Gwen Knapp strikes again

You may now resume the war in Bagdad's Green Zone (which as you may not know has been fitted with new version of astro-turf)

No she didn't. She likened the attitude of those who say "no felony, no foul" to the attitude that it was OK to let OJ publish a book.

I don't agree with much of what she says in this column, but I like Knapp a lot more than most writers because she doesn't stoop to histrionics or misty-eyed "what about the children" crap. She's obviously torn about the steroids issue (and admits that those she disagrees with, "the cynics," are "right to a certain degree"), and she's struggling with it. One thing she's right about, is that the "no felony,no foul" camp, which sometimes includes myself, can be just as strident and blinkered and dogmatic as the moral high horse camp. Good on her, I say.

And this batbrain, has the unmitigated gall to withold her BBWA vote from Mark McGwire and in the process lecture us on the moral depravity of Mr. McGwire for not bowing and scraping in front of a panel of grandstanding Congressional pork-barrel racers?

I'm supposed to take this woman seriously? The only thing that should be taken seriously with this woman is her personal computer and any, and all sharp objects.

Give her 15 minutes to clear her pathetic and warped sense of self-righteousness and ignorance out the door and onto a plane with a one way ticket to the Aleutions. There, she can submit weekly columns on the veracity of rumors eminating from the sponsors of the Iditarod on the illegal consumption of amphetamines, by the legendary heroic canine lionized by Walt Disney: " Balto "

This person is such an ass. Just a complete ass.

She writes:

But I'm not buying the nonsense about being a self-appointed moral guardian of the game because I didn't check the box next to McGwire's name. People who voted for McGwire have a moral code, too, one that reveres what happens on the field regardless of how it happened, and one that equates not receiving the ultimate professional honor with not being allowed to roam free in the world.

She's attempting in this passage to accomplish two things. First, she's trying to say "hey, I'm not one of those uber-moralists who thinks they are the arbiters of all that good and pure in baseball." She knows a lot of people hate that crap. But it's too late. Her anti-McGwire column in December already showed us that she is. She's backtracking.

The second thing she is attempting here is to project her own sense of moral superiority on her critics/other side of the argument. "See! They are voting their morals, too! We're all the same so you can't criticize me..." That's crap. She needs a shrink.

People who think that McGwire's stats warrant HOF consideration have the better argument. Why? Because we can all point to the FACTS (remember those) of his numbers. He did hit 583 homers in his career. But that isn't a moral argument. It's a factual one.

In sports, and baseball in particular, we use stats, in one sense, to measure players against each other (and themselves), to determine who is better and who has performed at a higher level for any given stretch of time. For a lot of people, McGwire's power stats show that he performed a very high level for a long period of time and a difficult task - hitting homeruns. He broke long-time records and put up huge seasons. Stats provide an objective criteria to evaluate a player's season or career.

In HOF voting, stats are often THE overriding factor, (honors, too). McGwire has the stats to justify his inclusion into the HOF. He also has some well-earned honors. In one sense, he was the best of his era at hitting homeruns. All Gwen Krapp has is that "he might have cheated because he was big and strong and didn't want to talk about it 5 years after he retired." Of course, she voted for Caminitti who used roids and died a cokehead. Aren't his numbers bogus, too? No, they happened, even if moral elitists don't like how it happened. Just like McGwire and just like Bonds.

Krapp further tries to obfuscate this undeniable fact of life by saying the homeruns didn't really happen:

These same people also like to cite statistics without any context. They talk about McGwire's 583 home runs the way Nigel in "This Is Spinal Tap'' brags about the amp that "goes to 11.'' They can't wrap their brains around the idea that the number just might be bogus.

It might be bogus? Really? You mean, I IMAGINED the ball leaving the park? You mean, the homerun I saw McGwire hit off of Randy Johnson in the Kingdome in 1997 DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN? Did the TV station edit some old footage to show that monster blast to the back of the Kingdome? Really? Like I said, the woman needs a shrink.  

As is evident, the numbers aren't bogus. They aren't bogus any more than Babe Ruth's numbers aren't bogus even though he didn't play against any black players. Willie Mays' numbers aren't fake even though he probably took amphetamines. Doc Ellis' no-hitter is real, even though he was on acid. Tim Raines' stolen bases are real, even though he was coked up. They're as real as Gaylord Perry's 314 wins, even though much of those were earned with an illegal spitball. They're real. They count in the record books. They actually, physically happened and they're not going away.

In any event, like most media tools, Krapp can't tell us which homers are bogus. She can't and won't point to the ones that don't count. She can't and won't point to the ones that wouldn't have left the park without McGwire shooting up with roids. She can't and won't point to the homeruns which weren't hit off a pitcher on roids. If and when she or anyone else does, THEN WE'LL TALK ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE NUMBERS. BUT UNTIL THEN, THEY'RE REAL, WHICH IS MORE THAN I CAN SAY FOR GWEN KRAPP'S LOGIC!