An older fellow sitting next to me at the airport this morning saw my Sox shirt and asked about a couple of players, how they were doing this year, where the team was going. You know, the kind of pleasant chatter people make with strangers at airports. We got to talking and he let on that he was a lifelong Dodgers fan.<\/p>\n
“Tough break about Manny,” I told him.<\/p>\n
“Nah,” he answered, “I never liked him much anyway. He’s only in it for the money and he was always a bum.”<\/p>\n
We talked about other players – who we thought was clean, who we thought wasn’t – and the conversation turned to Frank Thomas.<\/p>\n
“People are gonna look at him in a new light,” the guy said. “Such a great hitter, and he played the right way.”<\/p>\n
I mentioned Frank’s legendary pouting towards the media, the constant rifts drawn between (and by) management and himself, the baseball-is-an-individual-sport mentality. The guy at the airport just waved me off.<\/p>\n
“Can you really say any of that stuff matters anymore?” he asked me. “Look, he didn’t cheat. That’s what’s left. Look at the Dodgers I’ve been rooting for the past ten years! Kevin Brown throwing juiced pitches to a steroided up Paul Lo Duca, and we’re eating it up. What a disgrace. No wonder we couldn’t wait to sign Manny! Look, was Frank Thomas a jerk? I don’t know. Who cares? Look at him, look at Junior Griffey, look at Jim Thome. All clean, all stand-up guys.”<\/p>\n
All Sox, I added.<\/p>\n
“You oughta be proud of that,” he said, his face beaming in stern approval. “Three of the best hitters ever, none of ’em a cheater. That’s a classy organization you guys have there.”<\/p>\n
So the things about Frank, if true, aren’t a problem?<\/p>\n
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “If the worst you can say about a guy is that he hated reporters and hit the hell out of the ball, that sounds like a pretty good guy to me.”<\/p>\n
Dude checked his watch. “I gotta run,” he said. “Flight’s boarding soon.”<\/p>\n
Where you headed?<\/p>\n
“Home for the weekend. My brother and I are gonna catch the Dodgers-Giants game.”<\/p>\n
So the Manny thing, the Kevin Brown thing, that hasn’t soured you?<\/p>\n
“You think I’m gonna let some steroid cheat stop me from having a good time at the ballpark?” he asked. “Jeez kid, you got a lot to learn. Good luck with the Sox though. I think you’ve got a good team.”<\/p>\n
On the field or off?<\/p>\n
Dude just smiled, grabbed his bag and took off down the concourse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a little perspective, sometimes you gotta hang out in the airport bar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[90,109,130,435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1362,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}