There are Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
I am in the Angry stage.
In his every plate appearance at Angel Stadium in this tragically-abbreviated home stand, Oakland's Jason Giambi was booed heartily by a baseball public sick of steroid abuse and the coverage it got.
The media stoked the steroid story after years of ignoring it. But with famous drunk drivers all around us, where is the moral outrage for those convicted of driving under the influence? Where is the media witch hunt not accepting jurisprudence slaps on the wrist and castigating entire careers because of bad decisions that are potentially fatal to the perpetrator as well as innocent members of the public?
Jim Leyritz killed a woman in a drunk driving accident.This is worse than A-Rod testing positive.
Joba Chamberlain was recently shown in a stumbling state on a police-video of his DUI arrest. This is worse than Barry Bonds telling the feds that he did not know what his trainer was injecting him with.
Mo Vaughn was so drunk when he was arrested for drunk driving as a Red Stocking that he could not recite the alphabet. This is worse than anything Jason Giambi used to increase his muscle mass.
Tony LaRussa was asleep at the wheel of his car at an intersection, drunk, just a season after one of his players had been killed while driving under the influence. This is worse than anything Mark McGwire did to get shut out of the Hall of Fame voting.
And there are lots of others.
Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe are not in Cooperstown because of character issues. Baseball has a long list of players and personnel who have been arrested and convicted of driving drunk. The media loves the sexy secrecy of steroid abuse, the mystique of whether a magic and illegal elixir pumped up the muscles of our heroes into bulges of superhuman abilities. Media outlets practically yawn at drunk driving arrests... until someone dies. But then it is too late, so they better go wag their finger at those evil men in the Mitchell Report... the report about a crime so heinous that nobody even died!
The mainstream media has absconded any role in weighing the true impact of an offense. This editorial attitude has sent the mainstream media into the abyss of being inconsequential. In status, stature and influence, the MSM may not ever recover. But the media could start to gain in the public's eye were they simply to tar and feather the athletes who are actually putting the lives of innocent OTHERS more into risk than a syringe of testosterone ever will.
A decade into a steroid scandal, all of that spilled ink on Human Growth Hormone and the like looks so vain and frivolous now in the harsh light of the morning after a true tragedy with an epic consequence.