by Lozo, Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Blog?
I have a problem. I love to argue. Debate, if you will. While I am a master debater, I do prefer if the argument I am up against is a decent one, or if the person I’m arguing with has some sort of skills.
Like, The Inquisitor, for instance. Loves to argue, but we all remember the day we realized he lost his fastball. Heck, it was the day we realized he needed Tommy John argument surgery.
It was five years ago, during our first baseball trip. We were in Montreal, home of stronger beer, women who don’t shave their pits, and stronger beer. I can’t tell you the name of the place we were all drinking, but it had these monster-sized pitchers of beer. The Yankees were facing the Red Sox.
It was going to the ninth inning, and the Yankees had a slim lead. For some reason, Mariano Rivera was available but not brought in to close. Guess who was? That’s right — Armando Benitez.
Three of us openly mocked this decision. Not TI. “It’ll be good for his confidence,” explained TI.
We were of the belief that Benitez couldn’t close a hot dog stand, and asking him to close a game in Fenway was guaranteed disaster and was just going to hurt his confidence more. Of course, David Ortiz hits a game-winning smash off the top of the Green Monster, Boston wins.
Amazingly, to this day, TI defends his logic in this situation. And now whenever TI presents some sort of bizarre argument (Iowa will be in the Top 25) we refer to it as an “Armando” argument.
Now while that’s the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard in person, here is the dumbest one I’ve ever heard, in person or otherwise, because no one ever seems to point out how dumb it is — Barry Bonds was a Hall of Famer before he took steroids, so he should still get in now.
Let’s take a quick trip into Fantasyland and pretend there is a heaven and god and magic underwear work. Now, let’s say Mother Teresa walks into Washington Square Park with an Uzi and starts mowing people down. She kills 30.
Do you think on Jesus TV that night some commentator is going to be all, “Mother Teresa was getting into heaven long before she killed 30 people.”
I don’t think so.
Don’t like ridiculous hypotheticals? Well, let’s take the example that gets me worked up every time I hear the Bonds argument. Pete Rose.
Pete Rose bet on baseball, which is illegal. Barry Bonds took illegal steroids, which is, yes, illegal.
I can’t say for sure, but I believe that if Rose was never betting against his team (obviously debatable if you believe that, but I do) how does what he did harm the integrity of the game worse than what Bonds did? To me, cheating is cheating. Breaking rules is breaking rules. Is Bonds getting a pass because so many others took steroids, too? If you were a woman, would you be less upset that your husband was cheating on you if you found out 85 percent of husbands were cheating on their wives?
My point is this — why doesn’t anyone make the argument that Pete Rose was a Hall of Famer long before he ever placed a bet on baseball? If my calculations are correct, Rose got his 3,000th hit in 1978. If people believed he didn’t start betting till his managerial days, would Rose be in the Hall? Because the overall sentiment seems to be that Bonds is getting in on the merit of his pre-steroids days.
And to me, it’s just wrong. Bonds did just as much harm to the game as Rose did. I just don’t believe a double-standard in this case is warranted. Bonds in the Hall is an Armando argument if I ever heard one.
(Originally published 9/28)
