PEDs, What PEDs? How Racism Has Destroyed Sports Reporting, Chap. MMMDCCCIX

By Nicholas Stix

About the only thing left that baseball fans still consider sacrosanct is statistics, but they mean nothing to sports “reporters,” who hold the game in contempt, and merely exploit it, in the service of their racial socialist politics. Thus, to a real baseball fan, the greatest accomplishment is likely to be Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record of 755 dingers (though some will consider Cy Young’s pitching record of 511 wins during the dead-ball era a greater accomplishment). To the frauds who have subverted sports “reporting,” however, Aaron, who by the laws of the time was a clean player his entire career, is not the home run king, the cheater Barry Bonds, to whom they ascribe 762 homers, is.

The propaganda piece on the Triple Crown below, by a Paul Casella, contains repeated references to notorious juicers Bonds and Sammy Sosa. What do said references have to do with the price of tea in China? Not only did neither man ever win a Triple Crown, their “incredible” home run seasons were entirely due to cheating. Hence, it is unfair to even speak of them in reference to legitimate ballplayers, unless it is to emphasize their ridiculousness.

But since Bonds and Sosa are black and brown, respectively, all good sense must go out the window when discussing them, or anything remotely connected to them. Thus, nowhere does Casella mention terms like “cheaters,” “juicers,” or “performance-enhancing drugs” (PEDs).

I initially then wrote, “But no ‘professional’ sportswriter would dare do that, seeing as it would bring the career-killing charge of ‘racism,’” and cited Chris Collinsworth.

As I wrote in 2005,

In journalism as in academia, the most important questions one has to learn are those which one may not ask. For instance, back in April on Bob Costas’ HBO sports show, football announcer Chris Collinsworth, a white, retired Cincinnati Bengal wide receiver, stuttered and stammered as he tried to say that he is so nervous about touching professionally on race in any way, because it could instantly end his announcing career, that he is afraid to ask any race-related questions.

On second thought, things are worse now. These mooks, especially the younger ones, aren’t terrified of losing their jobs; they are gleefully terrifying other people. Even some of the older sports propagandists, like the Daily News’ Mike Lupica, are no more than Democratic Party ventriloquists’ dummies.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Lupica, who occasionally reveals his literary pretensions by dropping the names of great writers as a substitute for literary skill, came out of the closet as a lefty political hack, and got a political columnist’s gig at the News, in addition to his regular sports propaganda gig.

Not that Lupica’s leftism was a secret—he had pushed during the 1990s for the redistribution of profits within baseball by making the false claim that small-market teams could not compete with big-market teams—but his political columns were crude, vulgar, and screamingly dishonest in a way that his sports columns had not been. (For example, after John McCain threw the election by campaigning with both hands tied behind his back, Lupica despicably asserted that McCain had run a campaign of “hate.”)

Lupica would have been the first to know that the small-market Kansas City Royals, then run by their visionary founder, Ewing M. Kauffman, had dominated the American League Western Division for 10 years (1976-1985), winning seven division championships, playing in two World Series, and winning one. The Royals deteriorated into perennial losers based not on the size of their market but on Kauffman’s death in 1993, and the incompetence of his successors.

These days, Lupica writes things like that Obama will lose the election because the white Americans who voted for him in 2008 are so irredeemably racist that they will vote for Romney in 2012, with some weasely qualifications thrown in.

Some right-of-center writers, like my VDARE colleague Steve Sailer, have asked why sportswriters are so pc. They are so pc, because everyone in the newsrooms where they work is pc, and the J-schools they all attended—usually, Columbia—ensure that no one who isn’t pc is permitted to graduate. The difference between sportswriters and other “reporters” is that sports propagandists are permitted to be openly pc in their writing, to sound just like their “reporter” colleagues do among themselves, while the “reporters” still have to veil their politics in their writing, though since circa 1989, the veil has grown ever more threadbare.

By the way, the MLB.com operative below, Paul Casella, keeps writing that “baseball” had its last Triple Crown winner in 1967, when Carl Yastrzemski had his career year with the Red Sox, as if there were only one league. The National League had its last Triple Crown winner—Joe “Ducky” Medwick—in 1937.

Given that Casella is an employee of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, who like his fellow corporate bosses, mixes globalism, consolidationism, and political correctness, it is only fitting and proper, not to mention mandatory, that he should write that way. All mlb.com articles come with the phony disclaimer, “This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.”

While that might be true in the narrowest legal sense, writing a politically incorrect article would result in Bud Selig firing the writer. That’s “subject to the approval of Major League Baseball” in my book.

* * *
Few candidates for Triple Crown are long shots
Cabrera, Trout, McCutchen have work cut out to realize elusive achievement
By Paul Casella
August 9, 2012
MLB.com

8/5/12: Miguel Cabrera rips a two-run shot off Chris Perez in the 10th inning to give the Tigers a walk-off win vs. the Indians

One month into the season, some optimists were already tossing around the notion of Matt Kemp potentially ending the nearly half-century drought of a hitter not winning a Triple Crown.

(Actually, Kemp plays in the National League, which has not had a Triple Crown winner since Ducky Medwick in 1937.)

Kemp, after all, finished April with a blistering .417 average, 12 home runs and 25 RBIs -- all of which led the National League. A strained left hamstring, though, cost Kemp nearly two months and erased any chance the slugger had at the elusive achievement of leading a league in batting average, home runs and RBIs.

Now, with just less than two months remaining in the season and legitimate league leaders starting to emerge, it turns out all hope may not be lost for witnessing the Major Leagues' first Triple Crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.

In the American League, the Tigers' Miguel Cabrera entered play Thursday tied for the league lead in RBIs with 95 and sat just two home runs back of league leader Adam Dunn with 29. The biggest obstacle for Cabrera, who was hitting .323, figures to be claiming the batting title over Angels phenom Mike Trout, who is currently leading the way at a .345 clip and not showing any signs of slowing down.

In the NL, a few players seem to have an outside shot at the Crown, with Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen in the best position of the bunch. McCutchen led all Major Leaguers with his .370 average, was third in the league in homers with 23 (six behind the Brewers' Ryan Braun) and 10th RBIs with 69 (nine behind the leader, Carlos Beltran of St. Louis).

"Very seldom will you find someone who can hit for power and a high-enough average to go along with 40 to 50 homers," said McCutchen, who doesn't see himself rallying to the top of all three categories anytime soon. "[Barry] Bonds was pretty good at it -- good enough to win a couple of batting titles -- but now it's hard to find someone who can do both."

So hard actually, that no slugger has earned a hitting Triple Crown since Yastrzemski led the AL with a .326 average, 44 home runs and 121 RBIs. In the 44 seasons since, 10 hurlers have tossed their way to the pitching version of the Triple Crown (wins, ERA and strikeouts), including both Justin Verlander in the AL and Clayton Kershaw in the NL last season.

Overall, there have been 32 pitching Triple Crowns since 1900 compared to just 13 hitting. Not even Bonds could capture the batting, home run and RBI titles in the same season when he was putting up monster numbers in the early 2000s.

"The cycle the game went through ... [Triple Crowns were won] back in the day when 20 [homers] and 100 [RBIs] meant you were top-shelf," said Pirates manager Clint Hurdle. "Now those kinds of numbers would get lost in the crowd. The emphasis on power has de-emphasized the average, so we lost some of that context."

In fact, since 2000, 11 players have led their league in two of the three necessary categories. Of those 11, only Matt Kemp in 2011 and Matt Holliday in 2007 finished in the top five of the other category.

Holliday posted the rare form of a near-Triple Crown, leading the NL with a .340 average and 137 RBIs with the Rockies in '2007. His 36 home runs placed him fourth in the NL but he finished 14 behind home run champ Prince Fielder.

As for Kemp, he took the more traditional approach, leading the NL with 39 dingers and 126 RBIs a season ago. He remained in contention for the batting title deep into the season, but ultimately finished third with a .324 average, 13 points behind league leader Jose Reyes.

"There's a lot better pitching now, stronger guys in relief. You have to see guys throwing 99 [mph] at the end of games," McCutchen said. "So it's almost impossible that you can see something like that now [winning a Triple Crown]."
Almost impossible may be a fair assessment, but guys like Kemp, Alex Rodriguez and Todd Helton are among the active players who have kept things interesting into previous Septembers.

Helton had a near-miss in 2000 when he led the NL with a .372 average and 147 RBIs, but unfortunately that came in a year when Bonds and Sammy Sosa were crushing balls out of ballparks all across the country. Helton finished eight home runs shy of Sosa's league-leading 50.

"Some offensive teams give opportunities that are off the charts for certain guys." Hurdle said. "To lead in RBIs, you have to be stuck in the middle of a powerful lineup. The opportunities to drive in runs vary for hitters depending on the lineup they're in."

Ironically enough, the player most likely to keep Cabrera from ending the Triple Crown drought this season is a 20-year-old who may himself contend for one down the road. Though Trout may not be considered a front-runner to lead the AL in home runs -- and continuing to bat leadoff would make it difficult from an RBI aspect -- he has shown flashes of the power and hit-for-average qualities necessary to compete for it.
Just ask Hall of Famer Al Kaline.

"He's a strong guy, runs really well, power -- he reminds me a little bit of a [Mickey] Mantle," Kaline told the Detroit Free Press last month. "You don't see the combination of power and speed that he has."

While Kaline wasn't necessarily discussing Triple Crown potential when he made the comparison to Mantle, he did invoke the name of one of the 11 sluggers who have turned in the 13 total Triple Crown seasons since 1900. Mantle accomplished the feat in 1956.

"Is it surprising that Mike Trout's talent is able to produce what's happening on the field? No, that's not a surprise. He's an extraordinary talent," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said recently. "You go back probably 50 years and you can count the guys on one hand that came up at such a young age and had this much of an impact on the team."

All of which makes one wonder what type of impact Trout might have on the Triple Crown in future years -- and even this year, as he could ultimately play spoiler to Cabrera.

Paul Casella is a reporter for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @paul_casella. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.