Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: The Last Waltz and the MLB Steroid Scandal
What a culture deems worthy of an award can be quite revealing. Who we vote to the top our public meritocracies is often an indicator of who we are as a society.
All of that being said, the steroid scandal in baseball is like the Band documentary The Last Waltz.
Allow me to explain.
Both events were a pinnacle of performance in the respective arenas, paragons that subsequent generations would have to live up to. Both of them were also enabled and fueled by heinous, copious amounts of drug use.
Let’s look at the characters in this piece of comparative culture.
The Sosa-McGuire race to 61 is exactly like the subtle, but ever-present, on-stage lyrical duel between Band frontman Robbie Robertson and Bassist Rick Danko that took place throughout the night. Danko, like McGuire, took the title late in the game, when he sang a cocaine fueled belting of the fourth stanza of the Weight with, “Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog.” Sosa relates to Robbie Robertson in this case because he lost the title, did it with good humor and was also not a citizen of the United States.
Ken Griffey Junior was like Joni Mitchell because they didn’t do drugs and both of their performances revealed this to us.
Roger Clemens was like Neil Young because they both did drugs and it was very obvious.
A-Rod was like Van Morrison because he, too, came on the scene late, had been doing drugs longer than most people, had an unbelievable performance and left under the escort of police.
Bud Selig compares perfectly to director of the documentary Martin Scorscase because they both allowed the whole thing to happen, asked a lot of questions and made other people feel nervous.
Bob Dylan, the leader of The Band before they set off on their own, compares best to non other than Jose Canseco. Their godfather roles are not to be denied. They also both looked completely different than everybody else during both occasions. Dylan’s most memorable solo performance of the evening is thought to be Forever Young. Jose Canseco sought to do exactly that. They would both go on to do interviews with 60 minutes.
Barry Bonds is like Levon Helm because he was in the background of everything.
Then, there are the events themselves. In the seventies, rock and roll was being overshadowed by the painful fad of disco. It was suffering and miserable. In the nineties, baseball was suffering from terrible ticket sales and a lack of fan support. It too, was suffering and miserable. Both events pulled their respective cultures together to celebrate the glorious, synthetic ability of human potential. One group would be celebrated for the ages, while the other would be publicly humiliated for the rest of their human existence. Two stories that left us with one feeling: what a show.
Loading ...
