…Comes from Doug Glanville?! Wow.

I was the kind of Phillies fan who hated Glaville for how bad he was, how long he played after his career year in 1999, and how he represented everything that had declined with the franchise since the 1993 miracle year. I wasn’t alone, either. The boo-birds of Broad Street did not mince words with the aging Mr. Glanville.

Now, of course, it seems that the 1993 team, which included Darren Daulton and Lenny “real good vitamins” Dykstra, was heavy into the steroid needle. As John Kruk put it, they were “24 morons and a Mormon,” and then Dale Murphy went to the expansion Rockies, leaving only a bunch of morons and Jim Fregosi to keep them in line.

Inevitably, the Phillies players came down from their dizzying heights. Kruk was out of baseball just two years later, fighting a battle with cancer, Dykstra never recovered his form, and Daulton only had one more All-Star appearance after ‘93, despite being the Phillies nominal captain. And what did Ed Wade do about it? He ran out an endless string of Ricky Oteros and Doug Glanvilles and Marlon Andersons.

And now, Doug, with your beaming smile and University of Pennsylvania engineering degree, you’ve made me feel like all those seasons I hated you for what you represented, I was hating an honest player. And that is impressive. From that excellently-penned Times op-ed:

While your clock is ticking, faster, stronger and younger players are setting up their lockers next to yours. They usually have better sound bites and lower salaries, too. In 1998, I was the new kid in Philadelphia, battling Lenny Dysktra for the center field job. Five years later, I was mentoring another new kid, Marlon Byrd, so he could replace me. Faced with that rate of career atrophy, players are capable of rash, self-serving and often irresponsible decisions. Enter steroids.
[…]
We’re scared of failure, aging, vulnerability, leaving too soon, being passed up — and in the quest to conquer these fears, we are inspired by those who do whatever it takes to rise above and beat these odds. We call it “drive” or “ambition,” but when doing “whatever it takes” leads us down the wrong road, it can erode our humanity. The game ends up playing us.

Without apologizing for any player’s behavior, Glanville neatly describes the system of incentives and, yes, fear, that leads players to cheat. And until we can tinker with those incentives enough so that cheating is stigmatized, or penalized, or (perish the thought) made safer, all the Congressional hearings in the world won’t mean a thing.

So, Doug, I promise never to boo you again. Besides, I can always boo the next guy who’s getting over the hill.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Doug Glanville, PEDs, Phillies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.