Random Thoughts on Monday

Baseball on Steroids:

Do we give Barry Bonds the benefit of the doubt when he claims he had no idea the clear substance he was using for arthritis was in all probability an illegal steroid? I don’t know. Most people I talk to assume Bonds has been on the “juice” for several years, pointing to the fact that he came into the league at around 185 pounds and is now pushing 225 pounds of what appears to be solid muscle. Sure, Bonds works out with trainers and a nutritionist and has access to the best equipment, but that kind of muscular growth in a man in his late 30’s and now early 40’s isn’t natural. At that age, as many of us know from experience, metabolism slows, injuries take longer to heal, and the joints and muscles loose suppleness. Bonds appears to have reversed the clock, and that makes a lot of people suspicious.

I don’t know that bulking up gives Bonds or any other player an advantage when it comes to hitting a baseball moving anywhere from 80 to 100 mph. That’s a function of eye-hand coordination, knowledge of the strike zone, and split-second recognition when the ball leaves the opposing pitcher’s hand. If you watch Bonds at the plate, you realize very quickly that he knows the strike zone as well or better than any player in Major League Baseball. Unlike Sammy Sosa or Jason Giambi or Richie Sexson, to name three sluggers, Bonds rarely swings at pitches out of the strike zone. By virtue of his tremendous plate discipline, Bonds forces the pitcher to either throw a strike and risk having it deposited in the farthest regions of the outfield stands, or give in and deliberately issue a walk. The uncanny thing about Bonds, and what cannot be explained by allegations of steroid use, is how often he makes solid contact. Given a decent pitch to hit, he rarely misses.

In terms of putting the bat on the ball, making contact, steroids probably doesn’t help Bonds or Giambi or any other player caught up in the current controversy. What the drugs might do, however, is prevent a player from wearing down over the course of a long, grueling season – and that could be a decided advantage.

What I’m Reading:

Continental Drift by Russell Banks. My second reading of this fine novel, the story of Bob Dubois, an oil burner repairman from New Hampshire. Bob Dubois who flees the cold north because he senses that his life there is nothing more than a dull repetition of days and months and years, and himself a waking, walking corpse. Bob Dubois, who cheats on his wife and convinces himself that this is acceptable as long as he still loves his wife and she never finds out about his infidelities. This is also the story of Haitian immigrants, desperately poor and exploited and tossed about by forces beyond their control, and the very American notion of rebirth and renewal in a new locale.

I find it extremely satisfying to go back and several years later re-read a good novel. I catch important elements I missed on the first go round, feel the pathos differently today than back then. I come across passages I underlined five or seven years ago and wonder why they seemed significant.

Of Passing Interest:

Was a report in the Los Angeles Times about smut stores setting up shop in the heart of small-town America. Apparently, the decent, bible-toting residents of Kansas and Iowa and Missouri enjoy sex toys and XXX movies just as much as any resident of San Francisco or Manhattan. It’s somehow comforting to learn that good ol’ American porn sells in places so concerned with “moral” values.