I'm sorry but Santa Claus isn't real...

As a kid, growing up in the East Bay in the mid to late 1980's. I idolized the Bash Brothers. I'm also pretty sure I wasn't the only one idolizing the Bash Bros. I remember playing kickball or whiffleball somebody had to say, "Canseco hit it out of the park!" sooner or later.

I lost interest in baseball at around the '94 strike. I was growing up, went into a phase, like all adolescents do. The homerun races of the late 90's piqued my interest in baseball again and I was back into the fold of A's fandom by 2000-2001.

But those homerun races and Giambi, a homerun hitter, did influence my return to baseball.

Yeah, the idols of my youth probably cheated and gave themselves an unfair advantage. Does that tarnish baseball? Yes, but this is not the first time baseball has it's hands dirty. Remember the Black Sox, segregation, and also Babe Ruth may have had a few corked bats himself (from The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract). But when I was a kid I was barely aware of those things and as I grew older I thought things in baseball and American culture progressed where people just wouldn't do things like that.

Ah...The naivete of youth. I guess I just had my "Santa Claus isn't real" moment as a baseball fan who's still growing up. Yes, I'm 23, and I'm still growing up.