So Sick of It

Every year of my life the excitement of a new season has begun in about February. As the snow flies here in Buffalo I begin by reading the baseball preview issue.

By the time the games begin in April, I'm an emotional mess. In the late 90's and early '00's I just couldn't get enough information.

About Jeter and Bernie and Rivera and Posada and O'Neill and Brosius and Pettite. They were guys who battled hard. They were all upstanding citizens.

The Yankees just kept winning.

I remember where I was when the deal was announced that A-Rod would be joining the team. Soriano was going away in the deal, but how could it be bad? As much as I didn't like A-Rod, his talents were not in dispute.

I learned to like him even less.

And this year he's doing the impossible.

He's making a man, who for 40 years would eat, sleep and dream baseball, skip stories about the sport.

A-Rod is ruining baseball for me.

And he's not alone.

Not by any stretch.

There are hundreds of guys who should be painted with the same brush, and it really galls me that Aaron and Maris don't own the home run records anymore.

That is a flat-out shame.

Yet, I have been skipping complete games this year.

A couple of weeks ago I was more than an hour into my day when it occurred to me that I had no idea if the Yankees won or lost the night before.

And that's A-Rod's fault.

And Bud Selig's.

And Sammy Sosa's, and Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire and David Ortiz...ah hell, I don't have enough time to go through all the names.

And I wonder what the kids think. I was enthralled with the sport when I was their age. Reggie was loud and pompous, but he was great. Billy Martin drank too much, but he was tough. Thurman was gruff but he was a leader.

What can be said about A-Rod?

The 'but' in the discussion has been completely overwhelmed.

A-Rod is a cheater, BUT he's also a lying asshole, and a bad teammate and a Yankee who every Yankee fan worth an ounce of pinstripe loyalty hates.

Not much of a 'but' there

And it's making me think about something I never thought I'd think about in my lifetime.

Baseball makes me sick.

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