Braun Save Us from A-Roid

I think back to The Empire Strikes Back when it comes to A-Rod admitting to using performance enhancing drugs.  Specifically the scene where Luke stops his Jedi training and faces Vader.  As Luke runs off, Obi-Wan claims in a defeated tone that there goes the only hope and Yoda responds that there is another.  Today, baseball lost its only hope to wash away the taint that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, anybody else named in the Mitchell Report and 103 unnamed players who failed drug tests in 2003 have left on the game (the run-on sentence is on purpose). 

Alex Rodriguez got to see himself live long enough to be villain.  He will now be booed at every enemy venue and possibly never voted into the Hall of Fame unless he drops 80lbs and still socks 50 home runs.  Even then that might not be enough.  Instead of restoring luster to the home run record when or if he passes Bonds, A-Rod and Bonds can compare which grade of synthetic testosterone helped them get to the record.  Rodriguez was supposed to be the white knight of the game.  He was going to break the home run record Barry Bonds had no business owning and this steroid era could be forgotten any time a Hall of Fame vote was not being conducted.  Instead, he is now the dark knight and not in the Batman way.  He is a cheater, a spinster, an A-Fraud.


He duped us all, and just like Tom Hicks, we can not demand our money back.  What makes this worse is the game's integrity will continue to limp along until another wunderkind arrives and avoids injuries without the help of HGH.  That other hope that Yoda would speak of might be in our own backyard.  Ryan Braun has the tools, moxie, and the humble arrogance to restore peace and fair play to the game.  The guy is just cocky enough to prove he can break records without the help of science.  Plus, he claims to see the ball in HD.  The guy has already put up some monster numbers in just one and half seasons (71 home runs, 203 RBI, and 320 hits in just 264 games).  The issue is the numbers have to get bigger in a hurry as Braun has father time in his way with Braun being 25.  A-Fraud had similar numbers to Braun's by the time A-Fraud was 23.  Bonds had to allegedly do enough steroids to kill small animals and break the single season record just to get within a sniff of Hank Aaron.  The pace has to pick up if he is to even dream of 500 home runs let alone passing the all-time home run fraud.

There are some other new hopes out there.  Other candidates to maybe put up record numbers to clean up the Bonds taint include:
-Matt Holliday (although he is no longer playing at hitter friendly Coors Field),
-Mark Teixeira (he would have pound a lot of home runs to even get close to 500 home runs and he shares a locker room with A-Roid)
-Albert Pujols (who knows how long that elbow will let him continue to play at a high level)
-Prince Fielder (although he is an ice cream sandwich away from eating himself out of the league)
-Ryan Howard (a legit contender but does that big bat have enough power to hit 763 home runs?)
-Josh Hamilton (too bad home run derby homers do not count)

Either way baseball's hero is now a villain.  A-Rod may be sorry but he is forever a cheater.  He is a player that has now tainted the game.  You would never expect the janitor to leave a mess but in this case that is what A-Rod did.

(620wtmj.com)