So Former Sox Player Jim Parque Took HGH...
The question now: Does anyone care?
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Jim Parque cheated. Do you care?
Today, the Sun-Times managed to land an exclusive column penned by former Sox player Jim Parque. Parque was a Sox pitcher from 1998-2002 and played for the Tampa Bay Rays (then the Devil Rays; oh how we long for days gone by) in 2003. He was just OK at professional baseball, retiring with a 31-34 record and a plus-5.00 ERA.
Which is why we're betting you're probably not going to get too worked up about Parque's admission to taking human growth hormone. Parque wasn't a great pitcher, and his use of HGH doesn't seem to have opened all that many doors to him. Instead, it merely helped him "feel better" during a rehab stint in the minor leagues; afterward, Parque returned to the major leagues and pitched a couple more average seasons before finishing up with the Rays in 2003.
Parque's story is pretty familiar, in that it doesn't resemble Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire's. Basically, Parque was terrified of losing his job in professional baseball, of having to go out in the real world and get a real job without any of the skills or qualifications necessary, and so he cheated.
We find it hard to believe that anyone's going to care. We baseball fans tend to only really care about someone having cheated if that player is very good. When Sergio Mitre gets stuck with a 50-game suspension, we don't bat an eyelash; when it's Manny Ramirez, we run each other over to see who can post the first self-righteous screed. No one really cares if Jim Parque stayed in the big leagues thanks to HGH. Did he break any records? Destroy any nostalgia? Moving on, then. Nothing to see here.
Parque's question is a better one: What would you have done? And he's right. In that era, plenty of players were fighting for their livelihoods -- some were fighting for better livelihoods than others, to be sure -- right when a substance that "everyone" is doing comes along offering the power of faster healing, a snappier split-finger fastball and better batspeed.
What would we have done? We don't know. And that's precisely why we refuse to crucify guys like Jim Parque, or even guys like Manny Ramirez. They may have been stupid and weak, but they're human. We're more alike than we know.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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Posted Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 10:37 AM CST
