Several is flying solo again this week.

Hi AmSports fans! The media circus around the Super Bowl halftime show is somewhat subsiding, what with the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League's respective All-Star game showcases the past week dominating the headlines in all the daily and weekly journals. I shall refrain from comment on the Sports Illustrated 'swimsuit' issue that is being exposed on news stands, since I see very little 'swimsuit' and wish to refrain from comment on a public forum further¹.

So I was prepared to discuss the two All-Star games in hockey and basketball and to try to start to discuss college basketball, which is reaching its annual championship tournament until two breaking stories completely blew that away. I do, however, need to make note that Dale Earnhart Junior won the Daytona 500 stock car race Sunday, three years after his daddy was killed in a crash at the same race track.

The first story is the steroids trial, which handed down four indictments after four months of testimony. No athletes were specifically named, but it is known that many, many baseball players, international track-and-field competitors, and several AmFoot players were called to testify in the grand jury proceedings that led up to the indictments. International track and field has drug testing; the National Football League has substance-abuse programs in place... and Major League Baseball?

None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

We all sat and watched as Barry Bonds crushed 73 home runs in a season in wonderment, since he had never hit as many as 50 in years past. Now we learn that his 'nutritionist' and 'personal trainer' are indicted in the steroids case and have ample cause to wonder if that record is tainted. Back in 1961, when Roger Maris hit his 61^st home run, passing Babe Ruth's record 60 in 1927, the then-commissioner of baseball decreed that an 'asterisk' (these * thingies) be added to the record books, to indicate Maris had done it in a 162-game season, not the 154 the leagues had played previously.

Now, perhaps, we shall see a syringe next to Barry Bonds' name in the record books - and I hope that he does not grow a third eye in his forehead from all the 'human growth hormone' he has had injected.

And finally, the latest news has baseball's highest-paid player, shortstop Alex Rodriguez, leaving the Texas Rangers (who finished in last with him, and will finish in last without him) joining the Noo Yawk Yankers, which would push that team's payroll over the $200 million$ mark, roughly five time$ more than mo$t other team$ can $pend. The deal is not final, as I assemble this report, but clearly Major League Baseball, with virtually NO drug-testing programme and NO effective fiscal restraints, is headed for deep, deep doo-doo as it heads into Florida and Arizona for spring training.

So from the zero-degree temperatures here on the north coast (or south shore) of America, this is several, a/k/a random, doin' my level best to stay warm, over and out.

If you would like to report, opine or rant on matters sporting as Several and I do here, then just drop me a line at my personal space, or comment below. Also comment below if you would like any elaboration or further explanation of any of this week's stories.

Sporting With Egon Archive

Several a.k.a. Random 

19.02.04 Front Page

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¹Needless to say, the magazine is an annual sell-out. Babes not wearing bikinis guarans it.