It has been put forth by health care professionals that the shedding of tears flushes out toxins, kills bacteria, relieves stress and generally contributes to overall wellness.
So it was to my health, and to the heartbreak awaiting Tom Brady, that I sat down with a box of Kleenex and bawled my eyes out.
Brady, the quarterback of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, has been suspended for four games next season due to his role in “deflate-gate.”
Briefly, Brady’s suspension stems from his elastic version of the truth when he was asked about whether he knew that the Patriots’ staff let some of the air out of the footballs in New England’s 45-7 win over Indianapolis in the American Conference title game.
In the end, he knew that the staff let some of the air out of the footballs, down to a more squeezable level that he prefers, and he lied about it and got caught.
Brady will appeal the suspension and probably get it reduced. The NFL, soaring in popularity but plagued by recurring moments of discredit, would like this bit of theater and others like it to go away quickly and quietly.
Of course, when the game itself is reeling – as in, a teetering business model – a little friendly tweaking of ball specs can be a welcomed thing.
The Major League Baseball season of 1994 ended in the second week of August due to a labor disagreement that resulted in a lockout. There were no playoffs that year, and so, for the first time since the league was formed, no World Series.
What the sports world did get was a lot of enraged, done-with-it fans swearing off baseball, vowing with conviction to never return to another baseball park.
Baseball can withstand bad P.R., as in the Black Sox scandal, or the 1981 strike-shortened season. With massive payrolls to be continually met, it cannot handle idle turnstiles.
It wasn’t long before conspiracy theories began to sprout up about the number of home runs being hit after the ’94 season. The suspicion was that the baseball itself was tampered with – juiced up, with the intent of producing the sort of eye-popping offensive numbers that would rekindle interest and win back the fans.
American League teams averaged 148 home runs for the ’93 season; by 1996 the number had grown to 195. In the National League, where there is no designated hitter, the 1993 average of 139 homers per team gradually increased to its high-water mark of 187 in the 2000 season. So, there was that.
There was also anecdotal evidence.
Rod Beck was a relief pitcher who played for four teams throughout his 13-year, three-time All-Star career. His pitching coach in 1998 was Larry Rothschild, who noted after watching numerous routine fly balls leave the park that season, “Yes, something’s going on with the ball.”
Beck had a more illustrative take.
“When I first came up (1991), I used to sit in the bullpen, holding a ball – you could get it to wrinkle a little bit if you put your thumbs on the ball about an inch apart and pushed them together,” he said back in the 1998 season. “Now, you can’t get any kind of wrinkle out of it. You’d have as much luck getting a wrinkle out of a croquet ball.”
So, were those inviolable ball specifications played with?
Ultimately in matters like this, if it involves any sort of fall from grace, it boils down to who did the playing.
