I had the topic. I had the opinion. I even had the outline in my head. Normally that’s enough to sit down and put something together.

But when I got to the point where I would actually publish it, something felt off. The excitement wasn’t there.

Not because the topic wasn’t interesting to me. It still is.

What stopped me was something else entirely. The realization that even the places that once felt quiet now feel crowded.

Substack used to feel like a refuge from the rest of the internet. A place where people wrote longer thoughts and didn’t seem to be chasing the same attention economy that drives everything else.

Now it feels different.

Not bad. Just louder.

You can almost feel the volume of voices. Everyone has something to say. Everyone is building an audience. Everyone is trying to be heard.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just the natural gravity of the internet. Every platform eventually fills with people wanting attention.

But standing in the middle of that realization, I found myself asking a strange question.

Do I actually want to add another voice to the room?

That hesitation surprised me.

Because the truth is I enjoy thinking through ideas and writing them down. I’m not trying to be a content creator. That phrase alone makes me tired. I’m not trying to build a machine that constantly feeds posts into the world.

What interests me is something simpler.

Occasionally sharing a thought that has been sitting in my mind. Something I’ve noticed about baseball, business, culture, or life.

Maybe someone reads it. Maybe they don’t.

But even that simple impulse has started to feel heavier lately.

I spend most of my professional life in business development in the medical device world. It’s serious work, highly regulated, and full of people who are trying to build things that actually matter. But even there I’ve noticed how much of modern professional life has shifted toward visibility.

Every conference seems to generate a flood of selfies. Every announcement becomes a moment of personal branding. It often feels like people are documenting their work more than actually doing it.

Social media amplifies that dynamic.

Everyone is encouraged to stay visible. Post often. Share everything. Build your brand.

After a while it becomes exhausting.

And strangely, that exhaustion has started to show up in places I didn’t expect.

Even baseball.

Normally this time of year I feel a certain energy as the season approaches. But this year I’m not even sure I’m looking forward to it in the same way.

Not because I love the game any less.

Because of everything surrounding it.

Sports talk radio never stops. Every day demands another take. Another argument. Another prediction.

Major League Baseball tries to sell the game back to us through carefully packaged nostalgia. Throwback uniforms. heritage promotions. themed nights designed to make us feel something about the past.

But nostalgia doesn’t work that way.

The moments that stay with you from baseball were never scheduled by a marketing department. They happened quietly.

A late night game on the radio.
A box score in the morning paper.
A summer evening at the park that didn’t feel like an event because it was simply part of life.

Those moments weren’t trying to grab your attention.

They just existed.

The more I see nostalgia packaged and promoted, the more I realize how much I miss the accidental kind.

Maybe that’s part of why I hesitated to post this.

Because even writing about these things can start to feel like participating in the same noise I’m trying to step away from.

And yet the thought keeps sitting there.

Not as a hot take. Not as something that needs an audience.

Just as an observation about the moment we’re living in.

We are surrounded by more voices than ever before. More commentary, more opinions, more people broadcasting themselves.

At some point the natural response isn’t to shout louder.

It’s to pause.

That’s probably where I am right now.

Still thinking about baseball. Still noticing things about culture and work and the strange way everything now seems to demand attention.

But maybe speaking a little less.

Sometimes the most honest thing you can do in a loud room is simply stand still and notice how loud it has become.

I went from Franco to Mel Hall, Yasiel Puig, Esteban Loaiza, John Rocker, Josh Hamilton, Lyman Bostock, Chad Curtis, Roberto Alomar, Tony La Russa, the Pittsburgh Drug Trials, the exploitation pipeline in Latin America, Trevor Bauer, Roberto Osuna, Aroldis Chapman, youth baseball, Lenny Dykstra, Julio Machado, Jose Canseco, even the Yankee wife swap, Donnie Moore, umpire egos, Thurman Munson’s crash, and the cleat chaser culture. I didn’t map this out. I just kept following my own fucked up curiosity about the dark corners of this game.

What I learned is that baseball is never as clean as the highlight reels or the nostalgia make it out to be. It’s not just numbers, pennants, and Cooperstown speeches. It’s a game built and run by human beings, which means it’s messy. There are predators, addicts, liars, frauds, cheats, and egomaniacs. There is also pain, loss, tragedy, and silence. I thought I was chasing scandal. What I actually found was the reminder that this game is a mirror. The same shit that runs through America runs through baseball. Racism. Exploitation. Ego. Corruption. Violence. Greed.

And here’s the part that hit me the hardest. It’s not just the players or the managers or the umps or the league. It’s me too. I sat in Wrigley and cheered Chapman even though I knew his story. I ate up the steroid era even though the truth was obvious. I have been complicit in the silence because I wanted the magic more than I wanted the truth. That was a hard fucking thing to admit.

This season of The Dark Side of the Diamond was about facing that. Not to cancel guys. Not to moralize. But to stop pretending the game is pure when it never has been. If I say I love baseball, then I have to love all of it, even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.

So, this is where I leave it. I told the stories I needed to tell. I followed the trail until it went cold. I don’t know if baseball is better for dragging this shit into the light, but I know I am. I understand more about the game I grew up with and why it still gets under my skin.

Next season, I’ll move on to something else. Something new will spark my curiosity, and I’ll chase it. That’s how I work. That’s how Baseball Buddha works.

Thank you for reading, for sitting with me through the uncomfortable, for not looking away when the stories got heavy. Baseball is a beautiful game. But it’s never been perfect. And maybe that’s why I love it even more.

I interviewed them that day and wrote a story with the title Cleat Chasers. At the time, I had a rule that I would not post something unless the people I talked to approved it first. This time I skipped that step. I thought it was a good piece. I didn’t demean them, I just wrote what they told me. But when I posted it, a shit storm broke out. They felt I hadn’t portrayed them properly, and even though they knew they were on the record, they didn’t like how it landed. I took the post down. That was my first real lesson in how raw, messy, and complicated this subject can be.

Cleat chasing is not just a funny phrase, it is a subculture around baseball. Players know it. Fans whisper about it. Writers sometimes poke at it but rarely dig too deep because it gets uncomfortable. Baseball sells family and wholesomeness, but the road life is a different story. Night after night in hotels and bars across America, players are chased by a certain kind of fan, people who are not there for the game but for the players.

In the seventies and eighties, players talked about hotel lobbies filled with women waiting to latch onto rookies and veterans alike. By the nineties the slang stuck, cleat chasers. Some even kept scorebooks of who they had been with, treating players like stats on a card. It wasn’t always dangerous, but sometimes it was. Players got drugged and robbed. Pregnancies turned into lawsuits. Obsessions crossed into stalking. Eddie Waitkus nearly died in 1949 when a fan lured him to a hotel room and shot him. That was not called cleat chasing then, but it was the same energy.

Even the legends fed the culture. Mark Grace of the Cubs joked about his slump busters, sleeping with less attractive women to break out of hitting slumps. Derek Jeter was rumored to hand out gift baskets after one night stands. The 1986 Mets, fueled by cocaine and chaos, bragged about sneaking women into the clubhouse during games. Lenny Dykstra, Jose Canseco, David Wells, they all admitted it. Some laughed about it. Others spiraled into addictions and broken marriages because of it.

The dark side here is not just sex. It is power, obsession, and the way baseball’s road life feeds both. The long season, the endless travel, the loneliness of hotel rooms, it all creates a vacuum that cleat chasers fill. Sometimes it is harmless fun. Other times it turns psycho.

That day in Fort Myers, I thought I had stumbled onto a quirky little story about college baseball culture. What I did not realize then was that I was brushing up against one of baseball’s open secrets. Cleat chasing has always been part of the game. Baseball just does not like to talk about it.

I have his 1978 Topps card, number 60. That set is the only complete collection I own, and Munson’s card stands out every time I look at it. He looks tough, like a man who had carried his team through battles. I didn’t know much about leadership back then, but I could tell he was different.

When I heard Munson died in a plane crash, I couldn’t make sense of it. He was 32 years old. He had bought a Cessna Citation jet so he could fly himself home to his family in Ohio between games, trying to be both a captain and a present father. On August 2, 1979, while practicing landings at Akron-Canton Airport, he clipped a tree and the jet went down short of the runway. His two passengers survived. He didn’t.

The Yankees held a memorial the next day. Bobby Murcer gave the eulogy in the morning, then drove in the winning runs that night against the Orioles. Even Reggie Jackson, who clashed with Munson constantly, broke down in tears. The team left Munson’s locker untouched for years, a shrine to the captain they lost.

What makes it even heavier is that the year before, in 1978, Lyman Bostock was murdered in Gary, Indiana at only 27. Two players gone in back-to-back years. I have both of their cards in that ’78 Topps set. I remember staring at them, side by side, trying to process how men who looked so alive on cardboard could already be gone in real life. That was when I started to understand mortality. Baseball wasn’t just a game anymore. It was a reminder of how fragile life is.

Munson’s number 15 is retired. His statue is in Monument Park. Fans still chant his name. But for me, he will always be tied to that 1978 Topps set, the only collection I have. The cards taught me about the game. Munson’s and Bostock’s cards taught me about loss.

Bill Klem, the most famous early umpire, once said, “It ain’t nothin’ till I call it.” That was not a joke. It was a philosophy. Nothing was real until he declared it so. That authority made the game unpredictable. A pitcher might get a wide zone one night and have to beg for the corners the next. Hitters had to learn the umpire as much as the guy on the mound. Managers studied tendencies and tried to use them to their advantage. In its best form, it was strategy. Another level of the cat and mouse.

I fucking loved that part of the game. The quirks, the personalities, the way players had to adapt. It gave baseball texture. Some nights the ump gave a pitcher two inches off the plate and the offense had no chance. Other nights hitters stood there grinning as those same pitches were called balls. That tension was part of what made the game alive.

But power like that always rots. Earl Weaver made a career of calling out umpires, and they turned it into a sport of their own. Some admitted they baited him, poking the bear just so they could toss him out. That is not order. That is humiliation. That is ego running the show.

Players had to live under that same shadow. Roberto Alomar spit in John Hirschbeck’s face in 1996 after a called third strike. Alomar deserved the suspension, but Hirschbeck had a reputation for carrying grudges and antagonizing players. Alomar snapped. Fans remember the spit, but they forget the poison that came before it.

Go back to the integration years and the story gets uglier. Larry Doby and Monte Irvin lived through strike zones that mysteriously shifted. Close calls at the plate seemed to lean against them. It was another way to remind them that they were outsiders. Racism was baked into the game, not just in the stands, but behind the mask. That was not human error. That was deliberate. That was bullshit.

By the 1970s the umpire union under Richie Phillips made accountability a fantasy. Bad umps were untouchable. Players and managers could scream, the press could write, fans could boo, it did not matter. The fortress was too strong. It only cracked in 1999 when twenty two umpires tried to resign in a stunt and expected to be rehired. MLB finally called their bluff. For once the power flipped. But the damage had been festering for decades.

Technology came along and exposed it all. Replay and strike zone boxes stripped away the myth. Fans could see the truth on every pitch. No more pretending. Yet even with the world watching, the culture of protection still lingered.

Then there was fucking Ángel Hernández comes in. For years he was the face of the problem. His strike zone was a roulette wheel. Sometimes he gave pitchers six inches off the plate. Other times he squeezed them until they had no chance, forcing them to groove the ball down the middle. Hitters wanted to swing at everything because they knew a borderline pitch might be called a strike. Pitchers hated him just as much because they never knew if a perfect pitch at the knees would get the call. Nobody left happy. Hernández managed to infuriate both sides of the matchup.

And yet here is the contradiction. I liked watching it. Games with fucking Hernández had an edge. You knew it was not going to be clean. You knew tempers would flare. You knew someone was going to lose it. He made players swing the bat. He made pitchers throw with anger. He made fans grind their teeth. It was chaos, but it was alive. That kind of unpredictability has mostly been erased by technology.

That is the paradox of umpiring. The same unchecked authority that led to racism, vendettas, and arrogance also made baseball unforgettable. I miss some of that chaos. I miss the shouting matches. I miss managers kicking dirt on the plate. I miss the games where everyone knew they had to beat the other team and beat the umpire too.

The dark side of the umpire power complex is that the game asked us to treat unfairness as part of its charm. Sometimes that was true. The human element gave baseball grit and drama. But there was nothing charming about racism. There was nothing charming about a career cut short because an umpire decided to squeeze the strike zone. There was nothing charming about a playoff game turned on a call that replay would have fixed in seconds. That was not romance. That was corruption.

I can admit both things at once. The system was flawed, sometimes cruel, and at its worst, it reeked of bias and ego. But it also made baseball raw, unpredictable, and human. The truth hiding behind the mask is that the game was never as fair as we pretended. It was messy. It was corrupt. It was alive. And that made it unforgettable.

That is why October 1986 stands out. The Angels were on the verge of their first World Series. They had Boston down, two outs, two strikes. Donnie Moore was on the mound, one pitch away from history. He threw a splitter and Dave Henderson drove it into the seats. The Angels fell apart after that. They lost the game, then the series.

From that point on, the story started to write itself. Writers focused on that one moment. Fans remembered the swing every October when the replay came on. It became “the pitch” that defined Donnie Moore. Baseball has always loved those kinds of moments. Bill Buckner had the ground ball. Dennis Eckersley had Kirk Gibson. Those clips live forever.

The difference was in what came next. Eckersley owned his failure, kept pitching, and turned himself into a Hall of Famer. Buckner lived with the boos for years, but he walked back onto Fenway’s grass in the end and heard the cheers. Moore never found peace. He pitched three more seasons, but injuries piled up and the weight of the home run seemed to follow him everywhere. The more people told the story of that one pitch, the more the rest of his career disappeared.

By 1989 Moore was out of the game. He was living with shoulder pain, money problems, and depression. On July 18, his story turned tragic. In an argument with his wife, he pulled a gun and shot her in front of their children. She survived. He went into another room and took his own life. He was thirty-five.

The headlines almost wrote themselves. Reporters tied it back to 1986. They said the home run haunted him, that he never got over it. The narrative was tidy. One pitch had ruined his life.

I do not believe that is the truth. Henderson’s home run did not cause what happened three years later. The tragedy grew out of years of pain, silence, and struggle. Depression, violence, and the lack of support for players were all part of it. The “one pitch” story was easier to tell. It gave people a way to avoid facing the harder reality.

That is the part that mirrors life outside of baseball. We pin people to one mistake and pretend that explains everything else. It is easier to believe Moore was destroyed by one swing of the bat than to admit how complicated people really are. It is easier to tell a neat story than to deal with the messy truth.

What Moore did in the end was horrific and it hurt the people closest to him. That cannot be excused. But it also cannot be reduced to a single pitch. The dark side here is not just Donnie Moore. It is the way we cling to the simplest story when the truth is heavier. Henderson’s home run was one pitch. The tragedy that followed was a reflection of something much larger.

In 1973, Yankees pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were more than teammates. They were best friends and neighbors. Their families did everything together. Cookouts, vacations, kids playing side by side. Then they did something I still can’t believe they announced publicly. They swapped families. Wives, kids, houses, dogs, cars. And they didn’t keep it quiet. They held a press conference and told the media like it was just another roster move.

Surprised but then again people are people. I might not get how others want to live their lives, but it isn’t my business. I don’t care what anyone does in their personal life. What fascinates me is the psychology of it. This kind of thing is far outside my comfort zone, which is exactly why I find it interesting. I’ve only ever met one person who admitted to swinging with another couple, and that stuck with me. I’m vanilla, maybe naïve, but curious. So, when I read about two Yankees trading families and then announcing it to the press, I wanted to understand what could possibly drive them to that point.

And here is what really makes it stand out. Porn is everywhere today. People talk openly about sex, about what they consume and what they do. The filters are off. Nothing seems shocking. Yet this story still surprises me. Maybe because it was so public. Maybe because they weren’t just fooling around, they were restructuring their entire lives and dragging their kids and homes into it. Or maybe because they stood in front of the New York press and acted like this was just something people do.

The early 1970s matter here. America was still carrying the counterculture of the 1960s. Free love had moved from communes into the suburbs. Key parties, open marriages, swinging. Hollywood even turned it into comedy with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Kekich and Peterson weren’t radicals. They were Yankee pitchers in New Jersey. But they got caught in that current and pushed it further than most.

And in a way they invented a reality show before reality TV. They were thirty years ahead of Wife Swap. The only difference is they didn’t need producers or prize money. They just blew up their lives and told the press about it.

The fallout was brutal. Peterson’s side of the swap lasted. He married Susanne Kekich, and they stayed together for decades. Kekich’s side fell apart almost immediately. He lost his wife, his best friend, and his reputation. Fans heckled both of them. The media shredded them. Teammates wanted nothing to do with it. Peterson had won 20 games in 1970, but that was erased. All anyone remembers is the swap. Kekich never recovered.

This wasn’t a crime. Nobody broke the rules of baseball. But it is one of the strangest stories in the game’s history. Baseball always mirrors American culture. The 1910s had gamblers and fixers. The 1980s had cocaine. The 1990s had steroids. The 1970s had swinging and free love. And the Yankees ended up with the strangest trade in sports.

That is why this belongs in Dark Side Light. It is not tragic. It is not criminal. But it is human, messy, and absurd. Even today, in a world where porn is casual, sex is public, and nothing seems to shock, this still does. This is a What the Fuck type story…

Canseco could launch a ball into another time zone. McGwire wasn’t far behind. They looked like pro wrestlers taking BP, and we ate it up. Every towering shot was a middle finger to the pitcher and a love letter to the fans. We didn’t want line drives. We wanted moonshots. And then, years later, Canseco decides to nuke the whole fucking thing. He writes Juiced and drops names like he’s emptying a clip. McGwire. A-Rod. Palmeiro. And yeah, Barry Bonds didn’t need to be in the book because he was already the elephant in the room.

Bonds was the guy who saw McGwire and Sosa get their savior of baseball coronation in ’98 and thought, “Fuck this, I’m going to be bigger, stronger, and better than all of them.” And he was. In 2001, Bonds hit like he had unlocked God Mode. But don’t give me that “maybe it was flaxseed oil” bullshit. That power came with a needle in the arm.

And here’s where the fans come in. The same people clutching their pearls when the steroid story broke were the ones on their feet every time a ball sailed into the upper deck. The same fans who pretend they were betrayed were the ones buying the jerseys, the posters, the tickets, and the fucking video games. Everyone wanted the spectacle. We just wanted to feel like baseball was superhuman again. And when it was, we didn’t ask too many questions.

That includes me. I was all in. I watched every second of it. I loved it. I cheered for the freak show. I didn’t care if it was natural, synthetic, or brewed in some underground lab in the Dominican. I just wanted the next blast over the fence. I was part of the machine. I was a willing accomplice to the lie. And if I’m being honest, I’d probably watch it again.

And then there’s Bud Selig. The commissioner who made a career out of acting like he had no idea what was going on. Spare me. Selig saw the strike in ’94 almost kill the game. He saw the empty seats, the TV ratings circling the drain. Then came McGwire and Sosa in ’98, hitting bombs like they were swinging telephone poles. The crowds came back. The money rolled in. And Bud? Bud kept his mouth shut and his hands out. He rode that steroid wave all the way to Cooperstown, then had the audacity to stand there and pretend he was blindsided by the “shocking revelations” in the Mitchell Report. That’s not leadership. That’s complicity.

The real con was MLB acting surprised. They weren’t shocked. They knew. The owners knew. The managers knew. The trainers knew. The commissioner fucking knew. This wasn’t a scandal, it was a business plan. Fans lined up at the gates, jerseys flew off the shelves, and TV ratings soared. Baseball didn’t just allow steroids. Baseball begged for them. They built the fucking shrine and prayed for more home runs.

Canseco wasn’t trying to save the game. He wasn’t some martyr for the truth. He did it because it suited him. Because it kept him relevant. Because watching the baseball establishment squirm probably felt as good as hitting one 450 feet. And the thing is, he was right. About almost everyone. That’s what pisses people off the most.

That bat I’ve got from the Sports Illustrated cover is more than a piece of memorabilia. It’s a reminder that the steroid era wasn’t an accident. It was the game at its most raw and most exposed. Power. Ego. Greed. And yeah, fucking hypocrisy. MLB loved it. The players loved it. The fans fucking loved it too. And I was right there in the middle of it, cheering like it was pure. It wasn’t pure. It was perfect.

You don’t have to like Canseco. I’m not even sure I do. But if you want the truth about the dark side of the diamond, you start with him. Because sometimes the only way to see the rot is when someone lights the whole fucking house on fire.

Oh yeah… Julio Machado.

He pitched for the Brewers back in the early '90s. Not long. Just a season and a half or so. A middle reliever. Sidearm. A little funky. I couldn’t tell you his ERA, but I can picture him. Thin build, wiry energy, hair curling out under the cap. He had that look. The kind of pitcher you weren’t sure was completely in control, but somehow that made him interesting.

I don’t remember him dominating. I don’t remember any signature moment. I just remember him being there. A name I saw on a box score. A guy who jogged out of the bullpen when the Brewers were up by two or down by five.

Then he was gone.

And that’s what makes his story one of those “wait, what happened to that guy?” situations. Because what happened next wasn’t Tommy John surgery or a trade to Japan. In the winter of 1991, Julio Machado shot and killed a man in Venezuela.

That’s the part that makes you sit up. Makes you double-check Wikipedia just to make sure your memory isn’t playing tricks.

The details are murky. Something about a traffic incident, a confrontation, and then a gun. Venezuelan authorities charged him with murder. He claimed it was self-defense. He was convicted and sentenced. And that was that.

Except it wasn’t. A few years later, he was pitching again in the Venezuelan leagues. Quietly. No headlines. No comeback tour. Just back on the mound.

It’s one of those stories that sticks not because it was sensationalized, but because it wasn’t. No ESPN special. No angry think pieces. He just vanished from MLB, served his time, and reappeared in a box score somewhere far away.

And now, decades later, his name pops back into my head. Not with outrage. Just with that quiet sense of wonder. Oh yeah… Julio Machado.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. Maybe nothing. Maybe that’s the whole point of this series. To hold space for the strange, the forgotten, the complicated. Not to judge. Not to rewrite. Just to remember.

Because baseball is full of these guys. Not just legends and villains, but names that drift back to you when you least expect them. Names with strange footnotes and unresolved endings. Names like Julio Machado.

He wasn’t a star. He wasn’t a bust. He was just there. And then he wasn’t. And then maybe, quietly, he still was.

He was electric. He was dirty. He was the guy who didn’t look like much getting off the bus, but once he stepped on the field, he played like his life depended on it. They called him “Nails” for a reason. Tough as. Sharp as. And just as likely to leave you bleeding.

Dykstra broke in with the Mets in ’85, that gritty, brawling Mets team that was half baseball roster, half biker gang. He wasn’t the biggest name on that team, but he was the guy who made things happen. Hustle doubles. Clutch hits. That walk-off bomb in the ’86 NLCS, I can still see him skipping around the bases like he owned the world.

After the Mets, he ended up in Philly. That’s where he became a legend. The 1993 Phillies were a beer-league team in MLB uniforms. They looked like hell and played like they liked it that way. Dykstra was the heartbeat. That season, he led the league in hits, runs, walks, and plate appearances. He nearly won MVP. He was everything Philly wanted in a ballplayer: raw, reckless, relentless.

And yeah, he was juiced to the gills.

He later admitted it. HGH. Steroids. Amphetamines. You name it. He said he’d do anything to get an edge. Even filed his teeth at one point, like some kind of psycho gladiator. He played with cracked ribs, broken fingers, a collapsed lung once. All of it fueled by a cocktail of painkillers, ‘roids, and god knows what else.

The thing is, I admired it. That’s the part that’s hard to admit. I knew it was insane, but part of me loved that he didn’t give a damn about “playing the right way.” He was Nails. The guy who spit in the eye of polite baseball and dared anyone to stop him.

But off the field?

It turned dark. Real dark.

After retirement, Dykstra tried to become some Wall Street tycoon, positioned himself as this savant investor to pro athletes. Had a glossy magazine. Claimed he was mentoring players on how to stay rich after baseball.

It was all smoke. He was running a hustle.

By 2009, he’d filed for bankruptcy, claiming over $30 million in debt. That opened the door to the rest: bankruptcy fraud, grand theft auto, identity theft, drug charges, witness intimidation. In 2012, he was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing false financial statements. Just before that, he also served time for federal bankruptcy fraud, he hidden, destroyed, and sold assets he was supposed to disclose.

By then, Nails was just Lenny again. The ego was still there, but the myth had rotted out. He did his time. Got out. Wrote a book. Claimed to have dirt on everyone. Said he had private investigators tracking umpires during his playing days so he could manipulate the strike zone.

Is any of it true? Who knows. At this point, the truth and the myth are so tangled, it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

But here’s what I know, Lenny Dykstra was one of the most exciting players I’ve ever watched. He turned every at-bat into a war. Every basepath into a minefield. He didn’t play baseball. He attacked it.

And then he attacked everything else.

That same drive that made him so magnetic, it ate him alive. It wasn’t just a chip on his shoulder. It was a full-blown complex. He thought the rules didn’t apply to him, and for a while, they didn’t. Until they did.

You want to believe guys like that will figure it out. You want to believe there's redemption in the end. But I’m not sure Dykstra ever stopped believing in the myth of himself long enough to see the wreckage he left behind.

I still think about that 1993 season. The raw joy of watching a guy like him dominate. The swagger. The crooked smile. The kind of baseball that felt like it might explode at any second.

But I also think about the mugshot. The court appearances. The stories that went too far.

There’s a reason it’s called the dark side of the diamond. Because sometimes the same fire that lights up the field burns everything else down.

When I grew up, there was Little League baseball. That was it. No travel teams, no national showcases, no private coaches. Just a handful of teams, a dusty field, and a bunch of kids figuring it out with what we had.

Parents came to the games, but they weren’t exactly locked in. They brought lawn chairs, knocked back a couple beers, and mostly laughed at us while we tried to look like serious ballplayers. We thought we were battling for the pennant. They thought they were watching community theater with uniforms.

The coaches were just dads who said yes when nobody else wanted the job. Most didn’t know the game beyond what they remembered from sandlot days or watching the Brewers on TV. No one was running drills from a manual. You hit, you ran, you wore the catcher’s gear if it was your turn. That was the system.

If you were halfway decent, you made the All-Star team. That was the big deal, the one shot to keep the season going. Ashland Little League might win a game or two, but that was about it. We didn’t make it out of the state regional qualifiers. You lost, and you were done. A little heartbreak. Maybe a tear or two. Then it ended.

Baseball season wrapped up by mid-July. And after that, there was nothing organized. So, we made our own games.

We played “fence ball” at the Little League Park. Just a couple kids, a baseball, and one aluminum bat we all shared. One kid pitched, one hit, one chased balls in the outfield. We made up rules as we went. You got points for hitting the fence. If someone caught it, you were out. No umpires, no coaches, no parents, just us, figuring it out on our own.

Now? Baseball never stops. It’s year-round. Fall ball, winter camps, spring training, summer showcases. It’s a schedule, a plan, a strategy. It’s a job. Parents drop thousands every year chasing development and exposure. Everyone’s looking for an edge for the next step.

And the kids? Some of them love it. But a lot of them burn out. You can see it in their faces. The joy gets drained out before they even hit high school.

We weren’t elite. We weren’t being scouted. We were just kids, making bad throws, dropping pop-ups, laughing too loud in the dugout, and hoping someone brought Big League Chew.

That version of the game? I miss it. It didn’t ask you to be great. It just asked you to show up.

And if you were lucky, you got a few good swings in before the sun went down.

Now, here’s what it takes.

If your kid wants to keep up in baseball today, you'd better be ready to spend. And not just money, time, weekends, gas, sanity. Because now it’s not just a game. It’s a program. A system. A business.

And the business is good, if you’re the one collecting checks.

It starts with travel ball. You don’t make the “elite” team? Sorry, better luck next tryout, if you’re willing to fork over another $100 for the privilege. Make the team? Great. Now pay your $2,500 team fee, buy two sets of uniforms, pay for the bat bag, the team helmet, the custom cleats. You’ll need a new bat too, $400 minimum. And a glove? Let’s hope you don’t want quality leather, or you’re out another few hundred.

And don’t forget hotels. Every weekend, you're driving to some overpriced tournament in the middle of nowhere, staying at a Fairfield Inn with the team rate that’s still somehow more expensive than it should be. You’re eating fast food, paying gate fees just to watch your own kid, and sitting in 95-degree heat to see if they get three at-bats.

Offseason? There isn’t one. Because if your kid’s not training while everyone else is, they’re falling behind. That’s the pitch, always falling behind. So now you’re booking hitting lessons. Pitching lessons. Speed and agility classes. Biomechanics evaluations. Indoor cage time. Strength coaches who talk about torque and scap load to 11-year-olds.

Then there’s “exposure.” Want your kid to play college ball? Better get them on Perfect Game’s radar. So, you pay to enter a showcase where they’ll wear a jersey with a barcode and get evaluated by a stranger with a clipboard who’ll never remember their name. But don’t worry, you can pay extra for a highlight video set to bad music.

You scroll social media and see 9-year-olds with edited hype reels. Parents branding their kids like products. Posts like “My dude raking this weekend! #FutureStar #HardWorkPaysOff” from dads who think they’re Scott Boras.

Meanwhile, the kid's exhausted. Or injured. Or quietly miserable but afraid to say it because they know how much their family has invested.

And for what? A shot at varsity? Maybe a partial D2 scholarship that doesn’t cover textbooks? Do you know how many kids actually go on to play college baseball, even at the lowest levels? Almost none.

But we all lie to ourselves. We say it’s for development, for discipline, for opportunity. Sometimes it is. But too often, it's about adult egos. About keeping up. About convincing yourself that all this sacrifice is leading somewhere.

I watch it now and it makes me sick not because I hate the game, but because I love it. I love what it used to be. When it didn’t matter what brand your bat was or whether your swing had been broken down in slow motion. When a kid could just play without pressure.

We’re not raising ballplayers. We’re raising kids who burn out by 14. Kids who tear ligaments before they hit puberty. Kids who stop loving baseball because someone turned it into a job before they ever had a chance to enjoy it.

We act like we’re doing them a favor. But we’re not. We’re selling them a dream and handing them a bill.

Baseball isn’t supposed to cost this much not just in dollars, but in joy. In time. In spirit.

We played for nothing but the love of the game. Today’s kids are playing for everything but that.

His first pitch was 101 miles per hour.

People high fived. Eyes widened. It was electric. It was everything fans dream about seeing live. And I cheered. I was in awe. I wanted to see the guy throw gas, and he did.

And I knew.

I wasn’t a Cubs fan. I didn’t care about their World Series drought. I wasn’t riding any team’s bandwagon. I was there because I love baseball, the game itself. The feel of it. The power of it. The purity we pretend it still has.

But Chapman’s story was already public. Domestic violence allegations. Choking his girlfriend. Firing eight gunshots into the garage wall. MLB gave him a 30-game suspension, the first real test of their new domestic violence policy. No charges were filed. He didn’t deny it. He just served his time and kept his mouth shut.

And the league? They welcomed him back with open arms. The Cubs gave up a haul to get him. Because he threw 105.

And I still went to watch him.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I didn’t need him to be convicted to know what happened. I didn’t need a courtroom transcript. I knew. And I chose to show up anyway. I wanted to see something rare. I told myself the league had handled it, that it wasn’t my responsibility to figure out justice. That maybe it wasn’t that bad.

But it was.

And I was part of it.

I was a baseball fan cheering for a guy I knew had done something violent, something ugly, something that should’ve stopped everything cold. And I cheered anyway because his fastball was electric. Because I wanted to see what it looked like up close.

What does that say about me?

It says I wanted the magic more than I wanted the truth. That I let my love of the game override my judgment. That I prioritized velocity over values. And if I’m being honest, I think a lot of baseball fans have done the same. We cheer for the talent and pretend the rest isn’t our business.

But it is.

That night at Wrigley, I felt the crowd rise for Chapman like he was a conquering hero. All sins forgiven if you can throw 103. That’s the game. That’s the system. And I helped it work exactly the way it was designed.

This series, Dark Side of the Diamond, isn’t about calling out players from a moral high ground. It’s about acknowledging the ways we’ve all failed. Baseball isn’t broken because of one player. It’s broken because of a culture that rewards silence, excuses, and performance over character.

I was there. I knew. And I still watched.

No more pretending. No more hiding behind the scoreboard.

I have to own what I did and what I didn’t do.

Because if I don’t, then I’m just part of the problem. And I love this game too much to lie about it any longer.

This season isn’t about celebrating the game. It’s about holding a mirror up to it. Maybe next year I’ll shift to The Bright Side. But not this year. Right now, we sit with the shame.

The Dark Side of the Diamond isn’t here to make you feel good about baseball. I’ll save the redemption stories for another season. This series is about the shadows—about dragging what’s been ignored into the light. Because baseball doesn’t just have a cheating problem or a pace-of-play problem. It has a people problem. A silence problem. A culture problem. And Roberto Osuna is one of the clearest examples.

Here’s the story, an electric young closer, straight out of Mexico, debuting at 20, dominating by 22. The guy had the stuff: mid-90s heat, filthy late movement, ice in his veins. By 2017, he looked like the future of the position. But in 2018, everything changed. He was arrested and charged with assaulting the mother of his child. This wasn’t some vague accusation on Twitter. This wasn’t rumor or speculation. This was real. Police. Courts. A mugshot. And unlike Trevor Bauer, who went full scorched-earth trying to clear his name—denying, suing, podcasting, Osuna didn’t challenge a thing. No statement. No denial. No lawsuit. Nothing.

Just silence.

And in some ways, that silence was deafening. I remember waiting for something, anything, that showed some shred of acknowledgment, accountability, explanation. But Osuna let MLB do the talking. The league ran its own investigation and hit him with a 75-game suspension. One of the longest ever under the domestic violence policy. That’s not “We’re not sure.” That’s not “Let’s wait for due process.” That’s “We know enough.”

And you know what the Houston Astros did? They traded for him. While he was still suspended. While the rest of the league was treating him like toxic waste, Houston saw a bargain. A lights-out closer at a discount. That’s how cold this game can be. They didn’t even pretend to care about how it looked. Jeff Luhnow gave that tired corporate line about second chances and doing their homework, but it rang hollow. It always does. Because we all know how this works, second chances are for the talented.

If you’re just okay, they cut you loose. But if you’re elite? They throw their arms around you and say, we believe in growth. That’s the game.

And just to really make it clear where their priorities were, after the Astros clinched the ALCS, their assistant GM, Brandon Taubman, turned to a group of female reporters, one of whom had spoken out about domestic violence, and shouted, “Thank God we got Osuna!” Over and over. He didn’t slip. He taunted them. It was intentional. And when that story broke, the Astros didn’t own it. They attacked the journalist. They lied. MLB investigated, confirmed it all, and Taubman got fired, but only after they got caught. And their apology? Corporate white noise. Nothing real about it.

Meanwhile, Osuna just kept pitching. No press conference. No Instagram statement. No public apology. Just a uniform, a glove, and a paycheck. Eventually the injuries came, the velocity dipped, and the league quietly moved on. He went to Japan. Baseball forgot. But I didn’t. And if you really love this game, really love it, you shouldn’t forget either.

Because this is what we do. We cheer the velocity. We excuse the silence. And then we act shocked when the culture underneath starts to rot.

You don’t have to like Trevor Bauer to see the difference here. At least Bauer engaged, for better or worse. Osuna didn’t even bother to pretend. He just let the league spin the wheel and cash the checks. And because he didn’t make a scene, because he didn’t talk, baseball never asked him to be accountable. He slid right out the side door.

That’s the truth. And this series, The Dark Side of the Diamond, it’s about that truth. It’s about what happens when a sport that wraps itself in the flag of integrity refuses to actually live it. We’ve celebrated the wrong things for too long. This season, I’m not doing that. This is Ballpark Confidential with no filter. No sugar. No rose-colored nostalgia.

Maybe next year, I’ll tell the stories of the good guys. The mentors. The quiet leaders who reflect the values baseball loves to market. But this year, I’m sitting with the shame. I’m telling the hard stories. Because this game doesn’t grow if we don’t confront what it’s built on.

He was coming off a Cy Young season. He was vocal, intense, analytical, a guy who brought edge and intelligence to the mound. As a Dodgers fan, I felt like we were getting the complete package, elite talent, deep thinker, someone who was going to challenge norms and keep the front office honest.

He didn’t pitch like anyone else. He didn’t think like anyone else. And he didn’t act like anyone else either.

Then the story broke. The allegations. The headlines. The kind of stuff that makes your stomach turn. Bauer was put on administrative leave. Eventually, MLB handed him a record 324-game suspension. No criminal charges were filed. The case was dropped. Bauer didn’t settle. He denied everything. And he fought it.

The Dodgers released him with a two-paragraph press release. No press conference. No real statement. No clarity. Just silence.

Like a lot of fans, I didn’t just move on. I followed what happened next. Closely.

Bauer went to Japan in 2023 to pitch for the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. He was solid, 11 starts, 2.59 ERA, and struck out 87 in 85 innings. Then in 2024, he signed with the Diablos Rojos in Mexico. He was dominant, 10–0 record, 2.48 ERA, 120 strikeouts in 80 innings. At one point, he struck out 19 batters in a single game. And now, in 2025, he’s back in Japan.

Still pitching. Still producing. Still out of Major League Baseball.

And I’m still watching. Not because I need to defend him. But because I still don’t understand why he was erased while other players were quietly folded back in.

This is what gets to me.

Aroldis Chapman, Marcell Ozuna, Domingo Germán, these guys have had serious off-field incidents. Some involved arrests. Some included suspensions under MLB’s domestic violence policy. And yet, all of them returned to the field. Got second chances. Kept collecting checks.

Bauer? No conviction. No settlement. Suspension reduced by an independent arbitrator. And still no team in MLB will touch him.

Why?

Is it because he’s polarizing? Because he didn’t play the PR game? Because he spoke out, pushed back, and refused to disappear quietly?

It feels like his real offense wasn’t just what he was accused of, it was that he wouldn’t play ball with MLB’s unspoken rules. That he didn’t go away when they wanted him to.

That’s what bothers me. The lack of consistency. The selective morality. The way MLB and the Dodgers just backed away from it all without ever offering an explanation.

I don’t know what happened in that hotel room. I’ve seen the videos Bauer released. I’ve watched his denials. And I still don’t know.

But I do know this, justice, if that’s what MLB was trying to serve, shouldn’t look this uneven.

It shouldn’t be about how likable you are. It shouldn’t be about how quiet you stay. It shouldn’t be about whether your presence makes a team nervous about headlines.

Bauer fought back. He didn’t disappear. He didn’t go along with the narrative. And for that, it seems like the league just decided it was easier to leave him outside.

As a Dodgers fan, I felt connected to the story. I was invested. I believed in the guy’s talent. I believed we signed someone who could help us win. And when it all fell apart, I expected more from the organization.

I didn’t expect them to side with him blindly. But I expected them to say something. To explain their decision. To acknowledge the discomfort fans were left with.

Instead, they just let the league handle it and moved on. And I was left with questions. Still am.

I don’t need Trevor Bauer to be a hero. I don’t need him to be a role model. I don’t even need him to come back to MLB.

But I do need the league and my fucking team, to be honest. To be consistent. To treat players fairly, even when the situation is uncomfortable.

Because right now? It feels like MLB doesn't care about doing the right thing. Just the thing that’s easiest to manage.

And if you love this game, if you’ve invested in it like I have, that’s hard to sit with.

But I still follow him. Because even if I don’t know exactly what’s right, I know what feels wrong.

But I don’t see it that way anymore. Not since I really started digging into what that pipeline actually looks like.

Back in 2014, I read a book called Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice by Professor Alan Klein. It was eye-opening. When I finished the book, I reached out to him. I was surprised he took my call. I wanted to understand it better. We talked, and that conversation never left me. What he laid out in that book wasn’t just research. It was truth. A hard, ugly truth about how Major League Baseball’s global reach depends on poor kids with nowhere else to go.

I used to think of Dominican baseball as a story of opportunity, a beautiful, scrappy tradition of bottlecaps and broomsticks turning into million-dollar swings. But that’s not the real story. Not for most. What Klein showed me—and what I’ve kept seeing ever since—is a system built on extraction. It’s not a story of rags to riches. It’s a machine. It runs on poverty. It’s designed to be quiet, efficient, and disposable.

Kids start training seriously when they’re 12 or 13. Most leave school by then. They’re pulled into local academies that aren’t regulated, aren’t safe, and aren’t designed to educate. These aren’t run by MLB. But make no mistake—they exist to serve it. The kids are taught to throw hard, swing big, and say a few phrases in English. Sometimes they’re taught to lie about their age. Sometimes someone else lies for them.

By the time they’re 15, the scouts are already circling. You get one shot. You sign at 16 or you’re old news. The contracts are a joke compared to what American players get. You might get $20,000 if you’re lucky. Maybe $100,000 if someone thinks you’re the next big thing. But most of the money gets sliced up—the buscone takes his cut, sometimes a trainer, maybe a cousin who helped arrange the meeting. By the time the kid sees any of it, the dream’s already on a timer.

That’s how stars like Pedro Martínez, Sammy Sosa, and David Ortiz entered the system—signed at 16 or 17, funneled into a development track with little to no safety net. Pedro, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, was almost written off because of his size. Ortiz was signed under a false name. Sosa grew up shining shoes to survive. Even Vladimir Guerrero Sr., who signed for just $2,000, came from a level of poverty that most Americans can’t even begin to imagine.

These guys made it. But what stuck with me was how many didn’t.

I think about someone like Esmailyn Gonzalez, who signed with the Nationals for $1.4 million only to have it exposed that he was four years older than claimed. The whole identity was fake. He never reached the majors. He barely made it out of rookie ball. Or Joel Guzmán, once a top Dodgers prospect who signed for over $2 million and was being touted as a future star. He didn’t stick. He disappeared. And there are hundreds more like them.

You never hear about the ones who go home empty-handed. Who walk out of the academy with no high school education, no money, no plan. Their names vanish. Their stories get buried under the next wave of signings. No follow-up. No safety net. One former trainer told me, “Once they’re released, they’re gone. We don’t have time to worry about that. We’re scouting the next kid.” The machine doesn’t stop—it just forgets.

MLB will tell you they’ve made progress. And yes, there are now MLB-run academies in the Dominican Republic. The Yankees have one. So do the Cubs, the Mariners, the Rays, the Astros, the Giants, and many others. These facilities are clean, branded, and come with structured meals and English classes. The dorms look like college campuses. There are classrooms. Some even have mental skills coaches.

And I’ll admit—it looks better than it did ten years ago.

But here’s the thing: even with all of that, the goal hasn’t changed. The academies are still built to turn boys into assets. These aren’t schools. They’re baseball factories with a PR department. The education is just enough to make the kids functional. The meals are just enough to keep the bodies moving. It’s not about preparing them for life. It’s about preparing them for the minors.

It’s window dressing on a system that’s still disposable at its core. The success stories—Wander Franco, Juan Soto, Rafael Devers—are used to justify the machine. But they’re the exception, not the rule.

MLB tried to regulate the chaos with an international draft in 2019. On the surface, that sounded like a good thing. Structure. Oversight. Maybe even fairness. But the players’ union didn’t trust it—and I don’t blame them. They didn’t trust MLB to fix what it helped create. And they were right to be skeptical. The power imbalance wasn’t going away. Nothing changed. The buscones still control access. The kids are still on a stopwatch. And the machine keeps humming.

And here’s where I get conflicted.

Because I can hear the other side. I’ve had people tell me, “But it’s an opportunity. Isn’t that better than nothing?” And they’re not wrong.

If you’re a poor kid in San Cristóbal or Maracay, signing for $50K can change your family’s life—even if it’s only for a little while. If you make it, it’s everything. And I don’t want to kill that dream. I really don’t. It’s real. The kids chasing it are brave. They’re hopeful. They’re trying to make something out of nothing.

But I also think about how lopsided it all is. How little support there is for the ones who don’t make it. How easy it is for MLB to talk about global growth while leaving behind thousands of boys who gave everything to a system that was never built to hold them.

The dream is real. But so is the machine.

And if we keep pretending it's one or the other, we’re just helping the machine run smoother.

But maybe the better question is—why does this matter?

Why should anyone care? Kids in other parts of the world don’t make it all the time. That’s life. That’s sports. Not everyone becomes a star.

But that’s not what this is. This isn’t just a story of broken dreams. It’s a story of who profits when those dreams break.

This system—this pipeline—isn’t random. It’s engineered. It’s not a field of dreams. It’s a supply chain. One that lets billion-dollar MLB franchises outsource the risk of player development to the most vulnerable communities in the Western Hemisphere. Kids are pulled from school, separated from their families, and trained in underregulated conditions—not because it’s the only way, but because it’s cheaper.

We’re not talking about a kid trying and failing. We’re talking about a kid being used, economically and culturally, as part of a system that’s been intentionally designed to discard him if he’s not profitable fast enough.

That’s why it matters.

Because failure in this system isn’t a tragedy—it’s a business write-off. Teams don’t lose anything when a Dominican teenager flames out at 18. They barely spent anything. He was never an investment. He was an inventory line. A scratch-off ticket. A flyer. The team moves on. The press moves on. The fans never even knew his name.

But that kid? He goes home. No diploma. No income. No path forward. Just a broken body and a lingering sense that he failed not only himself, but his entire family.

And the game? It keeps rolling.

We should care because this is our sport. Because Major League Baseball isn’t just a game—it’s a cultural institution. It claims to represent character, tradition, and American values. But if we don’t look at what’s happening behind the curtain—if we don’t interrogate the cost of the product—we’re complicit in its deception.

This isn’t about killing the dream. It’s about questioning who controls it.

And if all of this sounds familiar, it should.

Because outside of baseball, we’re watching the same thing play out in real time. We’re living in an era where immigrants are treated as expendable labor, not as people. Where entire communities are praised when convenient and deported when inconvenient. Where a country built by immigrants tries to seal its borders while still reaping the benefits of their labor in factories, fields, kitchens—and yes, in bullpens.

The Latin American baseball pipeline isn’t separate from this story. It is this story.

Baseball reflects who we are. It always has. It mirrored segregation. It mirrored civil rights. It mirrored war, labor fights, economic collapse, and corporate greed. And right now, it’s reflecting something else: how easily we can justify the exploitation of young, brown bodies as long as the final product entertains us.

The glove might say “Rawlings,” the hat might say “Los Dodgers” on Heritage Night, and the player might be wearing number 27—but if he doesn’t make the roster next spring, he’ll be on a plane back to a country he left at 14, with nothing to show for it except a sore elbow and a burned-out dream.

That’s why it matters.

Because when a dream becomes a business strategy, and failure becomes a rounding error, it’s not just baseball that suffers.

It’s our ability to believe in anything it says it stands for.

And maybe that’s the hardest truth to face.

Turns out, that was bullshit.

The 1970s and '80s were my Golden Age. But as I got older and started paying attention, I realized that the Golden Age was caked in shit. Nostalgia does that to you. It sanitizes the mess. It hands you highlight reels and filters out the cocaine, the domestic violence, the racism, the broken kids from Latin America getting chewed up by the system.

What the fuck were we all watching?

We were watching Keith Hernandez snort coke and then pretend to be a role model. We were watching Steve Howe get suspended seven times for drug abuse and still get brought back because he could throw heat. We were watching Tim Raines slide headfirst to protect a vial of cocaine in his back pocket. We were cheering.

Nostalgia is a liar.

But here’s the thing, I still love all of it.

Because for every time nostalgia feeds us a half-truth, it also hands us a memory worth keeping. I still laugh my ass off at the Dock Ellis LSD no-hitter. It sounds made up. It feels like a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream. But it fucking happened. I mean, who else but Dock could say, "I can only pitch if I'm high" and then go out and throw a no-hitter?

And Pete Rose? That dude was a knucklehead of the highest order. A gambler, a bullheaded asshole, and possibly the last of the truly unfiltered legends. But goddamn, he played the game like his hair was on fire. I dove headfirst into second base for no reason other than Pete did it. I knew even back then he wasn’t perfect but that was the point. He was the game, warts and all.

The 1970s style? Come on. The collars, the cords, the shades, the mustaches that could stop traffic. It was chaotic fashion with swagger, and baseball wore it well. Who didn’t love the A’s unis? Kelly green, banana yellow, white cleats, looked like a softball team and played like gangsters. But beyond the threads, the players themselves just looked like guys, rough around the edges, unfiltered, real. Not like today’s carefully sculpted brand ambassadors, but more like the guy who might fix your carburetor and then go 3-for-4 with a hangover.

So yeah, I get it. I get why we cling to nostalgia. It feels good. It makes things simple. It paints the game in golden tones and edits out the shadows.

But I don’t want simple. I want the whole damn picture.

Because here’s the truth:

The game was a fucking mess. But it wasn’t separate from the world, it was the world. The '70s and '80s were gritty, chaotic, off-script. Baseball just mirrored the culture. Players were wild because the world was wild. Nobody was polished. Nobody had media training. There was no personal brand to protect. Guys had mustaches and opinions and made mistakes in full view. The game wasn’t curated. It just was.

And now? Now we live in the edited era. Everything’s a PR statement. Everyone says the right thing. The jerseys are tighter, the haircuts cleaner, the postgame interviews more robotic. The mess is still there; it just hides better. Everyone’s polished as hell, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. It just means the dirt’s harder to see.

That’s what makes nostalgia dangerous. We think it was pure back then because today feels fake. But neither version is true. Then was messy and alive. Now is polished and distant. In both, the game reflects the times.

Players were doing lines in the bathroom. Some were violent at home. Some were racist as hell. Some were just broken, addicted, angry, chewed up by the machine and spit out. And the league? It let them be all of that. As long as they could play. As long as asses stayed in the seats.

Steve Howe was suspended seven times for drugs and kept getting brought back. Seven. Fucking. Times. If he was a fringe guy, he’d have been gone after one. But he could throw heat, and that’s all that mattered.

And let’s not forget the minor leaguers grinding it out for next to nothing, or the kids in the Dominican taking steroids before they could drive. We romanticize the pipeline, the grit, the dream. But the dream was rigged. The dream was cruel.

And then there was Hank Aaron, chasing down Babe Ruth’s record with a bodyguard and a pile of hate mail. The country wanted to celebrate the moment, but a big chunk of it also wanted him dead. That’s not ancient history. That was during my Golden Age.

Meanwhile, the media pretended none of it existed. Writers knew who was using, who was violent, who was falling apart. They kept quiet. Protect the game. Protect the myth. Sell the legend.

And I bought it. I bought every pack of cards. Every Baseball Digest. Every dumb, sanitized story.

But I know better now. And I still fucking love it.

Because baseball was never pure. It was never supposed to be. What it was and still is, if you’re paying attention is real. Messy. Flawed. Human. It's not the feel-good nostalgia trip the league tries to package now. It's a complicated, contradiction-filled, glorious mess. And that’s why I keep coming back.

I still remember Reggie hitting three bombs in one night and thinking he was Superman. I still remember the sound of a game on the radio with the windows down and the smell of summer in the air. I still remember flipping through a wax pack, hoping for a good card and getting stuck with a checklist and gum that tasted like drywall. And I love every single bit of it.

But I also remember what got left out.

So here it is. This is my mid-season report.

The game remembers what it wants to. But I remember it all. The glory. The grime. The truth. The whole fucked-up, beautiful thing.

The trial took place in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh. The players weren’t on the field—they were in suits, testifying under immunity. Names I knew: Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Lonnie Smith, John Milner. Not being celebrated, but explaining how deep the cocaine problem in baseball ran. This wasn’t about one or two wild nights. This was about everyday usage. In the dugout. In the locker room. In uniform.

Milner said he got “red juice,” a liquid stimulant, from Willie Mays. Said he got green pills from Willie Stargell. Willie Mays. Willie Stargell. That’s royalty. That’s myth. That’s Americana. And here’s a guy, under oath, saying they were handing out amphetamines. He also said greenies were sometimes just left in his locker anonymously. Whether Mays and Stargell were knowingly enabling anything or just doing what everyone else was doing isn’t even the point. The point is that this stuff was woven into the routine.

Greenies—amphetamines—weren’t some dirty little secret. They were part of the rhythm in most clubhouses. Some players later said they were as easy to get as aspirin. Sometimes handed out by trainers. Sometimes passed around on team flights. Mike Schmidt, years after his Hall of Fame career ended, put it bluntly: “Amphetamines were widely available in major-league clubhouses… amphetamine use in baseball is both far more common and has been going on a lot longer than steroid abuse.”

Phil Garner echoed the psychology behind it: “It becomes a psychological addiction and a crutch… Some guys get on amphetamines and think they can't play without them.”

And I get it.

I used Adderall for three years. Prescribed. Legal. Controlled. It was powerful. It focused me. I got shit done. I could lock in for hours. But it also messed with my memory. It changed the rhythm of my thinking. I lost the thread of who I was a little bit. When I came off it, it took six months to feel clear again—like coming out of a fog. So yeah, I can understand why players used greenies. It wasn’t just about performance. It was about coping. Surviving. Trying to get through 162 games in 180 days, half of them on the road, playing hurt, chasing incentives, trying to keep your job, keep your edge. It wasn’t performance enhancement as science. It was performance maintenance as necessity.

Tim Raines didn’t try to sugarcoat it when he testified: “I kept cocaine in the back pocket of my uniform pants during games… I only slid headfirst when stealing bases so as not to break the vial.”

Keith Hernandez estimated that 40% of players were using cocaine in the early ’80s. That number wasn’t a scandal. It was a shrug.

Brian McRae, years later, painted a picture that’s almost absurd in its normalcy: “There were always two pots of coffee brewing in the clubhouse, one conventional and the other laced with stimulants. I had to make sure I got the unleaded.”

And yet, when all of this came out—in court, in public—Major League Baseball barely flinched. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth handed down suspensions to a dozen players. Then quietly commuted them. Community service. A fine. A public apology. No one missed time. No careers were derailed. No rule changes. No long-term plan to address addiction or accountability.

The league’s priority wasn’t justice. It was containment. Optics. Clean up the headlines and move on.

What gets me is how quickly the story faded. The steroid era came along and got all the fire, the hearings, the shame, the asterisks, the moralizing. Guys got locked out of the Hall of Fame for bulking up. But this? Cocaine in the dugout? Amphetamines passed around by legends? Just a few uncomfortable months in 1985 that everyone moved on from.

Bud Selig, years later, even admitted it: “In the ’80s we had a terrible cocaine problem. Did we have a policy? Did anything happen? No.”

So why didn’t this stick? Is it just because it wasn’t physical? Because it didn’t add visible bulk or show up in home run totals the way steroids did?

Let’s sit with that a minute.

Because if a player could lock in, stay hyperfocused for nine innings, react a fraction of a second faster, have just enough edge to lay off a slider low and away—that’s enhancement. That’s not marginal. That’s meaningful. And over the course of a season? That changes stats. That affects careers.

So what’s the difference?

Is it that steroids are seen as unnatural, while greenies were “tradition”? Is it because amphetamines were passed down from generation to generation like superstition—just part of the game’s fabric? Or is it because mental enhancement is harder to quantify? You can’t measure alertness. There’s no stat line for clarity.

But clarity changes everything. Focus is performance.

If I’m being honest, I think about how much Adderall changed me—not physically, but mentally. I was sharper. I could work longer. I could push through distractions and fatigue. But there was a cost. My memory suffered. My ability to rest and just be suffered. I was functioning, but I wasn’t really present. And it wasn’t until I got off of it that I realized how much I’d lost in the process.

So again—if players were popping greenies, or using Ritalin or Adderall later under a “therapeutic use exemption,” to get through the grind, and it helped them lock in, how is that not a performance edge? And if everyone was doing it, does that make it okay? Or just more deeply embedded in the culture?

Maybe it’s not about fairness. Maybe it’s about what fans can see. Steroids reshaped bodies. They broke records. They disrupted nostalgia. But amphetamines? They were invisible. Quiet. Baked in. They didn’t change the scoreboard—they just helped keep the machine running.

But that’s still a machine built on something artificial.

If you’ve got guys grinding through 162 on stimulants because it’s the only way to survive the schedule, and you’ve got a league that’s fine with that because it protects the product… is that any more “pure” than the home run era?

Or is it just easier—for the league, the media, the fans—to protect the illusion than to reckon with the truth?

You grow up thinking the game is one thing. Then you look back and realize how much of it was running on fumes, powder, pills, and denial. I’m not judging the players. Most of them were just trying to stay afloat. It’s the culture around them that failed. The league that looked the other way. The press that didn’t want to dig too deep. The fans who, maybe, didn’t want to know.

That’s what this series is about. Dark Side of the Diamond isn’t about taking shots. It’s about looking at the corners the camera never lingers on. The 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials should have been a reckoning. Instead, they were a dress rehearsal—for a league that’s always been better at managing scandal than confronting it.

Everyone knew. And no one really cared.

And maybe the scariest part of all?

It worked.

When Tony La Russa was hired by the Chicago White Sox in 2020, I wasn’t surprised he wanted to manage again. I was surprised he got the job. Not because of his age, he was 76, or even the decade he’d been out of the dugout. It was the DUI.

La Russa had been charged with driving under the influence earlier that same year. It was his second known DUI arrest. The first had happened back in 2007, during spring training. Police in Jupiter, Florida found him asleep at the wheel of his SUV, engine running. He had a BAC of 0.093 over the legal limit. He pled guilty and issued a standard apology, “I apologize to anyone who is close to me, members of the Cardinals organization, our fans. I regret it, take responsibility, and I'm not sure there is anything else I can say.”

He went on with his career.

Then came the second DUI in February 2020. This time in Phoenix. La Russa had crashed his car into a curb. Police said he reeked of alcohol, failed field sobriety tests, and blew a .095. He tried to talk his way out of it, telling the officer, “I’m a Hall of Famer, brother. You’re trying to embarrass me.”

He pleaded guilty, again. This time to a reduced charge of reckless driving. He got one day of home detention, community service, alcohol counseling, and a fine. He later said, “I know I don't have a drinking problem, just like I know I made a serious mistake… If I have a drink I will not drive. There's always an alternative.”

And then he was hired to manage a contending MLB team.

That hit me differently, not just because of who La Russa is, but because of my own story. I got a DUI in 2008. It scared me. I thought it might cost me my career. I took a hard look at everything. I quit drinking. Not because I couldn’t drink in moderation but because I couldn’t guarantee I’d never make that mistake again. That’s what it came down to, fucking responsibility.

Alcohol demands it. There’s no grey area in the moment when you turn the ignition. You either are or aren’t putting others at risk. And I had. Once.

I believe people can be forgiven for one. Take the consequences. Learn. Change. But more than one? That’s a pattern. That’s a choice. And it’s not just about you anymore, it’s about who’s driving near you, crossing the street, walking home. It’s about the people who don’t get a say.

That’s what made La Russa’s second chance feel so hollow. There was no reflection. No rehab. Just a résumé, a phone call, and a job. If this had been a no-name coach with the same two arrests, we wouldn’t even know his name. But La Russa is part of baseball’s old boys club and in that world, status still outweighs accountability.

You see it in the comparisons.

Wally Backman got fired four days after the Diamondbacks hired him in 2004, after a past DUI and domestic violence charge resurfaced. He never managed again.

Ron Washington, after an off-field personal issue, not a crime, resigned and disappeared from managing for almost a decade, despite a strong reputation and two World Series appearances.

Pat Murphy had a DUI in his past. It followed him for years. He never got handed a job. He waited until 2023 to finally get a chance to manage full-time.

La Russa? He got two chances. Because of who he was. Because of who he knew. That’s how this game still works in too many corners.

I’m not writing this to throw stones. I’m writing it because it’s important to see things clearly. When you’ve lived through the mistake yourself, and worked to change, you recognize what accountability actually looks like.

What La Russa got wasn’t accountability. It was privilege.

That’s the real issue. And that’s the part baseball still hasn’t figured out how to deal with.

But holy shit, did they make baseball feel alive.

Billy Martin was out there chain-smoking heaters, fist fighting his own players, getting tossed before the National Anthem ended, and somehow, somefuckinghow, managing his ass off. The man wasn’t managing a team, he was managing a bar fight that never ended.

George Brett once came storming out of the dugout over pine tar like someone had insulted his mother in church. I mean full-speed, eyes-bulging, foam-at-the-mouth rage. Today, he’d be trending for three days and forced to issue an apology written by his PR team. Back then? It was Tuesday.

Pedro didn’t pitch with strategy. He pitched with vengeance. He’d brush you back, freeze you with a changeup, then grin like he was mentally filing away the next time he’d drill you in the ribs. And you respected it. Because that’s how it worked. You knew the rules even if they were never written.

And don’t even start with Ohtani.

You think Pedro Martínez would give a fuck of Shohei Ohtani?
Please.

Pedro would look at Ohtani the way a lion looks at a show horse—confused why everyone’s clapping for something that’s never been in a fight. He wouldn’t care about your WAR, your exit velocity, your two-way unicorn bullshit. Pedro would brush Ohtani back just to let him know, this ain’t Japan anymore, kid. You flip a bat on Pedro? You better run. He’d put one in your ribs and smile while doing it, then strike you out on a changeup and talk shit to your dugout in two languages.

And Judge?

Oh, Judge would be his bitch.

Pedro would see that big strike zone and think, finally, a real estate investment. He’d throw that 97 with run under his hands, then drop a changeup that makes Judge spin out like he stepped on a rake. Pedro didn’t pitch to your strengths. He pitched to your nightmares.

He didn’t give a fuck about your endorsements. You could be 6'7", jacked, and perfectly polished, Pedro would cut you down like a weed in his perfectly manicured backyard.

Pedro didn’t pitch with respect. He pitched with rules, his god damn rules.

You crowd the plate, you wear one.

You show him up, you get the message.

You act like a superstar, you better earn it.

No bobblehead days. No charity strikes.
Just fastballs with consequences and changeups that told the truth.

Modern baseball couldn’t handle Pedro.
And Pedro wouldn’t try to handle modern baseball.

He’d burn it the fuck down.

These guys weren’t “brands.” These were men with grudges. Guys who hated striking out so much they’d punch a locker, the bat rack, maybe their own teammate. Guys who slid hard into second just because they didn’t like the way the shortstop looked at them. Guys who threw at you, dared you to charge, then fed you a mouthful of fist when you did.

Jack Morris once told his manager to sit down and shut the fuck up, he was finishing the game. And he did. Ten innings in a World Series game. No whining. No pitch counts. Just balls and willpower.

Rickey Henderson framed a million-dollar check because he didn’t need to cash it. Because Rickey doesn’t cash checks. Rickey remembers them.

Even the quiet ones were psychos. Randy Johnson killed a bird mid-pitch and barely blinked. He threw 99 with that serial killer glare and a mullet that looked like it had seen some shit. And when hitters stepped in? They knew. They fucking knew.

I miss that. I miss the unfiltered chaos. The imperfections. The fire. The absolute disregard for optics, algorithms, and “player image.” Guys were out there playing like every game might be their last and if it was, they were going to take someone down with them.

Now? Everyone’s best friends. They giggle on second base. They text each other after games. Bat flips are coordinated like TikToks. Pitchers scream when they strike out the ninth batter in a 10–1 game. And don’t get me wrong—I’m not mad at emotion. But this isn’t that. This is performance without danger.

The old guys weren’t “letting the kids play.” They were telling the kids to get the fuck off the lawn. You didn’t dance. You didn’t pose. You played hard or you got hit. That wasn’t toxic, it was accountability. You ran out the ground ball, or you got benched. You took a fastball off the spine and just jogged to first, because whining was weakness.

Maybe that’s the problem. Baseball’s gotten too polished. Too packaged. The dirt’s still there, but it doesn’t feel like it gets under the nails anymore.

I want the unhinged. The rogue. The guy who talks to his bat, flips off the fans, and drops a 12–6 curve just to humiliate you.

I want the fights that meant something.
I want the glares that gave you goosebumps.
I want baseball with bite, not just branding.

So yeah, maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe I’m just yelling into the void.
But I know what I saw. And I know what it felt like.

And today’s game?
It wouldn’t survive those guys.

Because they weren’t playing a game.
They were playing for keeps.

That’s why it hit me hard when I found out, today as a matter of fact, that Alomar was banned from Major League Baseball in 2021 for violating the league’s sexual misconduct policy. I completely missed it. I don’t remember seeing a headline. There was no buzz, no sustained coverage. And yet MLB, without hesitation, removed him from the game.

In April 2021, the league received a report involving an incident from 2014. MLB brought in an independent law firm to investigate. After reviewing the findings, Commissioner Rob Manfred banned Alomar permanently. His contract as a special consultant was terminated. The Toronto Blue Jays followed quickly, cutting ties, removing his name from their Level of Excellence, and taking down his banner at Rogers Centre.

Alomar released a short statement, “I am disappointed, surprised, and upset with today’s news. With the current social climate, I understand why Major League Baseball has taken the position they have. My hope is that this allegation can be heard in a venue that will allow me to address the accusation directly.”

Then the story went quiet.

A few months later, Melissa Verge, a journalist in Canada, published a personal account in The Toronto Star. She alleged that in 2014, when she was 18 and interning at a youth camp affiliated with the Blue Jays, Alomar pressed his body against her and propositioned her. She reported the incident to a team official. Nothing was done. She stayed silent until she saw MLB had taken action, and that’s when she came forward publicly.

Even with that new reporting, the story didn’t catch fire. ESPN and CBS Sports covered the basics when the ban was announced. Verge’s piece was impactful but largely stayed within Canadian media. The New York Times didn’t do a feature. There was no viral moment, no flood of commentary. It just drifted out of view.

Part of that was timing. 2021 was full of big, headline-grabbing stories, Trevor Bauer’s case broke wide open, Deshaun Watson was being investigated, and the U.S. gymnastics scandal was still unfolding. It was a year full of institutional reckoning. In that media environment, a story like Alomar’s, already “resolved” by the league, didn’t get traction.

And maybe that’s why I missed it. Maybe a lot of us did.

What makes this harder is the tension between what he was on the field and what we now have to reconcile off it. There’s no satisfaction in finding out someone you admired has been quietly removed from the game. It just sits there.

To MLB’s credit, they acted quickly. They didn’t wait for public pressure or a media circus. They did the investigation, accepted the findings, and moved. That kind of accountability is rare in sports. The Blue Jays followed suit without hesitation.

The Hall of Fame, though, did not. Alomar’s plaque still hangs in Cooperstown. The Hall issued a statement saying they are a museum, not an investigative body. That his induction reflected the vote at the time. And so, his on-field legacy remains enshrined, while everything else around him has been erased.

I’m still processing it. I’m not interested in performative outrage, and I’m not looking to cancel anyone. But I am trying to understand how someone that central to the game could be erased so completely and so quietly and how I never saw it happen.

Not every story explodes. Some just get buried. This one did. And it deserves a second look.