Today's Musical Selection: "Easy Come, Easy Go" by Bobby Sherman
Hello there, everyone! Today the big buzz is about Ricky Williams' retirement, about which I don't have much to say. Football isn't my favorite sport, and besides, it's not clear exactly why he did it. (Hei Lun over at Begging to Differ offers up an interesting theory, that Williams was about to face major suspension time for marijuana use, and it's worth a read.) The only thing everyone agrees on is that Williams was an odd duck, and that he really didn't feel at home in the football world, something I'm always sympathetic to.
Rather than talking about Runnin' Ricky, I'd prefer to focus on the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony that occurred this weekend. Reliever Dennis Eckersley and third baseman/designated hitter Paul Molitor were this year's guests of honor, and they have something in common: both triumphed over personal problems, particularly substance abuse. Both Eckersley and Molitor referenced these problems in their speeches. A number of commentators have called this the "New Age induction," since both speeches sounded like they might have been cribbed from a self-help manual. Eckersley spoke openly and movingly about his battle with alcoholism. Molitor touched on his own battle with cocaine from the early '80s. Both men paid tribute to their ex-wives. It definitely wasn't your father's induction ceremony.
Eckersley's speech was the one most commentators focused on (since it was more open and emotional), but I was more interested in Molitor. Molitor was one of the Brewers' brightest lights in my childhood, so naturally I was a big fan of his. At the time, he was just a great ballplayer to me, likeable primarily because he helped my team win games. Then he left Milwaukee in '93 in a cloud of acrimony to sign on with Toronto, where he won a richly-deserved World Series title. At the time, I didn't know what to think. Molitor was Milwaukee, he and Robin Yount. Yount stayed. But Molitor departed. Was it the money? Was it the lack of rings? How could he do this? It was my first experience in getting kicked in the teeth by the business side of baseball. (Later, of course, it became clear that the Brewers were at least as much to blame as Molitor for his departure, and it's certainly telling that the Brewers have not seriously contended since Paul left. Perhaps he knew something we didn't.)
Even then, I only knew Molitor as a ballplayer. But as time went on, and I grew older, I learned more about Molitor the man. First, it was the background mentions that Molitor had had a "substance abuse problem" earlier in his career. The "substance" was never specified, although anyone familiar with baseball in the '80s could probably connect the dots pretty easily. I never quite did, though. Maybe I just didn't want to. Eventually, the accounts became more straightforward: Molitor had used cocaine.
Nowadays, this sounds much more shocking than it did then. Nowadays, everyone knows the horror stories about cocaine, the risk of addiction and damage, the downside. But for a while, in the late '70s and early '80s, America thought it had found the perfect party drug. No side effects, no hangovers, just a tremendous high. It was a status symbol in some circles, and it was virtually mandatory among fashionable rich people who liked to party. And nowhere was this more true than among athletes. Baseball, because of a highly-publicized trial in Pittsburgh in 1985, was the sport most associated with cocaine use, but athletes in other sports did it too. (The NBA's Phoenix Suns had so many players snared in a drug sting in the mid-'80s that there was talk of folding the franchise.) It may seem stupid to younger people that so many athletes succumbed to cocaine in those days, but remember, these players didn't grow up hearing about how bad cocaine was. They didn't know how addictive it was, or what long-term abuse could do to you. They just thought it was a way to have a good time, to celebrate being young and rich and famous.
To Molitor's credit, he realized the damage cocaine was doing to him and his career, admitted his problem and kicked the habit cold turkey. And, of course, after he beat his problem, he went on to the long and productive career that landed him on stage in Cooperstown yesterday. Considering the lengthy list of cocaine abusers from that era whose habit derailed or at least diminished their careers, this is a significant accomplishment on Molitor's part.
Of course, Molitor's winding road doesn't end with his triumph over cocaine. He went through a difficult divorce a couple years back, and in his speech he acknowledged publicly for the first time that he fathered a son, Joshua, out of wedlock in Toronto. In some ways, I thought that was the most touching part of Molitor's address: revealing Joshua's existence in such a public venue, and promising to work on having a better relationship with the boy. Traditionalists grumbled that Joe DiMaggio never would have mentioned that in his induction speech, but I thought it spoke well of Molitor that he did. It takes a hell of a man to speak about that so openly. The most damaging thing about something like that is the silence, and the secrecy was corrosive, I'm sure, for both father and son. I really hope things work out for Molitor and Joshua.
Of course, it was hard not to listen to Molitor and Eckersley talk about their struggles without thinking of Pete Rose, who was just up the street, signing autographs and trying desperately to upstage the induction ceremony, as he does every year, unrepentant ass that he is. You may recall that Pete kicked off his latest get-me-in-the-Hall tour the day that Molitor and Eckersley were announced as being in the latest class. It was a typically crass and classless show from Rose, but the juxtaposition is interesting. Like Ecklersley and Molitor, Rose had an addiction problem in the '80s that threatened to destroy his career. Unlike them, however, he made no particular effort to control or beat it, preferring instead to pin blame on whoever was closest and most convenient, whether it be Bart Giamatti or Fay Vincent or John Dowd or the press. He's a manipulator to the max, never caring whom he might step on or annoy in his quest for personal ego-gratification. He is, in short, a dismal human being.
Now, you can certainly argue that Rose's addiction was no worse than Eckersley's or Molitor's, and you can argue that he should have been ordered into treatment rather than banished from the game. We can argue about whether betting for your own team is worse than betting against it, and whether gambling on baseball is tantamount to fixing, and any of the other side debates that have gone on for years now without any satisfactory resolutions. But one salient fact remains: Pete Rose has had 15 years since his banishment to get his life in order, and he hasn't done it. He hasn't even tried. All he's tried to do is figure out what minimum amount of public expression of guilt will get him off the hook. I still don't think he believes he has a problem, or ever did. And as long as that's true, he doesn't deserve to be cut any slack.
When Rose was initially banished from the game, I felt that keeping him out of the Hall of Fame was piling on. For someone who achieved so much and loved the game so well as Rose, it was cruel to deny him the Hall, especially given that sociopaths like Ty Cobb were deemed fit to inhabit Cooperstown. But the longer we've seen the swaggering, ugly Rose on display, the less sympathy I've felt for his omission. I still believe that he deserved to be in eventually; there's simply no justification for keeping the all-time hits leader out forever. But I'm increasingly disinclined to give Rose the satisfaction of entering Cooperstown during his lifetime.
It's true that the Hall of Fame is strictly a measure of one's baseball deeds, and not one's success or failure as a human. However, Molitor and Eckersley, in addition to being Hall of Fame players, are Hall of Fame people, for the way they're persevered and overcome. Pete Rose, however great a ballplayer he may have been, is no Hall of Famer as a man.
That's all for today. See you tomorrow!
Posted by Fred at July 26, 2004 03:24 PM