In this age of rampant drug use throughout baseball, I'm going to go Barack Obama all over Bud Selig and demand change. I vote for the opening of a new Hall of Fame, one that enshrines those Major League Baseball players not associated with the Steroids Era, the best of the non-tainted. In accordance with this completely random solo founding, I would like to introduce my first inductee: Jamie Moyer.
Currently a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Moyer is at 46 the oldest active player in the major leagues. Yet throughout a career that began in 1986, the same year in which three players on the Phillies' active roster were born, Moyer has remained a model of cleanliness, especially in recent years amidst the cream, the clear and the cheaters. Consider him a beacon of hope for baseball, a pitcher on whom younger children can model themselves, needle-free.
With a fastball slower than a suburban speed limit, it's highly likely that Moyer does not do steroids. Even though the only juice in his body is of the Tropicana label, his 246-185 career record paints the picture of a hurler who has somehow managed to remain among the ranks of baseball's most respected and most consistent, a telltale sign of a player whose body has not deteriorated due to the harmful effects of using.
Moyer's stint in the major leagues opened with the Chicago Cubs 23 years ago, but since then he has gotten around more than Paris Hilton. His journeyman status has landed him in Texas, St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston, Seattle and most recently, Philadelphia, and all the while he has been racking up wins with his fluttering fastball and devastating changeup. Moyer has won at least 10 games 14 times, including two seasons with the Mariners in which he reached the 20-win plateau. To that end, he has lost 10 games just six times, posting a modest career ERA of 4.19, 23 points lower than the league average during his career.
But that is what Moyer is: completely modest. You'll never see him pumping his arms after a big strikeout or pointing to the heavens, but rather calmly strutting off after another hitter is left baffled by his pitches. At the age of 45 last season, Moyer led the world champion Phillies with 16 wins, culminating in his first World Series championship, after which he nonchalantly walked around Citizens Bank Park with a pitching rubber on his shoulder, soaking up the moment. And who said people slow down with age?
What I like about Moyer is that he's not the sexy superstar, as he strikes out barely over 100 batters per year, yet his strikeout-to-walk ratio for his career is better than 2:1, and he boasts an extremely high infield-fly rate even into his forties. It's clear that movement and deception keep Moyer going through the years and make him baseball's proverbial Houdini.
Recently, Moyer signed a two-year extension with Philadelphia, allowing him to stay in the City of Brotherly Love. But it is his love for the game that provides a constant inspiration for those fans seeking another hero when the home run-bashing stars of the past will eternally don an asterisk.
Not only is Moyer a world-class pitcher, but he is a world-class human being. Together with his wife, Karen, he founded The Moyer Foundation in 2000, established to aid children in severe distress. In nine years, they have raised over $16 million to support organizations helping children, the same amount of money that would buy A-Rod roughly 7 million tablets of Primobolan. Imagine how much good one player could do by donating a couple million to provide assistance in dire times. Moyer has transformed the token charity golf tournament donation eightfold.
Regardless of how the Alex Rodriguez situation turns out and regardless of whether known-steroid users like Barry Bonds are inducted into the real Hall of Fame, this age in baseball will forever be linked to the syringe. Thank goodness we still have players like Jamie Moyer to help us forget.
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Alex Prewitt is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Alexander.Prewitt@tufts.edu.
