Does Carmen feel bad for Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez and his PED usage? Indeed. Especially considering his juicing contributed to the early 2000's Texas Rangers franchise. Why anyone is outraged at MLBP using steroids is really beyond Carmen. Has anyone ever looked at the amount of 50+ HR players pre-1995 and compared that total to today? DID ANYONE SEE BARRY BONDS HIT 75 HOME RUNS AND DOUBLE IN BODY MASS AT 35 YOA? Carmen's sympathy, for both Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez and Mikey Phelps, doesn't stem from their humanizations in spite of the public's idolatry or their concessive apologizes, it stems from people thinking they can comprehend at all the reasons behind what Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez and Mikey Phelps do. Outside of a heavily marginalized, divinely talented percentage of the population, no one understands how these guys' minds work. So few people have undergone the types of physical, mental, experiential, and familial sacrifices public figures of this caliber have, sacrifices that amount to such divergent paths from the norm that speculation on their mental processes moves into the realm of the abstract. They have unlimited amounts of money, adoration, and universal acceptance and what do they desire: normality, escape, a strain of acceptance so high that we get into golden calf connotations, the apex of the like, that once reached one can only be dragged down by very same force that propelled his ascension. To say that Arod felt "pressured" or Michael Phelps just wanted to "unwind" doesn't even come close to what those two guys actually wanted. These mistakes are so far removed from the normal conception of wrongdoing that the lines of right and wrong cannot even be drawn. Carmen feels bad because the public and the media try to attach reasons to these very complex things, to reduce them and these larger-than-life characters to something less than they really are, when the real reason behind it all is the public and media itself, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Carmen read a story by David Foster Wallace yesterday titled, Good Old Neon, that demands a reorganization of his Top-5 short stories list:
1. Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace
2. Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
3. Emergency by Denis Johnson
4. Little Expressionless Animals by David Foster Wallace
5. The Secret Integration by Thomas Pynchon
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