i just wanna b a baseball fan

Folks, I don't know about you, but, this is one of my favorite times of the year! Pitchers and Catchers are reporting for Spring Training in Arizona and Florida and we are a little more than a month away from the first pitch of a new baseball season. I absolutely love baseball. It's my favorite sport and only hockey comes anywhere near baseball in my hardened sports heart. That is why I have so much anger right now towards the industry I work in, The Media. Instead of talking about what teams are expected to finish where, what new players to watch for, the players that have switched teams and how they are going to perform, all we hear about are steroids. Earlier this week, I was truly outraged at The Media on two fronts: 1; As I was putting on my gear to hop on the bike for the morning ride down to The Dungeon, I was watching one of the few sports shows that I actually leave the volume up for, "First Take" on ESPN2. I like how First Take covers sports and I especially enjoy the "1st and Ten" segment that debates 10 sports topics. Besides "PTI", it is the sports-related show that I enjoy the most. This morning, as the show was coming on the air co-host Dana Jacobsen was giving a run down of what was coming up on the show, and, of course, her top story was "A-Rod talks to The Media" spiced up with "Do you believe him?". Then, incredibly, she stated that later on during the show they would bring on a "Facial Recognition Expert" to determine whether A-Rod told the truth or not. R U FRAKKIN' KIDDING ME? It's bad enough that The Media just will not let this story die the death it should have last week, now The Media just has to know if A-Rod is telling the truth to the point that a television program is bringing on a "Facial Recognition Expert". 2; Apparently, it is all our fault as baseball fans that the "Steroid Era" has lasted as long as it has! As I perusing the nation's newspaper's online I ran into this story in the Baltimore Sun. According to this genius, if baseball fans would just boycott ballparks because of their "outrage about the Steroid Era", baseball would be forced to do something about "The Steroid Mess". In other words, baseball fans, it is all our fault. If we just stopped going to the ballpark, Bud "It ain't my Fault" Selig and Donald "You can't touch us!" Fehr would just wave their Magic Wand and clean this all up! If I interpret the term correctly, The Media has "jumped the shark" on steroids. This morning "The Sports Reports", an ESPN Sunday morning show that used to be really good, spent the first half of the show talking about A-Rod and steroids. Not about the start of Spring Training this week, not about whether the Dodgers or Manny are going to blink first. Just A-Rod and steroids. All I want to do is watch, and report, on the baseball games. Since I am still a member of The Media, I am going to do something that I am lucky enough to have the power to do. I am going to stop talking about steroids. Period. Done. "The Southern California Baseball Report" starts tomorrow (2/23) on ESPN Radio 800 with previews of the three SoCal baseball nines, the Angels, the Padres and the Dodgers. The SCBB will be a steroid-free zone for 2009. I don't care who does what with 'roids. They will not be mentioned. I will praise those who need to be praised. I will bash those who need to be bashed. But not about 'Roids. All I want to be is a baseball fan lucky enough to be reporting on baseball. Just the games. And that's all I'm going to be.