2008 Woodie Awards
The Sports Pile: Yankee candy ban
Will Brinson
Issue date: 4/29/08 Section: Sports
Jones' manager is, ironically, Joe Torre, the man that Joe Girardi replaced in the New York Yankee clubhouse. Torre apparently has little care for what Andruw Jones actually puts into his body, in terms of food. Now, I do not necessarily think that whatever Andruw is eating at the ballpark is causing him to balloon up that quickly; obviously he has not been watching his weight too carefully at home either, otherwise he couldn't have porked up as quickly as he did.
But there's something to the notion of keeping the workplace clean and how it translates to keeping the house clean. And even if professional baseball players are highly trained and (usually) focused athletes, and even if they are grown men who know all about responsibility, that does not mean that they don't deserve a little accountability at the office. We are talking about the same group of men who, collectively, we just found were abusing steroids and performance enhancing drugs at a rapid and record pace, nearly culminating in the destruction of baseball.
And before you point out that the above statement is hyperbole, remember that if we (as in America) didn't love the sport so much, we might not have so easily ignored everything that happened on Capitol Hill. And while, no, junk food is not as bad performance enhancing drugs-not by a long shot-it's the same principle of accountability in the workplace. For so long, professional athletes, because they are millionaires who often control their own destiny, playing time and salaries, have had nearly zero personal accountability within the workplace. Sure, they have teammates that check up on them and watch their back, and yeah, ownership and management is concerned about their behavior. But I think that Girardi's decision to ban candy and ice cream from the Yankees clubhouse speaks more to this lack of accountability then it does to simply not wanting to allow professional athletes access to a bunch of sweets and sugary treats. And maybe you think I'm really stretching it to make that connection, but just remember that the Dodgers and Yankees are two of the five heaviest (or fattest, as it were) teams in all of baseball.
When one of them wins a (recent) championship without purging the candy and the ice cream from their systems, then maybe I'll concede that I was wrong about the need to keep the clubhouse clean. Okay, probably not. But I am looking forward to the Yankees actually being in good enough shape to not fold to the Red Sox once October rolls around. Wait and see. Girardi and I are going to be right about that whole candy thing just yet.
But there's something to the notion of keeping the workplace clean and how it translates to keeping the house clean. And even if professional baseball players are highly trained and (usually) focused athletes, and even if they are grown men who know all about responsibility, that does not mean that they don't deserve a little accountability at the office. We are talking about the same group of men who, collectively, we just found were abusing steroids and performance enhancing drugs at a rapid and record pace, nearly culminating in the destruction of baseball.
And before you point out that the above statement is hyperbole, remember that if we (as in America) didn't love the sport so much, we might not have so easily ignored everything that happened on Capitol Hill. And while, no, junk food is not as bad performance enhancing drugs-not by a long shot-it's the same principle of accountability in the workplace. For so long, professional athletes, because they are millionaires who often control their own destiny, playing time and salaries, have had nearly zero personal accountability within the workplace. Sure, they have teammates that check up on them and watch their back, and yeah, ownership and management is concerned about their behavior. But I think that Girardi's decision to ban candy and ice cream from the Yankees clubhouse speaks more to this lack of accountability then it does to simply not wanting to allow professional athletes access to a bunch of sweets and sugary treats. And maybe you think I'm really stretching it to make that connection, but just remember that the Dodgers and Yankees are two of the five heaviest (or fattest, as it were) teams in all of baseball.
When one of them wins a (recent) championship without purging the candy and the ice cream from their systems, then maybe I'll concede that I was wrong about the need to keep the clubhouse clean. Okay, probably not. But I am looking forward to the Yankees actually being in good enough shape to not fold to the Red Sox once October rolls around. Wait and see. Girardi and I are going to be right about that whole candy thing just yet.
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Steve "Bertie" Berthiaume
posted 5/13/08 @ 6:23 PM EST
The flip side is that many sluggers both in pro baseball and amateur baseball (softball too, in my experience) have tended to be overweight and studies have shown that by comparison their leaner brothers didn't hit as well. (Continued…)
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