Oh she knew. She knew why she couldn’t sleep. She knew what that sound meant. The slow braking of an all-too-familiar vehicle. Slurred gratitude as steps proceeded up the drive. Fumbling keys as the caricature of him stumbled through the door frame.

His steps greeted the stairs much like his lips eventually met her cheek: heavy and over-stated to feign restraint. She lay with her eyes closed but sleep had not visited her bed.

The smell of his addiction filled the room as he undressed. His shirt landed on the table and his pants found the floor as he barely avoided the bed post.

He climbed into bed and rolled over to kiss her properly this time. He stopped abruptly. He always seem to forget that he shouldn’t lie down too quickly.

A hastened rush to the bathroom and the expulsion of all that he consumed followed. She knew it would happen. She knew him too well. Hope is beautiful. if only in that it shows us the beauty in things we might otherwise let be.

That belief drove her to stay. His disregarded abstinence was but a faint whisper when he was her love. He brought a feverish passion to all that he pursued and the most magnificent of his talents was his ability to adore her. That light would gleam in his green eyes as his lips revealed each deliciously wicked notion.

God, how long ago was that? She tried to keep herself busy. She took on more projects at work and her friends kept her company. She knew where he would be. She also knew that the ghost of who they were would catch up with her if she stopped moving.

Ambition? Disregarded. She didn’t know when he lost it but he did. The light flickered, and like the innocence of youth, was gone.

They had tried. She had tried. He had continued through the motions. His affliction was the bottle. Her affliction was the unwavering desire to glimpse again, just for one moment, that spectacular vision of their lives together. Unbridled hope  may be the most profound, and utterly devastating, condition known to the human heart.

She knew the destructive power of fleeting hope. She also knew he was not her husband. Not anymore. She moved slowly as the sounds from the bathroom subsided and only mumbling could be heard. She avoided the mirror as she dressed. She knew one glance towards the light would fill her with that unspeakable feeling of pride in being his recovery.

But life is beautiful. It provides infinitesimal occasions wherein the purpose of our existence is firmly within our grasp to proceed as we wish.

You could say she stopped loving him. Some would argue that she never loved him more.

He lay under the toilet as she closed the front door behind her. His murmurs fell on deaf ears:

Will you still love me?

Will you still love me?

I know you will.

I know you will.

]]> http://gentlemenofsport.com/2013/05/17/spero/feed/ 0 gentlemenofsport http://gentlemenofsport.com/2013/05/08/enter-title-here/ http://gentlemenofsport.com/2013/05/08/enter-title-here/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 05:42:38 +0000 Gentlemen of Sport http://gentlemenofsport.com/?p=1642 ]]> It’s the morning raindrops dancing on the balcony that drew worn eyes to the window

Mother Nature tearing up real quiet like under a clearing sky as the man knelt in the dirt

Rumor has it that he asked for this; Said something about hanging being the coward’s way, the strange fool.

3 rounds and a sound.

They say he stole something, something important

Nobody really knows what but if he’s guilty, he’s guilty.

He was just someplace that he wasn’t supposed to be

3 rounds and a sound

He fought it tooth and nail

Said something about his missus. What do these fools know about loving someone?

They put him in prison till they could figure out what to do with him.

3 rounds and a sound

They asked him if he wanted his “missus” to visit him (Everyone got a good laugh out of that. They had sold her by that time.)

He declined. Said, “These memories keep me company.”

Guess we all want somebody sweet to talk to but momma and pappa say these fools don’t have human needs like we do

3 rounds and a sound

There have been some rumblings though; real low rumblings, like a train on the track, but it’s way off, you know.

Something about how the owner preferred the bottle

Something about how he found the owner in bed with her

Something about how the owner’s intoxicated discourse stoked the deepest fury inside of him

3 rounds and…that sound

Come to find out that life is not so much black and white, as it is differing shades of grey

Oh Fraulein Maria, why can’t every movie I watch be nominated for 10 Academy Awards, be one of the highest-grossing film of all-time, and also a classic? An actress I love, a genre I love, and a plot that I…love. Sigh…

I’m a picky movie watcher. I have had others tell me and I have noticed it myself. I am a picky movie watcher. I don’t know if there is an incredibly deep reason behind it but I am a picky movie watcher.

It’s weird being a picky movie watcher. People will rave about movies that I think are ok. On the other hand, there are movies I love that people don’t care for in the slightest. I feel like some species of a hipster.

*Animal Planet voice-over guy*: Look what we have here, folks. It’s the Picky Movie Watcher, Hipster Cinema Disdainious as biologists call him, in its natural habitat: sitting at its laptop on Rotten Tomatoes. The Picky Movie Watcher is easily distracted by films with rave reviews from critics. Careful though, while the Picky Movie Watcher seems unassuming, most people who stay around it enough come away with the stink of condescension.

And here’s the kicker, I actually like movies people have heard of before. Action movies, comedies, romantic comedies, musicals, sports movies, cartoons, etc. Love love love. I also have actors/actresses/directors that I’ll watch almost anything that they make, including but not limited to (and in no particular order mind you): the Dame Julie Andrews, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, the Dame Judi Dench, Leonardo Dicaprio, Edward Norton, Hugh Laurie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Connelly, Bryan Cranston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julianne Moore, Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman, Anna Kendrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, James McAvoy, and Emma Stone. I think that’s as random as that could possibly be. Good.

Moving on…I like stuff that people have heard of. I love the Toy Story franchise, Argo, the Bond franchise, The Artist, The Harry Potter franchise, any movie based on comic books or any book for that matter, any cartoon for the most part, the Star Wars franchise, etc.

I like stuff. And after seeing that list, you might wonder how I am so picky. Well here’s the rub: it has to be right combination of any number of factors such as cast, trailer, writing, characters, setting, etc. If I’m not feeling it, I won’t watch it. And I am typically not feeling a lot of things.

Moreover, I like movies that ask awkward questions. Some can be awkward funny but mostly, they’re awkward serious. Like,

What would happen if you wanted to date someone who is a professional matchmaker?

What would happen if a man who served our country returned home to a family that doesn’t recognize him anymore?

What would happen if you were a guy, with no guy friends, who was trying to make guy friends?

What would happen if we delved into the history of racism in the United States?

What would happen if you were pregnant in high school?

What would happen if you could erase your memory of past relationships?

What would happen if a pilot saved hundreds of lives while he flew a plane drunk and high?

What would happen if two kids decided to run off together because they didn’t like their lives?

What would happen if your life was just a dream and you’ve been refusing to wake up?

What if you could talk to Death and convince him to give you more time?

What if you had been raised by a surrogate father, who turned out to be a psychotic mobster, and you grew up to be a cop?

Those are some awkward questions. And if we’re perfectly honest, no one really knows the answer. Some of these questions are things we have dealt with in our own lives or seen how someone else dealt with them; most are not but some are. We may not know the answers but we know that these questions are real. We agree to sit and view how the director, writers, actors/actresses etc. choose to answer these question.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t watch popular movies that are just fun to watch and enjoy. I am also not saying that popular movies do not ask awkward questions that leave you with something when you leave the theater. I’m just saying that I typically trend towards movies that try to answer awkward questions because my mind asks awkward questions. I really don’t know any other way to be.

How do you solve a picky person like me? I really don’t know.

An easier question might be, how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

The day will rise

When we can truly say,

“The days past are more than the days ahead.

Yet, there is nothing behind that can take the breath from my lips.”

The soul cries the song of the caged bird

Limitless in potential

Embodied in mortality

There is no greatness we cannot find

If willing to find that which carefully considers

The truest of desires

It is not sufficient to exclaim our existence

The breath of life within the airways

The beating of affections, passionate and incapable of concision

Is the truest favor of the gods

In the greatness and the fall,

the forgotten and the forgiven,

the beginning and the end,

the last and the first,

forever and a day,

love and selfishness,

faith and scorn,

hope and bitterness,

humanity and eternity,

May our frailties find peace within

The things that change and the things that change us.

Norman Smith is an understated man; not necessarily underwhelming but understated. A simple man. He likes what he likes and ignores what he doesn’t want to see. Yet, he couldn’t tell you what he actually likes. While we’re here, Norman couldn’t really tell you what he believes in either. Norman is an understated man…who does what he does whenever he does it.

So on an understated Sunday afternoon, our understated protagonist took a drive down a back country road. Norman couldn’t really tell you where he was going but he could tell you it felt right to leave for awhile. The most vibrant reds and yellows blurred as Norman’s vehicle sped down the open road. As the miles from home grew in number, Norman couldn’t help considering whether the distance between who he was and the person he wanted to be was quite simply much too far. As if the odometer would halt rolling numbers and spell out “failure”. When the GPS asked for a destination, could he answer “Self”?

Norman wondered where love went wrong. He had good intentions. Isn’t trying what separates love from divorce? That’s not how his ex-wife put it in court but Norman liked to think so. He didn’t always say it (he said it everyday) but he made sure to remind himself of what he was not. “Do I deserve any of the good things that happen to me?” That lasted for a bit. Then to counter this conscious medication, Norman would recount his triumphs and delve into fantasies around his ability. Manual bipolarism, if you will. He had good intentions.

Norman drove till the sun began to set. He pulled over to side of the road when he found a knoll to admire the sun take its rest. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that remind us of how delicate this life is. Norman just enjoyed the sunset in his own way. He didn’t want to be anywhere else.

The nature of humanity is a drive to find what fulfills our spirit

and a hunger for an atmosphere where that fulfillment is consistent.

We are that which makes us whole. And nothing more.

Under the weight of the ideals we set for ourselves,

Let us be that which we wish to see.

That which makes us smile, brings out the best in us,

That which sets an example.

In our ambition, let us leave room for what is most important.

In our belief, may we be the better people.

In our love, may actions be words.

Disclosures of an intimate format

Discoveries beyond the struggle

to define the self’s

Will, selfish or humble?

What is life but mere moments

that taken together

form the basis of personality

for worse or for better

These moments are almost never

of our own preference or choice

and yet, the strength of humanity

is in our reaction and poise

So let us find the best

in the moments that try

our belief in trust and self

that by His grace, we may vie

to love and be loved.

I

As I grow now into my twenties, I often find myself longing for the good old days when times were simpler and worries were few, the kind of days that abounded in my childhood. I ask myself why I was so much happier in my younger days, why my mood was observably lighter and more carefree. It recently dawned on me that it’s because my perspective was so limited. The world that I inhabited was so much smaller and more neatly defined. Simply put, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that makes for a blissfully ignorant existence. With maturity, that life passes away, never to exist again. But if we’re lucky, we can still experience little snippets, pleasurable reminisces which occasionally transport us back to those happier times. Through his novel, Barking Signals (Badly) During Goldwater, author Garret Mathews took me on such a trip.

Mathews is a renowned author, having penned over 6,500 newspaper columns, two plays, numerous novels, and an audio project called “Folks are Talking” (his extremely interesting bio can be found here). Not only is he a skilled wordsmith, but he also possesses tremendous insight into the human mind, and into what makes people tick. This exceptional perception is particularly effective and enjoyable in Barking Signals, as Mathews’s narrative voice provides us with valuable insight into the thoughts of the central character.

Mathews’s flawed hero, A.C. Jackson, is a puny, tentative adolescent growing up in a rural community in the 1960’s. The story centers on his struggles, both on and off the field, as he makes the life-altering decision to try out for his high school’s JV football team. Anyone who hearkens back to his or her days as a teenager can relate, and have a hearty laugh at the day-to-day conundrums A.C. faces. A dry humor is a mainstay of Mathews’s writing style, but he does not merely flit across the life of 14-year-old A.C. The depth of the encounters he faces – meeting the mysteries of fear, love, identity, rejection, and even death head-on – imbue Barking Signals with an exceptional sense of realism. This is no mere sports story, no 80-page tale of how little Tommy tries hard and catches the winning touchdown at the end; this is a human novel, a story that will reach deep into your heart before you even realize what is happening, and enrapture you wholeheartedly. A.C.’s situation hit eerily close to home for me, from his constant concern over his social status and his fear of the unknown to the teacher who befriends and challenges him to grow. As is the case in any good novel, A.C. is not a static character; we clearly see his development over time. When he stumbles we commiserate, when he triumphs we rejoice as well… and our investment increases as we turn the pages. As I turned the last page, I did not want it to end. I wanted to follow A.C. further on.

Mathews has set out to accomplish a difficult task, to create a work that reaches across generations. It is not easy to do, but he succeeds brilliantly.  Fathers can enjoy A.C.’s tale with their sons. This book will touch so many more people than just fans of football. I would like to see it as required reading in middle school and ninth grade classrooms. The lessons that it teaches are so readily understood and so valuable… its merits are self-evident. And it is an easy read and an engaging text. I am a hard reader to win over, but Garret Mathews has succeeded fully in earning my esteem. Read Barking Signals (Badly) During Goldwater. It will remind you, too, of simpler times. It will make you laugh, and reflect, and feel. And it will be a literary experience that you won’t soon forget. I highly recommend it.

Here is an excerpt from the novel that is sure to leave you wanting more. This dialogue takes place when A.C. is calling his crush to ask her to Fall Social… and it’s pure genius.

I

With as much self-assuredness as he can muster, A.C. dials Sylvia’s number. He prays he can’t get through. Or, even better, that she put in a special request with the phone company to only let in calls from boys who don’t have to beat themselves up to get a black eye. A.C. won’t get a rejection. Just an endless dial tone. He’ll tell Mr. Wiley he wanted to ask, but technology wouldn’t let him. That wouldn’t earn the big money, but maybe the man would toss a couple of fifty-cent pieces his way.

R-ring. R-ring.

Two times. That’s enough. No sense waking up everybody in the Trice household just for a boy-girl conversation.

A.C. starts to put the receiver down.

“Hello.”

It’s her. He can’t talk. There’s a mud bog in this larynx.

“Who is this?”

She isn’t agitated. Her voice is calm. Patient. It’s like she knows the poor soul on the other end is scared to death, and she wants to give him every opportunity to collect his gumption.

“Uh, uh, uh.”

There is no surly “Just state your business.” No “Get on with it, there’s another call on Line Two.”

Just a kindly, “Gee, your voice sounds familiar.”

Of course it does. Sylvia has heard A.C. give oral reports in English class since they were seven years old.

“Uh, this is me,” he stammers.

“Oh, now I know. How is Mr. A.C. Jackson doing?” she asks pleasantly.

The kid is shaking too much to talk, so Sylvia dances lead.

“Did you hear about Aggie in world geography? Mrs. Jerrue pulled down the big map of the world and asked him to find South America. Aggie looked high and low from Australia to the Aleutian Islands. Couldn’t find it anywhere. Said the map company must’ve left it off. Everybody got a big laugh.”

A.C. can’t believe what he’s hearing. Sylvia is actually trying to make this easy on him. She’s like the tutor in remedial English. She wants him to pass the test.

A formal request is much too intimidating. He decides it will be better if he breaks it down to the lowest common denominator. It works in blocking assignments. Maybe it will in attempted dating.

“Me. You. Fall Social.”

I

Want more? You can purchase this book by sending $22 plus $3 postage and handling to:

Garret Mathews, 7954 Elna Kay Drive, Evansville, Indiana 47715.

More information can be found at pluggerpublishing.com.

I

I recently studied Mary Paik Lee’s Quiet Odyssey for an undergraduate English class. Essentially my entire class loved the book, and I found it shocking that the novel has created minuscule online discussion. While other tales are discussed on all sorts of different sites, this one remains relatively in the shadows, which is an injustice. In my opinion, there is not readily available information on the novel on the internet for scholars to work with, so I decided to post my thoughts here. I’m no expert, but I figured anything helps. Hope some student, somewhere in the world, finds this helpful!

In boxing, the best fighters are quick, strong, and durable. They don’t get knocked down easily, and in the rare situation in which they do go down, they’re back on their feet and ready to duke it out again shortly thereafter. Above all attributes, though, the exemplary boxers have mastered one technique: the one-two punch.

Right hook, left cross. Left jab, right uppercut. The variety and order of the punches are negligible, but they invariably come rapidly (at just the right time) and powerfully (with just the right amount of oomph), knocking the boxer’s unsuspecting, vulnerable opponent to the mat.

As a boxer must game plan, so too an author must have a strategy for presenting his/her story. In Mary Paik Lee’s biography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, Lee displays a propensity for landing haymakers and leaving readers befuddled, thinking “how did her family persevere through that?” Lee’s one-two punches are less noticeable than those of a boxing event, but they are just as devastating. Presumably, many readers respond to the text the same way I did: How could Lee carry on in the midst of such persecution? What remarkable strength, what resiliency, what ambition. English scholars are cynical by nature. It’s inherent in the education, and few characters in literature are universally accepted as amazing figures. The students in my class (myself included), however, were unequivocally blown away by Lee.

Thus, a question begs to be asked: what is it about her delivery that makes this short novel – which most likely is not the best-written piece most students have read in a year or month or maybe even a week – so powerful? It cannot be simply her poverty, for the impact of her tale extends far beyond a “Hard Knock Life” narrative.

It is Lee’s balanced story made up of a one-two punch – humiliation and religion – that makes her such an easily admired and beloved character. It is her family’s constant disgrace countered by its unswerving faith in God. These two facets of Quiet Odyssey lodge Lee’s tale in a reader’s memory, and it does not wiggle free easily.

Lee’s poverty is clear. Her upbringing is pitiable as her family lives in essentially unlivable conditions. They survive by existing like animals. Their lifestyle is downright appalling, and, through the eyes of a young girl, it is demeaning. Before their poor life in America, early in the novel, Lee divulges the reason her family left Korea and, in the process, establishes the theme of humiliation.

After Japan took possession of Korea, Korean people were treated like second-class citizens … They were deprived of all their property and had no rights under the Japanese laws. Names of towns, streets, and persons were changed to Japanese … All Korean books and Korean flags were destroyed. It was the complete humiliation of an entire nation. (Lee 42)

Her family is helpless, experiencing “one crisis after another.” Her home has been abolished. They cannot stay in Korea, as they are being discriminated against and more or less brainwashed. The kids would grow up thinking they were Japanese. Right away in the novel, as Lee is laying the foundation of her story, we notice her amazing tale originated because of humiliation – “the complete humiliation of an entire nation.”

Later in the text, an adolescent Lee tells her father about a job opportunity she is interested in pursuing to help their family and assist in feeding the hungry younger children. Lee goes on to say: “Many years later, he told me he had felt humiliated to hear his eleven-year-old daughter tell him that her one-dollar-a-week wages were needed to feed the family” (24). Despite the family’s horrendous living conditions and the extreme prejudice they experience, Lee’s father still holds onto his pride. When Lee offers to help, he is humiliated.

The complete elimination of pride appears often throughout the text. As the story opens and the family moves to Hawaii, Lee’s mother wants to work to support the family but her husband will not let her. He tells her, “Even if we have to starve, I don’t want you working out in the fields” (9). He protects his wife from work as long as he can. Shortly thereafter, when Lee’s mother absolutely must start working and becomes a cook for hungry working men, she is forced to cut off her long black hair, which reached the floor. Lee says: “It must have caused her much grief to lose her beautiful hair, but she never complained. We had already lost everything else that meant anything to us” (15).

The family’s plight of humiliation only gets worse. As the parents sleep on the floor, Lee sleeps with a block of wood for a pillow. And later, when Lee begins working, she reaches arguably her lowest point: “There were times when I cried from exhaustion while I was working, with the sweat running down my back and stomach” (97).

Lee’s early life evokes unabashed, understandable empathy from readers. Consider the situations established above, though they are just a few of many: Her home has been captured, changed forever, and ruined; many of her loved ones are stuck back in Korea in even worse conditions than she is experiencing in America and her family has no idea how they are doing; her family cannot afford to feed everyone and the youngest children are starving; Lee’s mother must go to work and abandon any sense of physical beauty; and Lee, still a young girl, works herself to the point of tears. In all, that sounds like an extremely rough life – and it is a tremendously small sampling of what she experiences throughout the book.

With the reader off balance and already quite partial toward Lee, she needs just one more positive attribute – the second shot in the one-two punch – to seal the deal and cement her place as adored in the reader’s mind. If Lee had complained through all the hard times (though she does give in, as any young girl would, occasionally) and been an annoying child, she would not be cherished. However, Lee stays composed through reminders to maintain unwavering faith in God and dedication to her Christianity, following the precedent set by her hyper-religious parents. Readers cannot help but applaud the family’s undying faith and belief that God is in control in the midst of extreme toils.

As soon as they leave Korea, Lee says: “Mother said that God must surely have been guiding us in the right direction” (7). Though her father was slated to make just 50 cents a day for working from dawn to dusk and their situation does not look all that bright, they believe leaving their home country is a positive thing because God is guiding their family.

Immediately upon arriving in Hawaii, though they had enough other worries, the Lee family becomes involved in a church, where Lee’s father preaches when he is not busy working on plantations. This dedication to making it to church no matter what and relying on God above all appears on seemingly every page. Perhaps the greatest portrayal of their extreme belief in God, however, comes on page 101: “All during our farming years, we donated what we could to help build and maintain our Korean Presbyterian Church.” The family could barely get by. They struggled to eat at all and never ate well. Nevertheless, they kept tithing because the Bible stated: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (II Corinthians 9:7, English Standard Version).

Several parts of the story incorporate both major themes – humiliation and religion – at the same time. When Lee travels to the slaughterhouse with Meung to gather the disposed animal organs for her family to eat (food “considered unfit for human consumption”) and the butchers taunt the children mercilessly, it is clear the family is at a humiliating level. But Lee’s father turns to his religion for an answer: “When I told Father I didn’t want to go there because they were making fun of us, he said we should thank God that they did not know the value of what they threw out; otherwise, we would go hungry” (16). In Hollister, when Lee finds a church she likes, the minister asks her to join the congregation, but she is embarrassed. She feels the regular attendees will not approve of her heritage. In Willows, when the family holds church with seven other families, the young children sneak out to eat any food they can find while Lee’s father prays. They are in a place that exists to praise God, but the children are too hungry to focus.

Lee’s one-two punch of a humiliating upbringing but firm religious belief in the face of utter disarray molds her into a character the reader cannot help but admire. I find it appropriate that Lee begins Chapter 16, “Reflections,” with Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Her family embodies faith. If they were to base their outlook on the things they see on a daily basis, they would be depressed people. But they stay optimistic and thankful and keep on pressing on because of their “assurance of things hoped for,” videlicet, eternity in heaven. One other Bible verse rang through my head as I counted the endless occurrences of demoralizing poverty and heartening religion, II Corinthians 4:16-18: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Mary Paik Lee and her family do not lose heart. In her recollection of their story of coming to America and struggling to survive, it is Lee’s early-life combination of humiliation and religion that causes readers to venerate her.

maybe it’s that fear of heights again,

I can’t  look down.

but for the life of me,

guess we’re all trying to find home.

I’ll tell you when I get there.

“what do you want to be when you grow up?”

start asking questions we don’t want the answer to

not sure if this is the person we always thought we would be

are not so far off

we’re getting to that age where the dreams we had as kids

Growing up as an American kid, I idolized baseball from the moment I encountered it. Playing Little League Baseball was the greatest joy of my young life. Watching This Week in Baseball then the MLB Game of the Week on Fox was always one of the highlights of my week. And watching the Little League World Series? Well… Williamsport, PA was just heaven on earth. There was nothing I would not have done, and no amount I would not have paid for just one opportunity to step on that diamond at Howard J. Lamade Stadium to play for the LLWS title. Baseball was my passion. I devoured book after book on the sport and its famous figures, from biographies on Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Hank Aaron to a book that recounted – in narrative form – every World Series from 1903-1985 in great detail, game by game, run by run. I love the game and the romanticized descriptions I found within the books I so readily consumed. Even though I cannot stand the modern iteration of the New York Yankees, I love and respect their previous generations for their consistent, unrelenting excellence. Baseball is just too grand and too beautiful to be marred by anything so petty as my own dislikes. It is the perfect game, classic and unchanging, standing apart from the ever-changing, cheapening world around it. Or at least that’s what I thought as a kid.

As time has passed, my illusions have been shattered. One summer, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pounded homer after homer, and I ecstatically went along for the ride. But these seemingly superhuman sluggers of the late 1990’s – my most impressionable age – have since tested positive for and admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. Barry Bonds came next and completely shattered the records that had been so recently set, and I was even further excited by his exploits. He, too, has since admitted to using steroids. When their magical seasons were taking place, I don’t think any of us wanted to believe they were tainted in any way. We wanted the romance of the magical run to continue sweeping us away. But then reality hit, and it hit hard.

What greater honor exists than the Hall of Fame? Middle-of-nowhere Cooperstown, NY is a legendary place because of it. The greatest figures in history are immortalized there. Stellar careers logically lead to the Hall. As such, several candidates should be voted in handily. Well, as it turns out, the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Class consists of… no one. Well, at least no one who is still alive. Three were elected by the Veterans Committee, all of whom passed away before 1940… meaning none of them had been involved in baseball for about 100 years. On the other hand, iconic baseball figures like Roger Clemens and the aforementioned Barry Bonds were denied admission to the Hall. How could this happen? The BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) pushed back, and indicated that tainted careers would be met with cold denial. At least this year. Writers are a fickle bunch, so who knows how long this resistance will continue. It could end next year, or extend indefinitely. As more athletes continue to be implicated in reports on PED use, such as the Miami New Times report which named stars like Nelson Cruz, Gio Gonzalez, and Alex Rodriguez, the likelihood of the BBWAA permanently souring on steroid users becomes greater and greater.

So Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, the most dominant pitcher and slugger in my era of fanhood, may never be immortalized in the Hall of Fame. But is this right? Isn’t the Hall of Fame a place to recognize excellence? It’s hard to argue with Roger Clemens’s career numbers: 354 wins (9th all-time), 4,672 strikeouts (3rd all-time), 7 Cy Young awards, 11 All-Star appearances. It’s even harder to argue with Barry Bonds’s career numbers: 762 HR (1st all-time), 1,996 RBI (4th all-time), 7-time League MVP, 14 All-Star appearances.

At the end of the day, though, it isn’t just about the numbers; sports still aspires to a certain level of integrity and decorum. Pete Rose is banned from the Hall for breaking the rules, and if the all-time hits leader is banned, then Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others may indeed face a similar block. I am a firm believer in the innate integrity of sports. True excellence is achieved fairly and cleanly. I think that it is a sad day for baseball when zero living members are inducted, but I think that it is a sadder day when the Hall of Fame is devalued by inducting proven, admitted cheaters.