When I look back to my childhood, I think of all the good times I had: staying up all night playing Street Fighter, going to the community pool, or if I was lucky, going to AstroWorld. It was an age of innocence: I didn't have the same values, thoughts, or worries that I have now than I am 20+ years older. Growing up, my chief concern was what, and more importantly, who, I was going to invite to my birthday party. Now, hell, where do I begin? Needless to say, times have changed, almost as much as I have over the past 20 years or so.
It's funny, I didn't really fully understand the jingle, "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys' R Us kid…I don't want to grow, because then if I did, I wouldn't be a Toys 'R Us kid!" As I've gotten older, I understand, but even more so appreciate, what this slogan means and why it's important. No matter who you are, I think I can say we all have a nostalgic sense of our childhood; I know I do.
I have a lot of heroes I look up to in life: my parents Football Jesus, my brothers, Daniel LaRusso, Will Hunting, Crash Davis, Rocky Balbo, among others. Some of my greatest teachers in my life have been movie characters, with Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Myagi being the greatest, and Rocky being a close second. By now, you should know how much I am enamored with The Karate Kid; it is a classic beyond all classics. What you don't know is why Rocky Balboa represents all that is great about this country we live in.
For the sake of humanity, I am going to assume you have seen the Rocky series. It's the classic underdog tale of an overachiever seizing an opportunity and making the best of his chance, culminating with a victory, in an over-the-top fashion, over The United States' chief rival: the Russians. Of course, throughout the series we are subject to some horrible acting, famous one-liners, a hit-and-miss soundtrack, tragedies, self-doubt, and, of course, triumph. Minor details aside, it symbolizes everything great about our country and what can happen when opportunity meets hard work and a bit of luck; success.
Spectacularly, all of these are featured prominently in Rocky IV, which is the greatest Rocky installment of the 4. Also, we must acknowledge parts 5 and 6 never happened and should be stricken from the annals of cinema history. In particular Rocky IV shows us a protagonist who, against all odds, succeeds where other have failed miserably (see: Apollo Creed dying), while other have doubted him (see:
Ed note: Seriously, after clicking on those links and hearing those songs, don't you feel like kicking some ass? I know I do. I'm ready to run another fuckin marathon, or maybe even take out a few Russians ala "Red Dawn"-style. I'll wait until you get back from watching the videos.....DRAAAGGO!!!!! (I just spent 23 minutes of my day watching clips from Rocky. Good time)
So, what's the significance in all of this? It's this: What happened to the days of innocence, the days where we would believe anything we saw and, under no circumstance, would we believe something bad could happen to one of our heroes? Where we held our heroes in such a high regard, where did the naivety all go? See, the beauty of movies is that we take it at face value and don't place anything in it, in other words, we accept it for what it is: entertainment. Much like the days of our youth, we are naïve that anything wrong can happen to those we know, what happened to those who we hold in such high regard, and those who mean something to us…which brings me to one of my heroes: Roger Clemens.
By now, you all have undoubtedly heard about the Roger Clemens-George Mitchell-performance enhancing substances fiasco. I can recall, vividly, the day the Mitchell Report, which documented and implicated hundreds of current and former Major League Baseball players, was released. As a matter of fact, I was doing my own training, of course, without the aid of any performance enhancing substances, other than hops and oats, at the time the actual report was released. Assuming you have a vested interest in Major League Baseball, particularly if you are a fan of the Houston Astros, New York Yankees, or even a fan of the Boston Red Sox or Toronto Blue Jays, I would expect you were overcome with the same feelings I had when Roger Clemens' name was mentioned. Disgust, betrayal, astonishment, doubt, shame, denial, and shock were just a myriad of feelings people all over the sporting world felt, among others; no matter what your thoughts are about Roger Clemens, you can't deny, and overlook, what he has accomplished in baseball. Now, extrapolate that times one hundred and you will scratch the surface of how I felt when that bombshell hit me.
Before I go any further let me clarify one thing: I am withholding judgment on Clemens. From what I have gathered, what has been documented, and, having a pretty substantial idea as to what the human body can do, I have come up with an idea as to what Clemens is; but, for purposes of this, I'm not here to lay blame or defend him. Yet. When it's all said and done, and the dust has settled maybe, I'll go into further detail as to what I think about that; stay tuned.
Roger Clemens embodied everything I mentioned. For years I was in amazement of what he could so and what he did on the baseball field. The countless records he owns, the multiple Cy Young awards he has, the multiple World Series rings; he was the definition of a major league pitcher. Of the past 50 years, and I would be willing to say, over the course of our lifetime, and just about any other one's lifetime, he is the greatest pitcher to ever play baseball. Those feats alone would make you appreciate, hate him or love him, you have to admit that he is one of the greatest, if not the greatest player, we will ever see in our lifetime.
What makes it even more damning about these accusations was that he was a former Texas Longhorn and a native Houstonian. Throw in the fact that he was a member of the two best years of the Houston Astros leading us to consecutive appearances in the National League Championship Series in 2004 and 2005, culminating in our first ever World Series appearance. I'll never forget him in Game 4 of the NLDS where he showed how gutsy he was coming out of the bullpen to pitch 4 innings in the 18-inning game; he solidified everything I heard about him. He was a legend in my book; an untouchable, the same way Vince Young has immunity, Roger Clemens achieved that in just those two years he was an Astro. By now, you should know how much pride I take in being a Texan and what it represents; and in some weird way, these accusations tainted him, it made me feel ashamed he was a Texan because we shared some type of connection.
Like I said, I'm not here to convict Clemens about what he may or may have not done, I can take in all the facts and look at them objectively, and even that is hard to do because I already have a predetermined position on him: I like Roger Clemens. That is why it's hard for me to come with grips that everything he has done over the past several years may have been a façade because, like I said, I want to be naïve and think that The Rocket didn't using any performance enhancing substances.
Which brings me up with another point, since we have been children; we have been engrained with the notion that if we put in enough hard work over periods of time, our hard work will be rewarded. This notion applies in all facets of life: professional, personal, academic; if you work hard enough to want something, in the end, you usually are successful in some regards. Granted there are exceptions to this namely professional sports, and probably adult film stars. See, you can work as hard as you physically can, yet, you must also need an abundance of actual talent to be a professional athlete; similarly, you don't need a lot of hard work to be a porn star but, then again, John Holmes was in a class all by himself.
I bring this up because it's been well documented and commented on about how vigorous and rough Roger Clemens' conditioning program is; furthermore, he's also thought to have one the greatest work ethic of any athlete playing baseball ever, much less ever. Taking into account what I just said, and then hearing about the notions that Clemens did, indeed, use performance enhancing substances, just contradicts everything that we have heard. Hard work will be rewarded; or is it? Was he getting any help from outside sources? Was he cheating? Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, we don't know any of this right now, and the fact of the matter is that even the sheer mention of his name is damning enough. He's Roger Clemens, The Rocket; he's Superman; the greatest pitcher I've ever seen, but after it's all said and done, maybe, we'll think of him in a different light-after all, the court of public opinion is the most damning one of all, ask OJ Simpson.
When I was about 12 years old I found out something that changed my life. Well, that may not be entirely true, but it was pretty close, especially for a 12-year old. I was snooping around the guest bedroom closet one night and came into a bag full of clothes. Not just any clothes, but the good stuff: Bugle Boy, Jordache, and, yes, even a pair of Z. Cavarrichi's, which were the modern day Armani at the time. Anyway, not thinking anything of it, I put on all the clothes and wore them for a while, getting tired of them; I placed them back in the bags and didn't think anything else of it for a while; until Christmas Day.
As you can guess, the clothes were my Christmas presents; however, they were from Santa, not Connie or Juan, but from Santa Fuckin Claus. Needless to say, I found out that winter, Santa Claus didn't exist. Crushing news, considering, for the first 12 years of my life, I planned on being an elf when I grew up. As a kid, we believe anything, we hear about stories from neighborhood kids who swing all the way around on a swing set; how the world is going to end in the year 2000, how Freddy Krueger is going to get us in our sleep; we believe all of this.
Is it because we are too naïve to believe anything else? Not really, its because at that age, we carry around a sense of innocence with us that whatever we think is the truth, we think everything we hear is the gospel. We don't know any better to believe otherwise, maybe, instead of the "the more we know the better", it's better to say "the less we know, the better", at least that way, people don't get hurt.
How fitting is it that my favorite Rocky installment is the greatest parallel I can come up with? On one hand, we have the favorite who trains religiously; someone who uses all the cutting edge technology and newest training methods. An absolute physical freak who is in his prime and who is the overwhelming favorite to win in just about every thing he competes in. You just know you are watching greatness while he is performing, this may be the time he dominates in a fashion no one has ever seen before. That's entertainment, that's why we go to see these athletes compete, unfortunately, it's also because, as Drago proves, they can be frauds too. Did Clemens cheat? Honestly, I think he did, it would be naïve of me not to think he didn't because, well, I can form my own opinion from what I have gathered. Just as Drago was a cultural icon to his country, the Rocket was the same way to us Houstonians, minus the whole Cold War thing. We see Roger and want to believe him, we try to believe him, but honestly, it's not looking good right now to be a fan of his, and that's unfortunate, maybe we're too grown for our own good.
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