Steroid to Heaven

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My younger son, who is not yet fourteen, is a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge. He idly watches Youtube videos of playoff games, World Series games, landmark games, championship games- you name it -into the wee hours of the night when he should be sleeping. During the baseball season he wears the rest of us out watching the MLB channel and will give up a steak dinner at Outback and a stop at Caravel Ice Cream if it means he'll miss the first three innings of a Rangers game.


      Just for fun one day I asked him who won game three of the 1986 American League Championship Series, and he not only told me who won the game (I couldn't have even told you which two teams were in the series if you'd put a machete to my throat), he told me the starting pitchers, the game situation when the winning hit was struck, who made the hit, and where the ball was hit. Impressed but thinking he had just gotten lucky, I tried him again. Game four of the 1970 World Series (the only World Series game I have ever attended in my life) between the Reds and the Orioles: what was the series record going into the game, what was the defining hit (Dave McNally, Orioles starting pitcher, hits a grand slam just past the left field foul pole- the only pitcher ever to hit a grand slam in the World Series), what was the final score, and just for grins, how did the Orioles score the rest of their runs? You guessed it: he gave me all the answers without hesitation, and I actually had to go on the Net to check his accuracy. He was right on every fact.


      He played baseball for a couple of very uneventful seasons as a little boy (his last season he struck out for the entire season, never swinging the bat once), but refused to go watch his older brother play. After his swingless, hitless season he declared that baseball was no fun anymore- "They're all too serious," he said. Instead, he picked up a baseball and started pitching, if not to me or his brother, then at the fence, and practiced imitating the deliveries of everyone from Randy Johnson and Oil Can Boyd to Justin Verlander. He actually got to point where he was throwing reasonably well with impressive velocity for a then-twelve-year-old. I encouraged him to play in the spring league, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Nahh, I don't think so. I just like to throw." Okay.


      Next, he decided to teach himself how to hit (he of course wouldn't take much, if any, instruction from his old man who was a pretty decent hitter in his day), both from his natural right side, and then from the left. Got pretty good at that, too. "Wanna try fall ball?" I asked.


      "Nope," he answered firmly.


    Last year he saw "Money Ball" and got to watch the Red Sox play in their home field.  Later, he and I ventured down to Houston to watch the dreadful Astros, really just to see Minute Maid Park more than take in a game, per se.  Now he wants to be a general manager; he's convinced he can do a better job than John Daniels, and with his knowledge of the game, I'm not inclined to doubt he might just do it someday.


    My boy has hair down past his shoulders, is slightly built, and looks a cross between a bookish liberal professor and an intellectual protestor from Berkeley of the 1960s. He does not look like a baseball type. But you would be placing your money at the losing window if you were ever to bet against him on a baseball question.


    There are many, many things I admire about this boy, my second son, but the one thing I think I admire most about him when it comes to baseball is that he abhors the cheating and 'roiding that seems to have become the norm in contemporary sports, baseball especially. So, it is for him that I rewrote the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." 


      As for the two of us, here's to the greatest game ever created:









"Steroid To Heaven"


There's a batter who's sure every fastball is slow

And he's buying some steroids to heaven.

When he gets them he knows, out the window will go

Aaron, Bonds, and A-Rod’s home run records


Ooh, ooh, and he's buying a steroid to heaven.


There's a contract he’s signed, but he’ll only be fined

'Cause you know sometimes laws have no meaning.

If you start at first base, the D.A. won’t take your case

Because all of your fans will forgive you.


Ooh, it makes him money,

Ooh, it makes owners money.


There's a feeling I get when I read on the ’Net,

That my hero is crying he’s a victim.

In his Tweets I have seen he thinks owners are mean,

And denies charges that he’s been juicing.


Ooh, and his swing is sweeter,

Ooh, it really is much sweeter.


And it's whispered that soon, if the Feds call the tune,

He’ll be indicted and go on suspension.

And a new day will dawn for those who played ball,

Without cheating or lying to win games.


If there's new hustle in your hero, don't be alarmed now,

It's just a PED rush in the springtime.

Yes, he has a .200 average, but he hits home runs

Five hundred feet above the bleachers.


And no one wonders.


His ego’s humming and it won't go, in case you don't know,

The Hall of Fame’s calling him to join them,

Bud Selig, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know

His PEDs and ‘roids come by U.P.S.?



And as he takes his practice swings

His shadow taller than his soul.

There walks the leadoff man on balls

He takes a lead and dares a throw.

And as Roid Boy steps to the plate

His average now .458

The pitch will come to him at last,

A curveball anyone could blast,

To swing and miss and not to roll.


And he's buying a steroid to heaven.


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