Selena Roberts—Where’s a Bus When You Need One?
May 4, 2009 · Andrew Nuschler · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
All that time in New York City. What, doesn’t the Big Apple still use above-ground mass transit?
OK, so I don’t really hope Selena Roberts gets hit by a bus. Not a real one anyway, although I admit a small part of my malignant self is rooting for a Greyhound.
I do sincerely hope the realization of how disgusting and irresponsible she is dawns on her one day. If it does, I hope it slaps Roberts so hard she has to adjust her Burger King uniform.
Unfortunately, parasites like this woman must, by definition, first be blessed with incredible conceit and such usually precludes self-awareness. Nah, it’s a safe bet Selena will go to her grave thinking she’s done society a great mitzvah.
That she’s consummately righteous.
She hasn’t. And she isn’t.
Instead, Roberts has achieved one of the more incredible feats recently seen in the sports world—she’s made a sympathetic figure out of Alex Rodriguez.
I can’t believe it, but, Bob Costas’ interview with this atrocious troll actually moved me so violently, I started writing this at 5 AM in California (when I first encountered the Costas’ story). OK, so I fell back asleep shortly thereafter—I prefer to think of it as my passion burning too fiercely to be sustained than a short attention span.
Up until the clip, I was like the rest of the Major League Baseball watching world. I really didn’t like what little I knew of Alex Rodriguez—the man-child is nothing if not fabricated.
From his fake tan to his laboratory muscles to his canned responses to his cliched abandonment of family for a famous diva, everything about the man is calculated and concordantly stale (so is the diva). For those reasons, I was only watching the performance-enhancing drug snafu out of the corner of my eye.
But now it’s got the focus of both peepers and a good portion of my brain. I still don’t much like him, but compared to Selena Roberts?
Alex Rodriguez is an adorable, three-legged puppy that poops fragrant roses and plays for the San Francisco Giants.
See, Roberts has climbed into the ring and come out swinging (in an appropriate typo, I first typed “swining”). It’s a one-on-one battle and you’re gonna have to pick sides. Once the dust settles, I’m betting Alex will be the fan favorite.
How the hell did that happen?
Seriously, this is a guy who routinely gets booed in his HOME stadium—not even Barry Lamar Bonds got such treatment (granted, San Francisco is not New York and Pac Bell is not any Yankee Stadium). Arguably, there is no less likable personality in professional sports who hasn’t given over to violence against another living thing.
Yet Roberts’ hatchet piece and transparent defense of it turn A-Rod into the good guy.
The primary mechanism of martyrdom is the fact that Selena bases her forthcoming garbage almost entirely on anonymous sources.
She’s willing to try to unravel an individual’s life on the word of people who aren’t brave enough to put a face/name to the statement. Typically, you aren’t scared to tell the truth unless it’s about someone prone to contracting hits rather than collecting them.
Even then, there’s a reason the Constitution of the United States of America requires the criminally accused be afforded the right to face their accusers. In the absence of such confrontation, there is a fundamental element of credibility missing.
Without the “Who,” the scales of justice have no calibration.
For instance, take the Bonds PED and perjury trial/witch-hunt.
What if an anonymous source close to Barry says she SAW the former slugger shooting up with the Clear or whatever? Sounds like that’s all she wrote for BLB—even more so because the only name in that sentence is Barry Bonds and we don’t like the man anyway.
But what if Ms. Anonymous Source becomes his jilted ex-lover, Kimberly Bell? Hmmm….
The court of public opinion isn’t controlled by the same rules and, in the arena of the written word, the First Amendment reigns supreme. Hence, Selena Roberts can publish her tripe and rake in the proceeds with legal impunity.
What she can’t do is hide her warts from those open to seeing ’em.
Selena would have you believe her information is coming from benevolent sources, people who are only concerned with Rodriguez’ safety and the purity of a legacy he could leave.
Right. And I have some lovely oceanfront property to sell you in Iowa.
If the sources are squealing out of charity, why the hell are they talking to a slug hack who’s clearly trying to make her bones by detonating Alex’s chemically-enhanced hard work and capitalize on his unpopular persona?
Furthermore, if there’s so much love in their hearts, why isn’t there a name to the statement? Nope, not buying it. Any of it.
Or, incidentally, the book.
The other aspect sitting very awkwardly in my gut is the intensely personal nature of the nonsense and Roberts’ “insight” into a man who—I’m taking a crazy leap here—didn’t spend much time interviewing with her.
According to the linked story from MLB.com, “much of the book details Rodriguez’s personal life, particularly his relationship with pop icon Madonna and his resulting divorce.”
Wait, what just happened? Where am I?
I thought this was about PEDs, baseball, and how Alex needs to clean up so he can deliver on his prodigious baseball birthright.
Like most everyone else, I believe A-Rod to be a colossal ass for his personal choices.
However, I much more strongly agree with Joe Girardi (not the part about the Presidents)—there is absolutely no reason to go digging through someone’s personal life unless it is germane to public discourse.
And by germane, I don’t mean a sensationalistic pile of manure that will move coin and get your mug on the interview circuit. I mean something that contributes to our society by accomplishing something productive.
A cowardly hearsay account of an athlete’s personal life doesn’t do the job.
In fact, it throws us further in reverse because it endorses the idea that these people, simply by nature of their visibility, are somehow worthy of admiration and imitation.
Look, celebrities and athletes may be perfectly wonderful people. You may want nothing more for your child (or yourself) than to grow up to be just like one of them. Hopefully, if such is the case, the fact they are celebrities or pro athletes plays a very minimal part in the desire.
If any.
And, please, spare me the lecture about steroids, PEDs, and the sanctity of the game.
That crowd acts as if PEDs are some magic elixir ticket to professional sport stardom. Not true. Really, really not true.
PEDs are a shortcut to be sure and a dangerous one to boot, but they are a shortcut for athletes who’ve already progressed farther down the path to the pros than you or I or 99 percent of the population ever CONSIDERS.
I am not a professional baseball player, but not because I lacked the talent. Maybe I had the talent, maybe I didn’t—but I lost the determination WAY before I lost the ability relative to my peers. And I was a damn good ballplayer when I opted to pursue engineering rather than small ball.
That’s the thing about baseball more than any other sport.
Nobody—N-O-B-O-D-Y—just shows up at the park on gameday and excels. I don’t care if you gave Barry Bonds PEDs in his prime. If that guy doesn’t practice like a dog in addition to everything else, he’s a chump. Plain and simple.
Even then, that superfreak would endure soul-crushing slumps.
Baseball is that hard.
Randy Johnson has been in the Show for 22 years. He’s got five Cy Young awards, a World Series ring, a World Series co-Most Valuable Player award, and he’s widely regarded as one of the best left-handed pitchers to ever toe the slab.
Last week, the Big Unit walked seven Arizona Diamondbacks (a notoriously undisciplined team at the plate) while recording only 10 outs.
And hitting is the really difficult part.
So I agree PEDs and the rest should be eliminated, just not because they so cheapen baseball. They destroy the individual and kids are using them—those are the only reasons and they’re good enough.
I say start the process already.
I also say writing National Enquirer rags about guys like Rodriguez, referencing abandonment by the man’s father when he was a child, and drawing intimately psychological conclusions about an individual with whom Selena Roberts hasn’t spent a great deal of time (again, I’m assuming) plays no part in the process.
For the record, I think a lot of what Roberts says is probably true.
I think A-Rod probably was juicing all the way back in high school. I believe his PED-use continued probably from then until he got caught—I see no reason to believe otherwise since he’s proven to be unreliable in his defense. I even believe the bit about tipping pitches since the guy’s always seemed like a stat geek.
Though I don’t know what that shortstop-tells-the-infield-what-pitch-is-coming drivel was since it’s not like you just shout, “hey, a fastball’s coming” to your mates.
Regardless, note the key words there—I THINK and BELIEVE. Nowhere do I use the word “know” because I don’t.
If you’re gonna write an entire novel (and, yes, it’s a novel) for national consumption making the accusation as well as extremely intimate judgments and then pretend to do so in the name of altruism? You better know.
That’s why Selena Roberts is deceitful and repulsive in my eyes. She wrote the book, but she doesn’t.
And that’s all the proof I need to know that Selena Roberts doesn’t care.
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