt cheaters like Bonds and Clemens). But it would be nice to get some answers about some people before their 5 year waiting periods are over.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012