Core Values: Growing Spiritually

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:21-28 and Hebrews 5:11-6:4:

This week we had to submit our annual statistics to the annual conference, which includes reporting on our finances, but then also about worship attendance, and membership, and how many people are impacted by the ministries of the church, and baptisms and participation in Sunday school and other classes. That is they are asking me to report things that they can count to try and account for how we are making disciples. The problem is, none of the things we have to report really say anything about that ultimately. Because you could have a youth group of 50, but not have them coming into relationship with Jesus, and you could have a youth group of five that is making deep disciples. So which is better? Well off of straight statistics, the conference is going to be happier with the 50, than with the five, even though our goal is making disciples. Of course you could have the opposite as well, I am not saying that big is bad, but it’s a matter of what is actually happening in those groups, which is harder to define.

In 2004, Willow Creek Community Church, which is located outside of Chicago and is one of the largest churches in the country, did try and quantify their ability to make disciples and to deepen people in their spiritual journey. Willow Creek, which began in 1975, was one of the primary pushers of the idea of creating a seeker church to bring in unchurched people by removing all the things that people associated with being church. And so, in their own admission, they undertook this survey to really prove how successful they had been in fulfilling the great commission and making disciples of Christ. But, the survey showed the opposite. That while they were great at getting people through the door, they were not moving them past seeking into discipleship.

In the Beginning

Here is my sermon for June 7. The text was Genesis 1:1-2:4a:

Last week I said that Peter’s line that the disciples aren’t drunk because it was only 9 am was one of my favorite, but the opening line from today’s Genesis passage is one of the most important in scripture, because it proves that baseball is the greatest sport there is, because God starts the creation in the big inning. Perhaps it’s also a sign that maybe the season will start soon. But the opening line here is probably one of the most famous in scripture, although what we have in Christianity, is more than likely a mistranslation. The Jewish Publication Societies translation, as other Jewish translations say, “when God began to create heaven and earth,” which might be more accurate, but it ruins my baseball joke, and so we’ll pretend as if it’s not there. This is the first of two creation stories in the Bible, and they are very different stories, as we will see, and contain different reasons for being and different understandings of God, and we’ll explore some of them over the next two weeks. But the simple fact that there are two different creation stories, telling of creation in different ways, should eliminate most of the arguments that we have about the Bible verses evolution.

But, unfortunately it doesn’t, and I can’t say why, but for simplicity sake, and I know this won’t be a problem for most watching today, you can indeed both be a Christian and believe in evolution. They are not incompatible ideas, and we’ll touch only briefly on this, but the earliest church’s opposition to evolution came not because of contradiction with scripture but because of the idea of social Darwinism, or survival of the fittest in humanity, which still exists today, which argued that he poor, handicapped, criminals, and others deemed unworthy, or unimportant by society should be weeded out, allowed to die, or purposely killed in order to protect humanity as a species. In arguments saying that we should just let senior citizens die so that we can get the economy going again is a social Darwinist argument, and something, I hope, that we find morally repugnant. But, that’s a different message for a different day.

Haggai: You Can't Go Back

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Haggai 2:1-9:

In just two weeks the Major League Baseball season will start, and baseball is one of those sports that in the more things change, the more they stay the same, so for example, one well known player said of the younger players coming up "The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that's it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it." Does anyone want to make a guess what year, or decade, that was uttered in? It was Ty Cobb, and he said it in 1925 while he was still playing the game. So, for all those people who complain today that the athletes are only in it for the money, that’s a complaint that goes back a long, long way, and I am sure that others had said exactly the same thing about Ty Cobb and his peers when they broke into the game as well. There seems to a natural tendency among humans to look to the past and to long for the ways that things used to be done, to wish that if things could only be like they were back then, then everything would be great. Or to phrase it differently, everything was awesome back then, and it’s terrible now, and who do these kids think they are anyways, kids in my day yadda, yadda, yadda. Perhaps it will make you feel better, or maybe not, to know that we see this same story taking place in scripture. There are the people complaining to Moses as they are wandering in the Egypt, who say “remember how good we had it back in Egypt? I mean sure we were slaves and all, but at least we weren’t walking all day following a cloud, Moses, when are we going to get there? Yadda, yadda, yadda.” And then there are the people who were complaining about the state of Judah after the people returned from Exile and how good it used to be, which is where the prophet Haggai comes into play.

All of the minor prophets we have encountered so far have been making prophecies in or to Israel, the northern kingdom, or Judah, which was the southern kingdom during the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. As you may remember, Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian empire in 721 and the 10 northern tribes were removed from the land and basically disappeared to the sands of history. They were replaced on the land by the Samaritans. Then the Assyrian Empire was destroyed by the Babylonian empire, who then laid siege to Judah and Jerusalem destroying the city in 587 and then the Temple in 586 carrying off all the treasures of the Temple, including the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the ten commandments, and set in place Indiana Jones’ search. They also carried off the elites of the society, including the political and religious leaders, into captivity in Babylon, which is why it’s called the Babylonian exile. This is one of the most important events in Jewish history with most of the books in the Hebrew Scripture focusing on the issues surrounding these events. But, then in 538 the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonians, ending their reign, and starting a whole new empire in the region, see you didn’t know you were going to get a history lesson on the empires of the ancient near east. But the last 3 prophets we will encounter deal with Judah under the rule by the Persian Empire. And just so you know it’s Alexander the Great who defeats the Persians, although I’m guessing the Persians didn’t think he was too great.

An Ode To Derek Jeter

Tonight Derek Jeter will play his last game at Yankee Stadium, or at least he will if it doesn't get rained out.  If we still lived on the East coast we would probably have tried to be there, or at least would have gone during this homestand.  I'm not really a fan of the "farewell" tour with every team giving him presents and things, and really hope this doesn't become a regular thing.  If it does, my question is who qualifies for it?  What if one team gives a player a gift but another team doesn't?  How would that work?  But that's off topic.

There has been a lot of conversation in the past week from two different camps.  The first are those who are praising Jeter and making him out to be the greatest Yankee ever.  He is not.  If we have a Mount Rushmore of Yankees (which would be 4 people), he's not on it.  He is easily in the top ten, but he is not number one.  This is not a knock on Jeter, because on many teams he would be the greatest, but when you have to compete against Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio just to start, it's tough to get to the top.  So let's lay off that side for a while.

The other side is trying to denigrate him all together, and say that he's not that great at all, and I'm looking at you Keith Olbermann.  There are also some saying that without "the tour" that the Yankees would have made the playoffs.  That by continuing to play Jeter every day at shortstop at age 40 and also continue to bat him second that he cost them some runs, and thus some games.  And then they claim that he should have either removed himself from the line-up or asked to bat lower "for the good of the team."

There are many problems with that argument.  The first is who Jeter is.  He is a competitor, and he has said and continues to say that he thinks he is the best person to be out there, that he brings more to the game than whoever would replace him.  So knowing that, we know he's not going to do that. Second, the manager gets paid lots of money to make these decisions, so it should be up to Girardi to do what needs to be done "for the good of the team" not the player.  And for those who bring up Gehrig removing himself, remember that he could not physically continue to play, and if I remember correctly never played again once he did take himself out.  And speaking of Gehrig, what happened when Wally Pipp took himself out of one game?

And please don't bring up WAR to me, which is wins over replacement.  What this seeks to measure is how many wins a play generates over the average player if he were replaced.  But here is my problem, these numbers never pass the sniff test.  One year, according to WAR, Jeter was the second worst player in the league and the worst player was Manny Ramirez.  Not when he was with the Dodgers, but during his hugely productive years with the Sawx.  Jeter and Ramirez the two worst players in the league?  The stat may say it, but I know that every GM in the league would have taken them if they could have them.

But here is the main problem.  Here are three batting lines from the Yankees this year:
BA        OBP       SLG       OPS
.253     .301      .309      .611
.176     .217      .213      .430
.155     .224      .279      .503

Now in hearing people talk about how much Jeter is hurting the Yankees, you might think that one of the bottom two lines would be Jeter.  But they are not.  Jeter's is the first line, and the other two belong to Stephen Drew and Brendan Ryan, the two people who would probably play shortstop if Jeter wasn't there.  Now these are not normal Jeter numbers, but they are a lot more impressive then his replacements.  Drew and Ryan would have been better with the glove, but the runs they saved on defense more than would have been given up by the runs they would not generate on offense.

Should Jeter have been moved out of the number two spot?  Yes, he probably should have been batting 7th or so.  But who would have batted in his place?  The problem is we had 6-7 guys in the line-up who should have been batting at the bottom on the line-up.  The entire line-up did not produce this year.  There are only two regular starters on the entire team who batted over .280 for the season. Two!  And those are Ichiro, who batted .284, and Cervelli, who is our back-up catcher, who hit .285.

When Jeter went 0-28 and everyone was bashing him, no one else on the team was hitting either. Gardner also went 0-28 from the lead-off spot right around the same time, and no one was yelling about him hurting the team, and that he should be benched or put lower in the batting order.  Instead it was Jeter's fault.

Should Jeter have retired last year?  Probably, but he didn't want to end his career on an injury, just like Marianno didn't, and so he played.  And I for one am glad he did because my daughters are old enough to realize what this means and will curl up on the couch with me tonight as we see the greatest Yankee of my generation, no offense to Mo, hang them up.

Is he the greatest Yankee of all time?  No.  But when his name is included on the lists of those who are, that is more than enough for any player.

The Stupidity of Black Out Rules

Today is the first day of the All Star break in which there are no baseball games being played, and that means that tonight, just like every other night, I won't be watching the Arizona Diamondbacks playing. But, the difference between tonight and every other night during the baseball season, is that normally I can't watch the Diamondbacks not because they aren't playing, but because they are blacked out where I live.

For those unfamiliar with what that means, in an agreement made between the owners in the dark ages, they agreed to divide up the country geographically giving teams the broadcast rights to large swaths of territory that they then control whether their game can be shown there or not.  This might make some sense in the Northeast, but in the west it's totally insane.

When I lived in Boston I understood why I couldn't watch the New York feed when the Yankees were playing the Red Sox.  That makes sense because the Red Sox want me to watch commercials for Boston, and make them money, rather than making the Yankees money.  But I could still watch the game!  And when the Yankees were playing anywhere else I could watch the Yankee feed.  But that is not the case with the Diamondbacks.

MLB Broadcast Black-Out Map*

Why?  Because the Diamondbacks "broadcast territory" includes all of the state of New Mexico, and so we are perpetually blacked out.  I can't even watch them when they are on ESPN.  They are always not on television, because heaven forbid that I might decide to go to the game, but then decide not to because I can watch them on TV instead.  Now to demonstrate the stupidity of this rule.

We currently live in Albuquerque.  If I suddenly had the urge to go to a game I would either a) have to drive seven hours to get there, or b) drive to the airport and catch a 1-hour flight to Phoenix.  The current airfare to do that on Southwest would be $493, round-trip.  So if I wanted to take my whole family, we would spend $2000 on airfare for our last minute decision, not counting the cost of the tickets, food and transportation.  Not really going to happen.

But, you might say, it's at least possible, and yes it is, so let's broaden it out a little bit.  My last church was 45 minutes from the Texas border.  So to do that same scenario, we would have added another 3 hours driving to get to the airport in Albuquerque, or 2 hours to go to Lubbock, plus an extra $100-$150 more for the plane ticket, and it was still blacked out.

Now here is the bigger problem for the Diamondbacks, and really for MLB as a whole.  I want my daughters to be baseball fans.  We get the MLB package so that we can watch as much baseball as we can, and in particular watch all the Yankees games, which we do.  I was born and grew up in Phoenix, and even though I left before the Diamondbacks existed, they are still my "hometown" team.  It would be nice for my daughters to have a rooting interest for them, and maybe even become fans, but you know what, they never will be because they never, ever get to see the Diamondbacks play.  Ever.

That means that when we are planning vacations, they are never going to say, "hey, let's go to Phoenix to see the Diamondbacks play."  They are never going to ask for any Diamondbacks jerseys, hats, socks, lunch bags, etc.  Which means the Diamondbacks are never going to make money from us, and my daughters are never going to be fans of them. But they do talk about the Yankees and ask for those things, why?  Because that is who I root for and it is the team they see all the time.

I heard yesterday that the average age of baseball fans is 53.  If the MLB want to make fans of a new generation, one of the things they need to do is to abolish the stupid way they televise games, because most people are not like me, they are not paying to have access to nearly every MLB game being broadcast, and so children are not seeing these games, and unless the live in the immediate vicinity they are not watching the games of teams that might mean something to them.

*You might notice that I am also blacked out from Rockies games, but I don't care about the Rockies, although maybe I would if I could see their games.  In my last church I was also blacked out from the Rangers, so even though I was minimum 8 hours from any of these teams I could not see them.  And if you live in Vegas, forget about seeing anyone.

Baseball and World Series Musings

After the Yankees lost on Friday night I had basically stopped following sports for a while. I hadn’t watch ESPN or read any of my normal Yankees Blogs, and so boy was I surprised by all that has gone on since then. I discover that pitching coach Dave Eiland has been fired, CC Sabathia is having surgery on his knee, Kristin Lee the wife of Cliff, was unhappy with how Ranger fans were treated (as if somehow only Yankee fans boo and jeer opposing team fans. Did you not hear the “Yankees S*#k” chants at the Ballpark in Arlington?), the official scorer for the Yankees, Bill Shannon, died in a house fire, Pettitte was pitching injured in the playoffs, and the Yankees first goal is to get Joe Girardi signed to an extension. And those were just a few of the stories. Wow.

Fox has got to be very upset with their World Series match-up which starts tonight. Of the final four teams, this was their worst nightmare, because outside of diehard baseball fans, who are going to watch anyways, and fans in Dallas and San Francisco, no one cares. Sure there are some good stories to follow, and the pitching has the possibility of being great, but these are not teams or players that people know, and Fox and MLB are really to blame for this.

Now as a Yankee fan I love the fact I can watch my team play games on national television that might otherwise be blacked out because of the absolutely ridiculous television contract that MLB signed with Fox. But when the teams that they push all the time are the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Dodgers, Braves, Cubs, and a few others, then it is little wonder that people never learn about any of the other teams. And if they don’t know those teams they are not going to be interested in watching them in the post season. In addition, the general marketing and advertising of the game is just ridiculously stupid and behind the times.

In many ways, MLB is like the church. They are counting on their much older fan base to continue to tell the story and bring in new generations rather than reaching out and doing creative things to bring the new fans in themselves. In other words, their marketing plan is doomed to fail at some point. One of the reasons they are working so hard to keep Mark Cuban from buying a team, besides for the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf (who owns the White Sox and is one of the commissioners closest friends) can’t stand him, is because they know that he will push them on this and be a general thorn in their side. As much as I can’t stand a lot of what the NBA does and represents, they do a very good job in marketing their sport and their personalities, and Cuban even pushes the NBA.

I don’t really have a good prediction on the series. I think the Rangers are the better team top to bottom, but I would also say that about the Yankees over the Rangers, so there you go. Both teams have been sitting out for a while, which is absolutely ridiculous. Baseball is an everyday sport, and it needs to be played every day. Every. Single. Day. Give one day for travel between home games, but other than that keep going. The Yankees sat for seven days before they played the Rangers, and it clearly didn’t help them. Remember the 2006 Tigers, they sat forever before the series and they suffered the consequences.

In this case both teams have been sitting for almost an equal amount so it will be which team can get their timing back the quickest. That does also make for the possibility of some ugly, sloppy baseball, which is not a good product to be putting on the field for what is supposed to be the premier event in baseball. For some this might be the only baseball they watch all year and it should be the best that can be found, but often it isn’t, and again MLB and their ridiculous television contracts are responsible.

I think what the series might come down to is which team is happy to just be there and which team wants to win it all. If you remember back to when the Rays made it to the series, they all talked about how happy they were to make it to the series, and that is how they played. They had already achieved what they wanted to do. (I know they all still want to win, but I think there was a letdown because they had already achieved so much. They certainly did not play like the team that won the American League East and pennant that year.) There are other teams that have done this as well.

Bottom line is that I am going with the Rangers in 6. I could be totally wrong because there are just way too many unknowns in this series. As a Yankee fan I’ve been going back and forth of whether it’s better for Lee to win or not, and I think I’ve decided it is best for us to have him win in Texas. This is true for a couple of reasons.

One is that winning the series in the best that is ever going to happen in Texas, and so that is already out of the way. There is nothing else Lee can do there. Two, then the Yankees can say: “Sure you’re a World Series Champion with Texas, but you haven’t won one with the Yankees. Winning in Texas makes you king of the Dallas metroplex, but winning in New York makes you the king of the world. A victory parade through the suburbs simply cannot compare to a ticker tape parade through the canyon of heroes, so come to New York and we’ll really show you what it means to be a champion.”

So what do you say Cliff?

Congress Taking a Stand

Okay, I tried to stay away from the Roger Clemens issue for a while now, but I just can’t do it. In case you don’t pay attention to these things, last week Roger Clemens was indicted on charges of perjury in his testimony to Congress. And all I can think is, are you kidding me? I’m glad that some members of Congress took time away from their incredibly busy schedules to pursue this.

I know how much work it takes to make sure we pass legislation that makes sure that people who declare bankruptcy cannot have their guns repossessed, because I know that making sure people under enormous stress and experiencing one of the worst situations in their lives can keep their weapons is priority number one. I think we should have added an amendment to give them free ammo for all those declaring bankruptcy so they don’t have to worry about that expense.

I know that making sure that a bill that would provide medical care to all our emergency workers who worked at ground zero wasn’t passed because the Republicans wanted to make sure that no funds would go to illegal immigrants took a lot of time.

And I know that they are so busy that they literally passed a bill entitled “The _____ Act of _____.” (You can’t make this stuff up.)

So even with all of this incredibly important stuff going on, I’m glad they took time out to make sure that Roger Clemens is taken to task. What more pressing issue can there possibly be? After all, Clemens must be taught a lesson for allegedly lying to congress. He certainly must not get away with this.

What Clemens did, after all, is much worse than the heads of big tobacco saying under oath that they don’t spike their cigarettes or that tobacco is not addictive. Clemens alleged untruths must be worse because these people were never brought up on charges of perjury. Clemens must be worse than auto administrators who have lied about the safety of their vehicles, or drug companies doing the same thing, or the last administration lying about intelligence, or heaven forbid all of the members of the financial community who have said things under oath that were patently not true. Obviously all of those things are not as important as the issue of steroids and so we must make an example of Clemens.

As long as Congress is wasting their time, and the time of their federal prosecutors, let me suggest a few laws they might better spend their time passing:

• Recording artists cannot release a greatest hits album until the tenth anniversary of their first song reaching the charts, or after having released a minimum of five albums in seven years. I’m tired of seeing a band releasing a greatest hits album after only their second mediocre album is out. (And yes I know they actually aren’t albums anymore but you can’t really call them CD’s either since I buy almost all my music as MP3s, so I’m sticking with the tried and true).

• All movies released on DVD must come with a director’s commentary. And if the movie scores below 40% approval on rottentomatoes.com the commentary must also include an explanation from the director why they created such a terrible film and an apology for wasting two hours of our life.

• Any person who talks about protecting their Constitutional rights must be forced to read the actual Constitution so they have some idea what they are talking about.

• Any state that has a death penalty must also institute similar laws for white collar criminals and state executions must be done in equal numbers. One state execution of a black man for killing a white person must be equaled by the death of a white banker/corporate exec, etc., who stole money from someone else, often those who can least afford it, like the minority communities.

• Everyone who takes Labor Day off must donate ten dollars to the labor union movement (a list can be stipulated). This does not apply if they are already a union member.

• Every corporation that donates any money to a political candidate, party, or PAC must list each and every donation and amount in at least 14 pt font on the first page of their website, on every public document released, in every commercial they run, on the bottom of their screen if they are a television station, and on their receipts if they are a retail business. For punishment for failure to comply with the law, the CEO could be subject to the penalty discussed above.

• M. Night Shyamalan must be forced to admit that The Sixth Sense was a fluke, movie studios and promotion departments have to stop making a big deal of his films, and everyone else must stop wondering when he is going to put out another good film. He's put out six already, our "sixth sense" should be telling us it is not going to happen.

• Sports announcers must stop saying RBIs. The acronymn is either run batter in or runs batted in. It is already plural, so you don't need to say it again. Yesterday, Robinson Cano had 6 RBI, he did not have 6 RBIs, just as on Saturday, Derek Jeter had 1 RBI.

• Television stations cannot increase the volume of their broadcast when commercials come on. The sound must be consistent for both the television show and the commercials. For possible penalties, see above.

• Airlines must be required to post what they charge for each checked bag on the first page of their websites. Have you ever tried to find this information on their site? It's nearly impossible.

• Daylight savings time must be eliminated.

An A-Bomb by A-Rod

Congratulations go out to Alex Rodriguez who hit his 600th home run yesterday, becoming just the seventh player in Major League history to reach that plateau. Now many sports commentators are playing down the significance of this because it is unknown how many home runs were assisted by means of "performance enhancing drugs." If you've been reading this blog for any period of time you already know my thoughts on this, which is that it is bogus.

First, as my beautiful bride said last night, how come all they ever talk about is hitters, why don't they talk about pitchers? Half of all the people who have tested positive have been pitchers, so does that effect how we look at the debate?

Second, the steroid area extends from at least 1986, which is the year pegged by Peter Gammons, although I think you need to go back to 1983 or 1984, up through maybe 2004 or later if you think everyone just moved to untraceable drugs like HGH. As much as I can't stand Jose Canseco, so far he has been right about almost everything he said, which includes the fact that at least 85% of all players were using during this time period.

This was an issue for at least 20 years, so let's stop talking about who is clean and who isn't, because there is absolutely no way of knowing. Frank Thomas and Ken Griffie, Jr., are routinely said to have no indications that they ever used, and I hope they didn't, but there is simply no way of knowing. I am no longer surprised by any one's name I hear being mentioned. There are certainly some that disappoint me, but none are surprising. Unless you are going to discount all numbers for all players during that decade let's just deal with it and move on.

Finally, as one person said, Babe Ruth never had to face Satchel Page, so wasn't that an advantage? A-Rod has the advantage of having better supplements and work out routines that are legal, as well as the fact that he can go into the locker room immediately after each at bat and watch what just happened so that he can make real-time adjustments to a pitcher, as well as having scouting reports that were just simply unimaginable forty years ago. Imagine what Ted Williams could have done had he had this technology? Do we discount his home runs because of that advantage.

Here is my solution. If we don't want Bonds or A-Rod to be the home run champion then let's put the title where it rightfully belongs, which is with Josh Gibson, who is arguably the greatest home run hitter of all time. It is estimated that he hit 800-1000 home runs in his very short career (he died of a brain tumor at age 35). The "official" records for the negro leagues credit him with 115 home runs in 1855 at bats over 510 games (although these are known not to be fully accurate), and the full total will simply never be known. The "official" numbers do not include all the games he played in when his teams were just barnstorming and not playing other negro league teams.

Based on the "official" numbers, Gibson hit one home run every 16.1 at bats. A-Rod has hit a home run every 14.5 at bats, Hank Aaron hit one every 16.4, Ruth every 11.8, Willie Mays every 16.5, and Ken Griffey, Jr. every 15.6.

Let's put Josh Gibson's name where it belongs since the only reason he was never given a chance to prove how good he was was because he was not white. That certainly seems to me as egregious a crime as someone taking steroids was, if not worse.

So how do we deal with those numbers and the numbers of the white pitchers who never had to face him in a line-up? Baseball is all about numbers, but they've also always been somewhat artificial and not really comparable across decades and generations. We've put an asterisk on a home run record in the past, and we all know now what a terrible mistake that was, so why do we want to do it again? Haven't we learned anything?

So congratulations A-Rod. You might not get the credit you deserve from some, but no one can truly take those numbers away from you.

Commissioner Gets Tough... Sort Of

Yesterday, MLB comissioner Bud Selig instituted a new policy in which all minor league players will be randomly tested for HGH. That is all minor league players who are not on the 40 man roster of the major league team (which is around 15 minor leaguers). Selig is making this move "to protect the integrity of the game."

I have no problem with this, except to say that the idea that Selig is taking the high ground for integrity is just ridiculous. Minor league players have no collective bargain rights. That means the commissioner can require them to do anything he wants. Make them pee in a cup, no problem, make them take a blood test, no problem. Selig unilaterally instituted steroid testing in the minor leagues, and the players had no say. Of course he did that well after the issue of steroids was already front page news. He could have also instituted a test for HGH at the same time, which was being called for, but he didn't. Instead he waited an additional nine years to do it. I'm glad the step has been made, and baseball is the first professional sport in America to require this test, but please don't gloat about something that you could have and should have done a long time ago.

Now part of the reason given for why HGH was not tested for in the past was the unreliability of the test. That is true, although many think it is still unreliable. But the problem is that the Olympic committee has been testing for HGH for years, and they have been going one step further. They have saved the blood samples so that when a reliable test was made that they could then test retroactively and know who was using and remove any prizes they may have won. MLB could have done the same, but they didn't.

This season is being called the year of the pitcher. Whenever anyone asks about the resurgence of pitching the one reason given is that the "hitters are no longer on steroids." There are two problems with this. The first is that in the testing program half of all the players caught using steroids have been pitchers, so that doesn't seem to work. (although a funny cartoon I just saw, asked how many home runs A-Rod might have hit had he not been facing pitchers who were juicing.) The second problem is that testing has been in place for quite a while, which leads to the question why is this happening now? You either have to say this year is an anomaly of some sort, which is all that can be said since one data point does not create a pattern or trend, or you have to say that steroids testing has not been effective if players were still knocking the ball around, until this year.

Another topic of conversation this year has been the spate of injuries plaguing teams. You need look no further than the Red Sox to see this taking place. There has been a lot of conversation about this as well, with lots of speculation of why this is happening, including working out too much, but what has not come up yet is the simple fact that steroids allow players to heal faster. That was really the major reason to take them.

Regardless of what all the pundits say, I do not believe that steroids can make you hit home runs. Instead, they enhance your performance by allowing you to work out harder and longer, and for your muscles to heal much quicker from those workouts allowing you to continue much sooner then you otherwise would. And, when you do get injured they allow you to heal quicker, getting back sooner. That means you remain healthier longer into the season, and the little nagging injuries that would have slowed down your production through the dog days of summer no longer happened. That is why home runs totals went up. Just look at Mickey Mantle. If he had been able to stay healthy he would have blown Ruth's single season home run record away, just like McGwire and Bonds, but come August and September his production always went down because he couldn't stay healthy.

Remember Andy Pettite's claim about why he used? It was so that he could heal quicker, and most of the players who have admitted to using, especially retired players, have said that was the reason they used. So now we are seeing the direct results of no steroids. The nagging little injuries that would not have been an issue 15 years ago are now putting people on the DL because they are not healing as quickly, and the cumulative wear and tear of the season is dragging them down. And we have a lot more data points for this because this has been happening for a number of seasons. Although I doubt that a reporter will go back and try and track DL assignments before and after testing, it would be a great story to do.