Friday, December 14, 2007

Reds Are Losers Because They're Clean?

Given the near-absence of Cincinnati Reds players in the Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball, we true fans wonder whether our team's miserable performance over the last decade can be attributed to clean living. Current Red's relief pitcher Mike Stanton is named in the report as a user when he was a Yankee, but certainly nothing has enhanced his performance lately.

The Mitchell Report provokes a certain SWNIDish nostalgia for a book that we devoured in our formative years, Ball Four by Jim Bouton. Among the nefarious escapades detailed in that amoral memoir was the many players' habit of ingesting "greenies," amphetamines that raised their alertness and reflexes in the grueling schedule of a cross-continental, six-month, 162-game baseball season, the resulting fatigue compounded by frequent hangovers.

It has always been so among baseball players, it seems.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are also thirteen former Reds on the list. I'm not sure that's exactly clean living, but, by comparison with the Yankees, I understand your point. (Full disclosure: there are twelve former [and no active] Cubs on the list.)

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

The Reds look even cleaner when one looks at the list of implicated Reds and notices that few of these guys made any contribution to the team whatsoever and most who did drugs did them in other cities.

Cincinnati's drugs of choice remain Skyline and Graeter's, with allowances for beer and goetta.