Steroids in baseball and greatest pitcher of the 90's

Well, I'm finally going to weigh in on the whole Miller report, etc. It seems to me that the report revealed a pervasive problem within the sport. 80 or so names listed specifically, many of whom are still playing and an entire team worth of All-Star players. That assumes of course that they were ever really All-Stars to begin with. Naturally that is. At any rate, here's my opinion. All the players should come clean and admit what they did, when they did it, why they did it and for how long they did it. Continuing to deny allegations in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary just makes you look even more guilty. After everything is said and done, there should probably be a few disciplinary actions handed out. However, punishing someone for doing something that wasn't illegal (although perhaps unethical) at the time it was done isn't really justice, so I think any punishment should really be done on a case by case basis. At any rate, that's pretty much it for me. Punishment can't possibly include removing records from the books, although it might include adding asterisks, which I hate, but somehow they might be needed. Finally, I'll now weigh in on who was the greatest pitcher of the steroids era. Everyone has always said it was obvious that Roger Clemens was the greatest pitcher. He had more wins, more strikeouts, fewer losses and more Cy Young awards than anyone else. While all that is true, the new allegations about his alleged steroids use certainly calls into question a lot of those statistics post 2000. Some say that pitchers being juiced isn't bad because the batters they were facing were too. I say that's nonesense, because not all pitchers were juiced which would give the juiced batters an advantage against them and the same is true in reverse. Therefore, while it might not matter in cases where both players were using, it certainly mattered in cases where only one player was. Therefore, who was the greatest pitcher of the 90's (steroid era)? That's easy, only one pitcher has statistics that come anywhere close to those of Clemens and there has never been an allegation that he used steroids. In addition, he's almost never even been on the disabled list. He would have faced juiced up and non-juiced batters alike and still achieved greatness regardless. Therefore, the greatest pitcher of the 90's was Greg Maddux followed closely by Tom Glavine, then Clemens would be third, not first, mostly due to the idea that he used 'roids to heal from injuries faster and possibly to give himself an advantage. At any rate, I don't think we'll be hearing that Clemens was the greatest so much anymore.

soccer in drag

I must admit that one of the most entertaining events I've seen in a while happened last night. Everyone knows that soccer is the favorite sport of Brazil. Last night, while attending the communities Christmas festivities, which included a wonderful children's choir from Sao Lucas Community School (I think that's what it was called, after all, Portuguese is not my strong point), we looked over at the soccer field to see a bunch of men playing. Upon a closer look, all the men on the field were dressed in drag. There were a bunch of women watching and taking pictures and some of the men were obviously too big for what they were wearing indicating they were probably wearing their girlfriend/wife/whatever's clothes. It was quite entertaining watching this soccer match, especially since the men were getting into their roles pretty well at times. There was some obvious poking fun at women? perhaps or just at themselves, again, Portuguese isn't my strong suit, but the whole spectacle was quite entertaining. My 3 year old son didn't seem to notice a bunch of men dressed as women playing soccer (although I'm not sure how you can miss the skirts and dresses these guys were wearing) but he did want blue to win. Since there were guys on both teams dressed in blue, that made it easy for him to root since he got to cheer both sides, whenever someone was wearing blue.

Travelling TAM Airlines

So, my family and I were travelling to Brazil last weekend. I must say that it was relatively uneventful. However, TAM Airlines apparently thinks that using an A320 between Miami and Manaus is a good idea. I might as well be flying domestic while flying on this plane. In addition, their apparent idea of in-flight entertainment was an American program, dubbed into Portuguese with no English on the second channel, followed by a British comedy program in English, followed by a magic act in English with the grand finale to the entertainment being a Brazilian show with subtitles (yeah). Oh wait, the subtitles were in German. Go figure. Anyway, I also would not recommend doing customs at 2:30 in the morning with 2 children who you have no chance of keeping asleep, but we did manage, even though the next day was like walking through a vat of molasses.