Pyle of List

Let me start off by saying that I couldn’t give two handfuls of monkey crap about steroids in baseball. Oh, so you injected yourself with juice to hit the ball further? Good! Keep going. I love watching long balls, so if this stuff will make that happen more often, and make the balls fly further, I don’t care if you’re injecting the blood of nubile virgins into your ass, just keep hitting home runs. I’ll give you baseball players some advice that was once given to me: “at the end of the day, you’re nothing more than a dancing clown. So dance, clown, dance.”

But I had a good chuckle of some of the names that appeared on the report. No, I’m not talking about the Clemens’ and the Tejada’s of the world, I’m talking about the career B List-ers that I haven’t thought about since I determined their baseball cards weren’t worth saving, and promptly used them for practice as I perfected my Gambit card throwing ability. Here are my 10 favorites:

10. Jeremy Giambi - What’s worse than being the underachieving little brother of a steroid abusing MVP? Using steroids yourself and still being the underachieving younger brother of the a steroid abusing MVP. But he did go to Cal State Fullerton, which is close to me. Go Titans!

Career Highlight: Not sliding into home and getting called out on the now infamous “Derek Jeter Flip Play” in the 2001 Division Series.

9. Glenallen Hill - I only remember Glenallen because he played for the Angels for a little bit. A career .271 hitter, Hill was best known for not being able to catch a ball. Glenallen is the perfect example of why they should think twice about calling them ‘performance ENHANCING drugs’.

Career Highlight: Was the first NL player to be a DH in an interleague game.

8. Mo Vaughn - Maurice Samuel Vaughn was a big fat oaf who hit well for like three seasons. Yet another MVP on Mitchell’s list, Vaughn might be the ultimate outline for picking steroid users out of a crowd: be a good, big power hitter for less than 5 years, have a sudden drop off in production, have body fall apart. It’s a pretty easy patter to spot (see: Giambi, Jason).

Career Highlight: 1995 AL MVP. Also terrorized Tokyo many times.

7. Randy Velarde - I don’t know why, but Randy Velarde is the embodiment of 90’s baseball to me. Mediocre white guy that always seemed to have a job waiting for him. Oh, and he took steroids. And why do so many of these guys seem to have passed the Angel’s organization at one point or another?

Career Highlight: On May 29, 2000, Velarde turned an unassisted triple play, just the 11th in Major League history.

6. Denny Neagle - I remember Denny because my grandmother was a huge Atlanta Braves fan, and he joined that ship in the middle of it’s dominating run through the national league. Let’s take a look at Denny’s career arc: 1996-1998 pretty good pitcher. 1999 only made 19 starts due to injuries. 2000 shaky performance at best. 2001 wheels fall off wagon. Looks like our formula works for pitchers too. But don’t worry about ‘ol Denny, I hear he’s got a chain of restaurants that are a real ‘Grand Slam’!

Career Highlight: Neagle was known to teammates and the media for his playfulness, which included the ability (and compulsion) to imitate the “choo, choo” sound of a train.

5. Todd Hundley - Man, when I saw Hundley’s name I said ‘oh yeah, Todd Hundley…’ and then chuckled to myself. He was the guy that caught for the Mets before Piazza got there. To be fair, I just think Todd had too much pressure from coming up to the Bigs at such a young age (20 years old). But I’m also sure the boozing and smoking didn’t help undo the damage steroids were doing to his body. He did set the Major League Baseball record for most home runs in a single season by a catcher (41). Unfortunately it was later broken by Javy Lopez (who probably juiced too).

Career Highlight: As a member of the Chicago Cubs, Todd flipped the bird to fans while rounding the bases after hitting a home run.

4. Benito Santiago - Was it just me, or did every pack of baseball cards have a Benito Santiago in it? Really though, Benito was a surprise, as I never thought of him as a great power hitter. But I guess he channeled his roids into his uncanny ability to throw out runners from his knees, setting a great example for lazy fat kids in little leagues all around the nation.

Career Highlight: Played for 9 different teams (San Diego, Florida, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco, Kansas City, Pittsburgh) over 19 seasons (1986-2005)

3. John Rocker - Nothing like watching a true a-hole get chopped down to size. I bet John wishes he hadn’t said those mean things now! Actually, I bet he just wishes he could travel back in time to stop the South from surrendering. Or perhaps just saving a little bit of that fat MLB paycheck for these “thin days”. Another formula follower (good from 98-00, then basically died off), Rocker probably could care less about what I think because I’m from “Hollyweird” and “am probably some sort of homo”.

Career Highlight: Made his screen-acting debut in the 2002 horror comedy The Greenskeeper as a murderous golf-club groundskeeper.

2. Kevin Brown - As if Kevin Brown’s career wasn’t already a big enough joke. Now even the few dominant years he had will be tainted by the steroid brush. But I bet the Yankees would still give him a huge contract. (Note: I was going to use Lenny Dykstra in the two spot, but I’m afraid of him finding me and punching me in the face.)

Career Highlight: Lead the NL in ERA twice (1996, 2000)

1. Wally Joyner - I swear, I could be standing over a family members grave, weeping like a child during their funeral, and you could walk up to me and whisper the name ‘Wally Joyner’ into my ear and I would break out in laughter. For some reason, no baseball player reference is funnier to me than that of Wally Joyner. I’m seriously having trouble writing about him because I’m laughing too hard as I do this.

Career Highlight: Was Wally fucking Joyner!