Conrad Retiring

MSNBC is reporting that Kent Conrad will announce he's not running for re-election in 2012.

Hmmmm. Anybody heard Bud Selig's plans lately?

Crook. And Liar.

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What John Amato says. And I agree:

Roger Maris. 61 in 61.

Earned.

Mark McGwire.

Roided.

The Steroid Era of baseball cannot be spun away. Peel back the layers and they were all in on it. Owners, managers, players, media.

All the same ones who are trying the disgraceful campaign to rehabilitate Mark McGwire today.

And if the public gets bamboozled on this, well, there's a certain former Texas Rangers owner who'll just be lookin' forward to walkin' you through his liberry of rehabilitation soon. And the same way ....
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Props to the Phillies

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Congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies, winners of the 2008 World Series. Here in Prairie Country, where Fargo is the home of 61-in-61--"some say" still baseball's homerun king, Roger Maris--we take our baseball seriously.

To the roster of homegrown baseball stars Darin Erstad and Rick Helling, now is added Phillies catcher Chris Coste.

You do Fargo-Moorhead and your hometown team, the RedHawks, proud.

Winners never quit.
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Hawaiian? Aye.

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This year, it helps if you're Hawaiian...in a metaphor of good karma, salut! to the Little League World Series Champions...Waipahu, Hawaii.

Even nonexotic Cokie Roberts has gotta cheer that one.
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Rites of Spring—Wind-up

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We're seeing the beginning of the endgame now. Senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to endorse Barack Obama, another Super Delegate speaking out instead of prolonging the likely inevitable. Pundits like David Brooks and Peter Beinhart on Meet the Russet this morning describe Hillary as being in the untenable position of being a strong candidate, not a weak one, with miniscule possibility to win.

Endgame on display in America's game, baseball, too. George strides out on the red carpet and winds up from the pitcher's mound, to a substitute catcher because the regular guy is mired in a steroid scandal. This is about where we came in, folks.... except that now when the old-school media edits out the boos, you can still hear 'em loud and clear on the Internet.

In tonight's episode of John Adams on HBO [you're not watching? shame on you!], there is the awkward first meeting between Adams and George III. Diplomacy begins in place of the war for independence against the foolish, stubborn king.

A hopeful sign for the course of this country once again when the red carpet no longer lays for this George and he is consigned to the wind-up of this sorry administration and time in America's history.

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Unsportsmanlike Conduct

The Mitchell Report about steroids in baseball caused quite a stir this week in Prairie Country. As the home ground for Roger Maris, we’re a mite touchy about the dissing he’s received over the years from Cooperstown, despite his record of 61 in 61. So the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs was bound to catch our eye. Especially when it’s embedded enough in the culture of baseball to earn these seasons the label, even from the President, of Steroid Era.

Whether you think professional athletes are role models or overpaid entertainers, whatever it takes to win is the name of the game. And that attitude seems to permeate every corner of our country these days.

The law requires truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But there are “technicalities.” Religion says we shouldn’t bear false witness…yet we’re told some say their followers are schooled that lying is okay to accomplish their ends. And p.r. has been swallowed up by self-serving, word-manipulating catapulted propaganda.

The media feed a steady win-at-all-costs diet of bread and circuses to their audiences. Build alliances, connive, compete with an edge…be a Survivor. Win the Great Race. Be an American Idol. Walk down the Runway without being tripped up by Auf Weidersehn.

The economy, too, has been living in the Steroid Era. Enronomics. Subprime mortgages. Rcord oil industry profits. 21^st Century robber barons buying up mega media empires as Mitt Romney’s Bain Capitol is doing with Clear Channel. (And is that an oxymoron or what!)

In Prairie Country, a visionary local media family bought back the Dakota-region stations they’d sold to Clear Channel. They are champions of fair play these days, educating about community issues and global issues. Presenting spokespeople from both teams, but also callin’ hits and foul balls when spin leaves the facts behind. Salut today to the talkers at KFGO in Fargo and to the Voice of Dakota at employee-owned KNOX in Grand Forks. The more teams who lead with high standards, the more the steroiders can be consigned to the Hall of Shame.

A baseball man himself, as he’s proud to say, George Bush has led his own Steroid Era in the White House: from the election of 2000 to the lies that led us into Iraq to the crony corrupt players on his team who are working to win at all costs while tearing down the stadium, this has been administration run amok in a ‘roid rage of tearing away civil liberties; running up debt; outsourcing and mortgaging America, the home team; shifting wealth from the middle class to the haves and have-mores; lying about everything from war to peace, and leaving US in pieces in the process.

Their team “kicks sand in the umpire’s eyes,” calls foul balls like No Child Left Behind as fair, puts their own umpires in the game and dares the Progressives and Democrats to compete. They cheat to win. They lie when the truth would serve them better. They sully the game.

Maybe there’s nothing to do but stay in play until they leave, gamely stepping up to the plate for every inning, even knowing they’ve brought steroids to the game and they own the umpires. Maybe we can’t win yet. But we’ve a responsibility to call ‘em as we sees ‘em. And demand the mess be cleaned up, the cheaters kicked out. And with their passing, put an askerisk after their names. All of ‘em. In a Hall of Shame of their own making. Like the Black Sox, back in the day. We won’t forget. And we’ll vow to play better.

Because it’s all about baseball…and it’s more, far more, than just a game.