The rites of spring.

A day late with this, but such is life.

Ah, Spring. Printemps. Snow melts, skirts appear, pitchers and catchers report. A Yankee explains to a media horde why he used steroids.

Alex Rodriguez told reporters at the Yankees' Spring Training facility in Tampa that his cousin regularly injected him with substances between 2001 and 2003. “I didn’t think they were steroids,” Rodriguez told the assembled crowd, though he conceded that “I knew we weren’t taking Tic Tacs.”

“This public bloodletting of individual stars, the fallen stars, anybody who witnesses what these individuals have to go through after the fact, say, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be in the chair, I don’t want to be the one—the poster child for the problem with the game, and on every newspaper across the country and every talk show.”

Whether he likes it or not, Rodriguez is now the poster child for this era. He got into that boat when he signed a $250 million contract. He's got the best numbers in an era when everybody's numbers were inflated. The one thing he is not is shunned.

Now let's hear from that cousin.

Mr. Dunn goes to Washington

The Nats got themselves a steal in Adam Dunn for two years, $20 million. Dunn is a very strangely controversial player, inasmuch as he flys pretty low under the radar. Still there are people out there who hate Adam Dunn. Toronto Blue Jays General Manager J.P. Ricciardi recently made the conventional anti-Dunn argument.

“Do you know the guy doesn’t really like baseball that much?” Ricciardi asked a call-in show questioner. “Do you know the guy doesn’t have a passion to play the game that much?"

Dunn is also controversial for another of Ricciardi's charges, that he's "a lifetime .230, .240 hitter that strikes out a ton and hits home runs." Dunn is a lifetime .247 hitter, and he strikes out in 32.4 percent of his at-bats.

That doesn't mean Dunn is particularly prone to making outs. Break out the handy Baseball Reference Play-Index and sort the numbers of all active non-pitchers between age 21 and 28 -- the years Dunn has been active in the Majors -- by the number of outs they have made. Dunn ranks 18th, behind Jimmy Rollins (2nd), A-Roid (3rd), The Pujols (6th), Derek Jeter (11th), Barry Bonds (12th), and Carlos Beltran (15th). The rest of the list is impressive enough. You have to be pretty good to make a lot of outs at a young age, to be allowed to make a lot of outs at a young age.

Go back to the Play-Index and sort the same group* by on-base percentage and see that Dunn is 13th. Dunn ranks behind fellow free agent Manny Ramirez (3rd) but ahead of fellow free agent Mark Teixeira (14th).

Sort the same group by home runs and see that Dunn ranks 4th.

So Adam Dunn makes a lot of outs, though he still gets on base at an elite level, and he slugs the ever-loving crap out of the ball. Dunn will be moving to first base, where defense is really a formality. He's a valuable hitter who isn't going to kill you defensively.

Less than a week after Ryan Howard, who is 10 days younger than Dunn, signed for three years and $54 million, THE NATIONALS signing Dunn for two years and $20 million is a veritable masterstroke for Nats GM Jim Bowden. Bowden, however, is still a doufus with a segway, a DUI -- unrelated -- and Elijah Dukes.

As far Adam Dunn not liking baseball goes, if not liking baseball means a .381 OBP and 40 home runs every year, like clockwork, I'll take not liking baseball any day. Adam Dunn may not wear his heart on his sleeve, but you don't get to the Major Leagues without caring. A lot. Saying otherwise disrespects the amount of work that it takes to be a Major Leaguer.

* Lie. I set a minumum number of 879 games played to exclude Kei Igawa.

Free Alex Rodriguez, or steroid fatigue.

The worst part about baseball's steroid story is that it lends itself so perfectly to bottomless pessimism, and I find that my cynicism extends to all the agents of the story, from the players to the executives, and especially to the reporters. I believe most baseball writers either missed or willfully ignored the steroid story in the Nineties and early Aughts, and now they're forced to play catch-up. This makes much of their sanctimoniousness retroactive, hence the focus on and romanticization of baseball's past.

I'll admit steroids sell. But if the public never again has to read about another of Alex Rodriguez's urine samples, I think they'll find a way to live. The general public is not too attached to the steroids story that it can't let it go. It's the writers who do the perpetuating.

Baseball writers forget the fundamental rule of baseball players: They are scoundrels. This has been common knowledge since the game was first formed. Baseball players will do anything and everything to get ahead, from sharpening their spikes to taunting Jackie Robinson with racial epithets to injecting Winstrol in a teammate's buttocks.

It's irresponsible for me to name names, but suffice it to say that if baseball players from Babe Ruth's era to Hank Aaron's era to Mike Schmidt's era had access to the types of supplements and performance enhancers that today's players use, they would have used them as well. If you ask a retired player today whether or not they would have used steroids of course they'll deny it. Today's baseball players haven't exactly been forthright about their steroid usage, have they? That's because baseball players are scoundrels.

So as I read articles with titles like A-Rod has destroyed game's history, I can't help but be annoyed. I have this image in my mind of writers like Jayson Stark firing off a priggish invective in one burst of creative energy, sitting back in their desk chairs and feeling like they're righting a wrong. It's so disingenuous. Where were you in 2002, Jayson? Here:

We keep hearing how players today can't play like they did in the olden days. Give it a rest. You can go to a game these days and see [...] a shortstop who has hit 50 homers two years in a row (A-Rod) [...] Or you can see a six-time Cy Young award-winner (Roger Clemens) [...] a 600-homer man (Barry Bonds) [...] In Babe Ruth's day, the game was played by a whole lot of slow white men. Players today are far better athletes [...] Let's broadcast that to the world, huh?

You ain't foolin' me, fellas. If you had done your jobs right the first time, this wouldn't be necessary.

15.

I've never actually ranked the loves of my life, but I know that if I did Cardinals baseball would rank disturbingly high. It's not a question of whether or not I take it too seriously; It's a question of how long victory or defeat will fundamentally affect my baseline mood. Far too often, memories of Cardinals baseball are so viscerally seared into my memory that I can tell you ludicrous specifics about my surroundings during weighty Cardinals games. When I say I'm a Cardinals fan, I mean I've lived and fucking died with them.

For example, I can't tell you many specifics about the year 1996 -- think there may have been some sort of Presidential election -- but I can tell you that I watched the entire NLCS Game 7 -- a feat, I assure you -- in my parents' kitchen, and that I ate four bowls of Frosted Mini Wheats during the game. Two percent milk.

Or that I skipped school -- first time ever -- and watched Rick Ankiel's meltdown in the Game 1 of the 2000 NLDS at the bar of Houlihan's in the St. Louis Galleria -- malls are very big where I'm from -- while drinking three iced teas.

I also sense that my experience isn't particularly unique.

My street-cred established, I come to bid farewell to one of my favorite players, Jim Edmonds. He's the greatest center fielder I've ever watched on a daily basis, and he's the new benchmark for a center fielder who falls just short of the Hall of Fame.

If the payroll contraction inspired by the economic crisis causes star free agents to remain unsigned, Edmonds' career could very well be finished. Edmonds crushed the ball with the Cubs last year, and I think he can hit the 18 home runs he needs to reach 400. But time is a fast current and Edmonds has been swimming against it for a while now. Edmonds gets no play in the media. Take a look at a Google News search of Edmonds' name and you'll find a lot of older articles and terrible sources. (Not you, David Heck of the Tufts Daily.) Free agency is still at a point where a team can sign Manny Ramirez or Adam Dunn. Jim Edmonds isn't a hot commodity right now.

So if Edmonds is finished, I think it's the end of a career that was historically significant but not worthy of Hall enshrinement. According to the always handy Baseball-Reference Play Index, Edmonds ranks 12th in career OPS+ among players who played at least 500 games in center field. Ahead of him are the following 11 names:

1-8: Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Hack Wilson, Duke Snider, Ken Griffey Jr.

9-11: Wally Berger, Larry Doby, Earl Averill

Every single name on that list is a Hall of Famer, though some (the Earl of Shomish) are less significant than others (Seven). Edmonds stacks up well to the final three, though Doby is, of course, an exceptional case relative to Edmonds. Still, based on their stats, it's not unreasonable to say that those players have marginal Hall of Fame candidacies. Doby, of course, still being an exceptional case relative to, well, nearly everybody.

The problem is that there are also impressive names directly following Edmonds -- players who aren't Hall of Famers:

13-15: Fred Lynn*, Jimmy Wynn, Ellis Burks

All of those guys were fantastic players for a lot of years, but aside from Red Sox homers wanting to see their boy Fred get in, these guys don't have groundswells to get them elected to the Hall of Fame (And why doesn't Red Sox nation have more love for Ellis, who began and ended his career in Boston? Probably racism.)

So Jim Edmonds is stuck in the middle between a group of marginal Hall of Famers above and a group of talented non-Hall of Famers below. Then there's the fact that he played during an era of unprecedented chemical advantage, legal or otherwise. It's the unfortunate truth of this era and, all things considered, I'll take it over World War and institutional racism.

Jim Edmonds has authored as many Cardinals moments that are burned into my memory as anybody. Jim Edmonds is so great, he's beloved by both Cardinals and Cubs fans (admit it, you were smitten last June). I will one day prattle to the idiot friends of my children's children about the catch I saw Jim Edmonds make in second inning of Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS on a ball that Brad Ausmus hit that I don't think Jim even thought he could reach. But Jim Edmonds falls short of the marginal Hall of Famers.

Jim Edmonds is not worthy of Hall of Fame enshrinement.

* Stylistically, Jim Edmonds is the Fred Lynn of this generation. You heard it here first.

Prado given chance government would like.

With no regard to Sole-Survivor Policies, Hall of Fame jockey Edgar Prado will ride the brother of Barbaro, a horse he rode both zenith (a Kentucky Derby win) and nadir (life-ending injuries). Prado is excited to teach Nicanor, Barbaro's three-year-old younger sibling, all about the circle of life.

Michael Matz, who also trained Barbaro, pits the latest progeny of La Ville Rouge and Dynaformer in a battle for his life starting either this weekend or on Feb. 7.

“He’s getting there. Either one of the two,” Matz told the Associated Press. "I’m not sure yet. When we get him back to the track, we’ll see how he is.

"I'm looking forward to milking this one for his semen before turning him into superglue, just like his brother."*

* May not be included in the Associated Press story

Super. Bowl.

I was too young to be conscious of the fact that the Arizona Cardinals left St. Louis. I know now that it happened somewhere in the jumble of tire swings, ThunderCats and Muppets taking Manhattan, but I have no recollection of the events themselves. My first memory as a football fan isn't akin to my first memory as, say, a baseball or hockey fan. It's not of a game I attended, a player I cheered or an Avant-gaudy uniform that's seared into my memory. It's not of the Cardinals leaving; it's of them being gone. I went from blissful ignorance -- and judging by my older brother's deep-seated hatred for the Cardinals, I'm pretty sure I was the lucky one -- to not having a team, and there's never a sense of loss when you can't remember what you had.

My first memory of Kurt Warner, on the other hand, I still own. It was the Rams' third preseason game before the 1999 season and big-ticket free agent quarterback Trent Green had just been carted from the field to a standing ovation. At that point, Green had not thrown a single pass for the Rams, but he was symbolic of an expected rebirth that included Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt. With him out of the way, that rebirth was on life support.

Then, the only thing we knew about Warner was that he couldn't beat out Tony Banks or Steve Bono for playing time in 1998. He was representative of the same-as-always, sorry-sack Rams. When Warner went three-and-out in his first series, I remember joining 65,000 fans in booing him. Vociferously. 

I remember turning to the previously mentioned older brother and saying, "They're fucked. Time for them to start scouting college talent."

One legendary press conference, two MVPs and three Super Bowls later, Kurt Warner continues to make a mockery of my first instinct.

So as I watch the quarterback I once booed lead the team I never knew I lost into the Super Bowl, I struggle to summon the vitriol to hate them in a suitable fashion. I won't be rooting for the Cardinals on Super Sunday, that much is sure. But I won't be too angry if Kurtis can lead the Cardinals to the top of the mount. As a fan, I'm forever in his debt. And as far as the Cardinals, well, good for them. The Cardinals seem to St. Louis a bit like a crazy ex-girlfriend they hear is about to get married. Sure, there's some nostalgia, but it's more of a time-and-place wistfullness, as opposed to a yearning-to-possess-again. They don't want to get back together with her. They're happy she finally got her act together. There's really no jealousy.

But why did she have to get together with an old friend?

See, this why nobody like yo' ass.

You never blog.