Christmas On Steroids

By Kim J. Harmon

Bah Humbug.

We have this picture postcard image of Christmas in our heads that was crafted out of bits and pieces of old movies, new movies, books, and traditional tales we’ve heard since we were in kindergarten, and how many times have we actually seen that image come to life?

Say we have this image of a couple bundled up in heavy coats with wool collars, walking down a quiet, tree-lined, snow-covered walkway. It’s night and snow is softly falling. They have packages in their arms, but they aren’t too bulky or too heavy — so there probably isn’t an Xbox 360 or Christmas fruitcake wrapped up in there — and they both have pleasant stress-free smiles on their faces in order to wish a Merry Christmas to passersby.

And the street? Festive, lit up brilliantly with dazzling white or shiny green and red lights — and completely empty of cars.

Because in this picture postcard image of Christmas, there is no gridlock, no hordes of desperate shoppers who — judging by how many of them there are — have been barricaded in their homes for the past 11 months and just now have been released by their captors to roam wild and free to choke normally passable roads with their foul congestion.

And forget the actual shopping, just getting home from work has turned into a nightmare of epic proportions, because it seems, in the past 11 months of contentment, the hordes of holiday travelers have completely forgotten the rules of the road (and parking lots) not to mention concepts of basic human decency.

I wonder if the Christmas spirit was with the woman who I saw pull into the parking lot at The Brass Mills Mall in Waterbury the other day. She was driving a white Jeep Cherokee; I was right behind her (silently cursing her for driving the sort of vehicle that’s causing me to pay $3.15 for a gallon of gas) and watching as she pulled into an empty slot right next to another empty slot. Great — the parking lot was full, so all I had to do was wait for her to get out of her guzzler.

She had pulled in cleanly, but then to my amazement — I saw her back up and then pull back in so her Cherokee was straddling the line between both slots, actually shutting me out.

That was real nice of her. I felt like wishing her a Merry Christmas as she walked by my car idling in the middle of the lot with nowhere to go. But I was too stupefied to speak and, anyway, I would have interrupted the important call she was on.

I wonder if the Christmas spirit is in any of the dozens of drivers who have clogged initially every intersection in Waterbury by driving through a red light and then getting stopped right in the middle of the intersection because, get this, there is nowhere to go!

That has been a nice Merry Christmas to all the drivers who have been trying to cross the intersection from the side roads.

I wonder if the Christmas spirit was in that woman at Toys ‘R’ Us who told my daughter — as a dozen or more people were rushing to get this new iPod gizmo — to look for it down one aisle when she knew darn well it was behind the electronics counter. Right after my daughter failed to get the gizmo, someone right in front of her in line got the last one, even though she had been first in line outside.

I would have loved to have been there for that. I would have wished that woman a very Merry Christmas after jacking her up against a rack of video games.

See, that’s the Christmas spirit singing in my blood. No really, I like Christmas; I just wish it was more like we imagine it to be and less like it normally is.

When I was a kid, it was my brother drawing a picture of what all three kids would look like on Christmas morning when my father shouted from the bedroom, “Okay, everybody up!”

Some of these drawings were priceless.

The tradition in my family now is for all five of us (now six, counting our buddy Rascal, who we got at the Newtown Pound) to sit together on the couch and read the tall poem, “The Night Before Christmas.” That’s nice. That’s Christmas.

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Hey, can we talk about sports?

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I hope real baseball fans take the Mitchell Report for what it is  — a bunch of blather, signifying nothing.

It’s sole purpose — other than wasting some $46 million, apparently — was to create a dog and pony show for the benefit of pseudo-moralistic Congressmen who described how steroids were poisoning our children and they were going to get to the bottom of it.

What did the Mitchell Report reveal? It revealed 85 players — that’s right, 85, of the thousands who have played the game in the last ten or so years, about the scope of the “investigation” — who might or might not have been involved in using or selling  steroids or HGH.

Many of the names we were already suspicious of. Many of the names were on “the list” — which were printed in every newspaper and scrawled on the screen of ESPN — solely because some guy told another guy that this guy was possibly thinking or maybe considering whether or not to use steroids.

It’s pointless.

It’s stupid.

The federal investigation at BALCO and the Internet sites are all being accused of trafficking in performance enhancing drugs — these are 12 investigations that will mean something, that will have some teeth and will change forever the way we look at this game.

Eighty-five people? That’s all Senator Mitchell could come up with — most carry on the questionable testimony of two guys trying to keep their prison sentences as small as possible?

It was the worst kind of dog and pony show. My only question was, did it really cost $46 million?

Andy Pettitte manned up in the wake of the George Mitchell Report on steroids and performance enhancing drugs in baseball. That should count for something.

While so many vehemently deny their involvement (denials, through attorneys, that ring so hollow) one of the favorite sons of the New York Yankees fesses up.

“Yeah, I did it.”

That counts for something.

No one can convince me that steroids and HGH will get a hitter better hand-eye coordination or a pitcher more spin on his breaking ball, but I don’t deny that these substances certainly give a player more vitality that age and simple wear and tear will take away.

Do I think it extended Barry Bonds career for longer than it should have? Absolutely.

I don’t really consider these guys cheaters. It was a level playing field out there, with hitters on the juice facing pitchers on the juice The players who were cheated were the players who came before (like Tim Rice, Tony Perez, et al) whose numbers — once  fearsome — now seem feeble in comparison to the incomprehensible numbers being recorded today.