Gary Sheffield=Pete Rose?

As you know, several days ago a deal involving Mike Cameron and Gary Sheffield was being discussed. During the day, Sheffield had an interview with WFAN New York, in which he basically warned the other 29 teams in the league that he can be a lot to handle. His tirade brought up talk of his history of being disgruntled throughout his career. While listening to the Mets pregame show later that day, Howie Rose brought something up that I had never heard before: Sheffield admitted to this announcer that he had purposely played poorly in an attempt to get himself traded. Everyone around baseball certainly knows Sheffield as being a selfish guy, but purposely playing poorly is no small thing.

Rose made the point that this is just as bad as Pete Rose (no relation to Howie that i know of) betting on baseball. Naturally, I was a bit surprised at first, considering that I had never even heard about Sheffield doing this until now. However, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that Howie Rose was completely right. The biggest problem with betting on baseball is that, if the person bets against his own team, he's going to try to play or manage worse to try to win that bet. Although Rose denies betting against the Reds as a manager (this is when he was betting), I don't believe him, especially after lying about betting on baseball for about 14 years. On days that he bet against the Reds, it's logical to think that he would purposely make worse decisions in order to win his bet. Looking at what Sheffield did, he played worse to get what he wanted: a trade out of Milwaukee. In both cases, the person (either Rose or Sheffield) sacrificed their team's chance to win because of selfishness.

As we all know, Sheffield isn't exactly the number one nice guy in baseball. It seems that he always finds away to get into contract disputes with his team and is constantly seeking a trade (or, in the most recent case, denouncing any trade involving him). Not to mention, he got a complete free pass during the debates on steroids this off-season. Because his name was linked with BALCO and he is still one of the best hitters in the game though getting old, he should've been one of the main players on which the talks were centered. However, he recieved almost no attention during the talks. If you don't remember, several weeks before the whole BALCO thing boiled over, Sheffield did an interview with ESPN, saying that he unknowingly took steroids; he said that his trainer told him it was arthritis cream and that he trusted his trainer. First of all, this is nonsense. He wouldn't take something without knowing what it was. Second of all, this is basically the same thing that Barry Bonds told the court in San Francisco. While Bonds was the complete center of the steroid debate, Sheffield got no flak. I'm not trying to make Bonds out to be innocent. In fact, I dislike him the most out of all the steroid guys. However, the fact that Sheffield and Bonds admitted to the exact same thing and only one of them got flak for it seems silly, doesn't it?

While with the Yankees, Sheffield has been decently quiet with the exception of the interview. However, it's time that we identify him as being in the same class as the Barry Bonds' and the Mark McGwire's of baseball. After all, that's where he belongs.
-Adam

Sheffield, as a Dodger, with Bonds. Sheffield said that it was Bonds who got him involved with BALCO.

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(Note: this will be my last post until Wednesday at the earliest)