Morneau's Concussions

Twins first baseman, Justin Morneau, has gotten a lot of sympathy over his concussion recently.  In the past week he has received a great deal of tweets and letters from fans worrying over the state of his health.  What got fans into this frenzy was a statement that Morneau made referring to his health and his retirement.  Recently he has had concussion like systems for a while, and has yet to be cleared to play.  Morneau says of his comments "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if the stuff continues I probably wouldn't be able to play again. It wasn't anything other than stating the obvious."  However, for fans this was anything but stating the obvious.  
Morneaua's fans have loved and watched him for years.  They think of him as someone who comes home for family dinners, and they talk about him as if they truly know him.  Any fan can tell you that when their favorite player retires they don't know what to do with themselves.  They feel a connection with this person, even though they have never had a real conversation with this person.  This is demonstrated in Coover's novel, The Universal Baseball Association. Henry the main character becomes so intertwined in his players' lives that he doesn't know what to do when one of them dies.  Even though his players are imaginary, he feels a deep connection with them.  This is no different than Morneau's fans.  They consider him to be part of their lives, so if he was to stop playing tomorrow what would his fans do?  Although, Henry and Modeau's fans have never truly met their star player, they feel as though their  decisions affect their lives.  Thus in this since we glamorize baseball and make it more than just a game.   

Ryan Braun and Steroids

The Milwaukee Brewers are waiting on an important decision regarding their last prized possession, Ryan Braun.  After Prince Fielder left the Brewers, they were left with their left outfielder and National League MVP, Braun.  However, now the Brewers may be with out Braun for 50 games because he was caught with performance enhancing drugs.  Thus without the Brewers' heavy hitters, the season doesn't look too promising.  So once again a team is stuck to deal with the steroid talk.  The old game verse the new game.   The traditionalist verse the modernist.  The traditionalist believe the MLB needs to keep the game clean and pure, while the modernist are ready for change, which includes updated statistics and possibly not even banning performance enhancers.  If everyone was able to take a performance enhancer what would that really do to the game?  Most likely there would be more deep threats on teams and possibly a player could play longer.  So what really is wrong with that?  As we see in Cover's The Universal Baseball Association tradition and The Game are parts of our culture.  Henry, the main character in The Universal Baseball Association, finds the game to be something bigger than just men trying to hit a baseball.  He sees it as a way of life.  For one of his players to be doing steroids would be unheard of and a blow to his Game.   It is hard for a traditionalist, like Henry, to image a game where steroids are accepted.  In his mind and other traditionalist it ruins the purity of the game.  Thus Ryan Braun has betrayed the purity and the traditions of the game.  So for that reason it becomes bad, just because it takes away from what our culture was told about the game, baseball.  Thus all eyes are on Ryan Braun and the Brewers to see if another great player will go down wearing the scarlet letter of steroids.

Milwaukee Brewers waiting on outcome of Ryan Braun hearing