All Over Albany

"But even very rich people who may have commissioned portraits of themselves as centaurs deserve to be treated fairly."

Over at Deadspin today St. Rose political scientist Scott Lemieux plays a different angle on A-Rod and the situation surrounding performance-enhancing drugs in baseball:

But the particular focus on players of the '90s makes it clear where baseball's anti-PED hysteria comes from. It's about the boomers who are offended that better players have taken over records they believe should belong to their childhood heroes in perpetuity. The nostalgic sentimentalism that used to produce lots of drearily irritating tributes to baseball now leads to lots of drearily irritating attacks on baseball. ...

That's what the war against A-Rod is about. Not all MLB PED-users have been singled out, after all. Prominent accused users like Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, and David Ortiz aren't treated like pariahs, because they haven't broken certain iconic records or passed certain statistical benchmarks or threatened any sportswriter's right to remain a child forever. After comparing Rodriguez to a murderous gangster, Bill Madden goes on to complain about "the steroids plague that has tarnished the game's integrity and made a mockery of the home run records." In a sentence, that's what motivates the anti-PED fanatics.

In addition to the professoring at St. Rose, Lemieux also writes regularly at the blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money as well as The American Prospect.