Torre: A-Rod Is A Taint

Oh, I'm sorry, I may have misquoted you, Joe.

I'm happy that Alex admitted it. Knowing him personally, I know how proud he is of what he's done and how hard he works. I haven't been around anyone who works harder. I know it's important to him to continue to add to his numbers, because he has a chance to do a lot of special things numbers-wise, but now they're going to be tainted, because people don't forget.

It's laughable that this is even a headline on my ESPN Widget.

When it comes to steroids, the meejah thinks that calling someone's numbers "tainted" is tantamount to saying they are the biggest dirty fucking cheater who ever pissed on Babe Ruth's grave. The fact of the matter is that his numbers, and everyone's from this era, are now indisputably tainted, and that should be obvious.

Think about the word "taint". Awwww, not the Urban Dictionary definition, sicko. This one:

• taint (tnt)

v. taint·ed, taint·ing, taints

1. To affect with or as if with a disease.

2. To affect with decay or putrefaction; spoil.

3. To corrupt morally.

4. To affect with a tinge of something reprehensible.

All it takes is "a tinge". This is "a truckload". To me, if something is tainted, it means it can never be the same again. No matter what happens from here on out, history has already been written. Alex Rodriguez used steroids and that's never going away. Eight years from now, when he's 56 and dating Stevie Nicks, he's still going to hear "Aaaaayyy-Raaawwwd!!! Yaaawwwaah aaaahhh faaacccckkkinnn cheeeeaaataaah!!!!!!" every time he sets foot on the grass at Fenway Park.

If your girlfriend (or boyfriend for our six female readers) cheats on you, it's not something that goes away. You might smooth it over and get back together, but you don't erase the past.

Which is why A-Rod might be a taint, but Bud Selig is an asshole; that which makes the taint vile to begin with. Even though he backed off his earlier statements about suspending A-Rod and reinstating Hank Aaron as the Home Run King, the fact that he would ever say either of those things gives you some insight into some of the specific ways in which he is such an insufferable prick.

He thought about suspending A-Rod based on the results of a test that was supposed to be anonymous, and didn't turn out to be so because HIS LEAGUE didn't destroy the results as was originally agreed upon. If you didn't think he was in the tank for the owners already, he basically forgot the MLBPA was part of the MLB. I'm guessing when one of his daughters did something wrong, he'd her sit down and say "Honey, just tell me what happened and you won't get in trouble, okay?" And then when she admitted it, he would slap her across the face and say "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??!?"

And the Home Run Title... Bud Selig thinks you, baseball fan, are an idiot. An ignoramus incapable of even the most basic objective analysis. Because if you walked into a hypothetical museum and saw a photo retrospective of each player's career with, aside from pictures and captions, just some basic career stats and no other details, you would just assume that Barry Bonds is the All-Time Home Run Leader because he has seven more round-trippers than Hank Aaron. You wouldn't find it suspicious, you dumbass, that Barry Bonds' career exploded at the same time as the size of his head and biceps, when he was 35 and turned into the greatest hitter to ever walk the planet. The fact that he put up the greatest offensive season of all-time at the age of 39 after his middle-aged metamorphosis, wouldn't seem odd to you. Because you are that fucking stupid. You asswipe.

That wasn't me typing, that was Bud Selig. He needs the record books to be changed because you can't decide whether or not PEDs were worth eight, EIGHT - fucking eight - of Barry Bonds' 762 career home runs.