Day Forty Five: Ryan Franklin

My cousin Chris finally got to Barry Lamar Bonds on his Giants countdown that he is doing on Facebook. I was very happy to see the greatest on the list. Barry's career was generation defining no matter how you choose to look at it. But for me, I look at it like I look at everything else that is supposedly scandalous in the game today. What would I do? And that truly is the most important thing to think about regarding alleged (and please please do remember that Barry Bonds was NEVER CAUGHT doing anything) PED use. If my analysis of the topic does not begin in that manner then I am nothing but a sanctimonious pissant hypocrite. And Lord knows there are too many of those in the Baseball establishment, media, and "fandom." I don't argue with folks regarding PEDs anymore because I know that it's like arguing with someone who is a Trump supporter. It's why I've remained utterly silent regarding the Astros, other than drafting all of them in my fantasy league. I would gladly rock an Altuve jersey this year, and let me try and explain why I feel so strongly here. And hopefully in doing so we can talk about Ryan Franklin, pride of Spiro, Oklahoma and generally rad dude.

For every Barry Bonds (again! alleged!) there is a Ryan Franklin or a Mike Cameron. And of course there's a lot of even lesser known players who have gotten popped for PEDs in the aftermath of the laissez-faire attitude of the McGwire Sosa campaign, but for our purposes as Mariners fans lets use Franklin and Cammy. And let's focus on Ryan Franklin because he is the Mariner being spotlighted in this essay. Ryan Franklin was living a charmed existence. He came up through the Mariners farm system at a time when they were producing stars. He worked with arguably the best pitching coach of the era on the big club with Bryan Price, and his offensive club was nuts. He was set up from the get-go to have some excellent years. And he had them. For the first three years of his career Franklin was an outstanding pitcher. Doing whatever he could to get by with less than average big league stuff. He was a technician that is often overlooked in favor of Jamie Moyer, but they were both reinvigorating the soft game together those first couple years. Certainly, Franklin wasn't throwing the change-up that Moyer had, but he was pretty filthy for a time. And then the ball started leaving the park way too often and Franklin's career went off a cliff. He led the league in HRs given up in 2003 but still managed to have a decent year (Marine Layer my eye!) but in 2004 he was pretty terrible. He scuffled to get himself righted in 04 and 05 and was the eighth player busted for testing positive to steroids in 2005. Oh for shame! Ryan! With his charming Oklahoma accent and easy demeanor, who would have thought that he could do something so utterly horrific and detestable!!? Oh the humanity!

But why wouldn't Ryan Franklin take PEDs? He had the opportunity to try and extend his career as a major league player. The ethical aspect of it is whatever you choose to apply to it. Baseball is a business in a capitalist society. There is nothing that is against the rules. The ownership is constantly working to find a way to pay players less, to find players who are cheaper, to undercut any power that the players might have, and to generally work to exploit every bit of talent available for the least amount of money spent. It's the reason that the rise of analytics is so confounding. Here are people who claim to be "outsiders" freely giving management and ownership special tools to pay players less and give guys shorter careers. Of course you can say, "but those ballplayers are millionaires!" Ok fine, but you can also say, "that grocery store worker shouldnt make 20 dollars an hour!" How you feel about that grocery store worker right now? Or their comparative worth? Saying what workers "deserve" is giving the victory to management before the fight has even begun. Nothing in this world has been won for the working class by the managerial and ownership benevolently giving it out. It was won through struggle. Just as the players fought for the positions that the union (one of the few unions left that is strong tbh) has won, we all fight for what capitalist controllers monopolize. So when Ryan Franklin tries to get a little bit more out of the tank by maybe taking some drugs then I cannot ethically condemn him for it. For that matter, I am a person in recovery and how on earth would I be even able to for an instant say "how could you take those things?" How the fuck could you not take those things? Anyone saying they wouldn't do it is full of shit. Of course you would.

And that is how I feel about that. Ryan Franklin put together his first all-star performance several years after the Mitchell Report and the positive test and I for one was happy as all hell to see him do that. Stick it to the sports trolls who feel like a ball player is nothing but a pool of talent to be drained and discarded. I don't mind stats and analysis but I don't ever want to view people as a commodity to be disposed of. Perhaps I will have more rantings about the connections between Capitalist exploitation and player "performance enhancement" over the next few months, but this is a solid place to start. And thank you Ryan Franklin for always giving a great interview and for generally being a super fun dude during some really fun Mariners teams. Ryan always seemed like he was just so happy to be involved. And I was happy to root for him.