LeftField

Fly Fishing in Left Field

By Matthew G. Cooke

Author Matt Cooke ponders the role of cheaters in baseball lore.

         After years of struggling with my crappy casting stroke, I have found a
way to improve it.
        I'm going to get juiced.
        That's right. A friend of mine has a connection with a veterinarian who is
willing to hook me up with some equine growth hormone. I'll get the junk and
then slam it into my thigh with a big-ass needle.
Soon I'll be making 500-foot casts with my five weight. Next fall, I'll be able to
wade West Virginia 's Gauley River when it flows at over 3,000 cubic feet per
second. My casting will be so accurate that I'll land #28 gnats inside of a
hummingbird's ear.
         Future anglers will tell great stories of me--of orcas fought on light tackle,
of my ability to tie 80 flies an hour, or how I had polarize eyes.
        Because that's what matters--the stories.
        And if the stories are good enough, they become myths.
Which is why baseball, and America , tolerate Barry Bonds.
We need the story of a cheater who broke sports' most sacred record.
What will we do if Bonds faces federal perjury charges? Probably nothing,
because that's the way we need the story to end.
Icarus cheated. He had the ability to fly out of Minos' prison, just like Bonds
had the ability to be among the greatest home run hitters. But like Bonds, he
went too far, wanted too much to be the only human with abilities that aren't
human.
       Baseball's dependence upon myth is also why Pete Rose is barred from
the Hall of Fame. Excommunicating a guy for gambling, despite a lack of proof
that he bet against his own team or that his gambling influenced the outcome
of a game, is a much better story than one about a guy with a bad hair cut who
worked hard, never took shortcuts, and did something as pedestrian as just
get hits night after night, for two and half decades. The same way that
generations of other Ohio Valley blue collar workers have gone to work in
plants and factories day after day, doing what's right and expected.
           Bonds is smarter than all that. No reason to put in the work if you don't
need to. Rather than be outraged with this thinking, we go along for the ride,
because deep in our minds, we know how this myth ends, with Bonds falling
like one of his home runs into McCovey Cove.
And if he isn't indicted on federal charges? Maybe it doesn't matter if we ever
know for certain if Bonds is a golden god or just a human who cheated.
Perhaps it's the ambiguity that makes the myth.
What matters is that I--the steroid-stoked fly fisherman--become myth. The
angler who never slipped while wading because felt grew on the soles of his
feet. You shall know me by the trail of dead trout.

--Matthew G. Cooke is a freelance writer and lover of fishing, The Herd, and all
things West Virginia.