Simmons: Confronting my worst nightmarePosted using
ShareThisAs a preliminary matter, I am not so sure I believe a 6 and a half year old is really giving Dad and Grandpa such a hard time about such serious issues. Perhaps more importantly, I find it somewhat hard to believe that a kid so young is less naive than Ruby... but I guess you never know. I have been equally surprised by the wealth of knowledge of children that age in the past. The reality, of course, is he got that information from somewhere and because I don't think a 6 year old was reading the sports section every day in 2004, he must have gotten this information from Dad... or someone. So, although it's a nice little story, I'm not really buying the plot line. But, I digress.
The real issue here is that it's not cheating if everyone else is doing it. If we are suggesting that the Red Sox "cheated" in the 2003-04 season and World Series and, perhaps more importantly that year (as it is most years), the American League Championship Series, I think the relevant question is did the Red Sox have an unfair advantage? Of course, as Simmons makes clear in his article, any "cheating" on the part of the Red Sox is entirely speculative and "nothing has been proved." But, for those watching that year, the real competition came during the ALCS when the Red Sox came back from 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees and ultimately go on to sweep the World Series.
What a dramatic series that was! No team in major league baseball had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a 7 games series. In fact, that was only the third time in North American pro sports history any team had done so. The Sox managed to tie up the 4th game and it went into extra innings... lots of 'em. To be honest, I think most Boston fans had already chalked the season up to another disappointing end of the season loss to the Yankees. I know I had. But, as I watched inning after extra inning at the bar where I was a cocktail waitress by night, we all began to have hope and, in the 12th inning, victory.
But, how many of the 2003-04 Yankees were on the Mitchell Report? A few. And how many have subsequently admitted to past steroid use? At least one. So, if the argument is that the Red Sox cheated, I simply don't buy it. Even if the speculation is true, the Sox were no better off than the Yankees. In fact, based on the Mitchell Report it is more likely the Yankees had more of an advantage because of steroid use. Moreover, the National League put up such a poor showing that year (as it does most years) in the World Series, that I simply refuse to believe that steroid use was what led to a Sox victory. And, again, I refuse to believe that not a single player on the '03-'04 Cardinals were doping.
