Quote of the day.

The two loudest curmudgeons on CNN did not mince their words when discussing the MLB steroids scandal.

First, Jack Cafferty of The Situation Room:

Roger Kahn dubbed them “The Boys of Summer” in one of the finest books ever written about American sports. Baseball has long been the great escape in this country. An afternoon at any Major League ballpark watching wholesome, fresh-faced union young kids playing a truly great game at its very highest level, well, that was a perfect escape from the tedium of the job, the drudgery of the commute, the tensions of the marriage, the problems with the kids.

A hot dog, cold drink and the cry of “Play ball always!” always better and cheaper than spending an hour on some shrink’s couch. They had to go and ruin it for us.

When Mark McGwire, with a neck the size of a tree trunk, was shattering homerun records and waving his bat around at home plate like a toothpick, we should have known something was up, and it was. Now comes the depressing news that bunch of our heroes were jerking us around and have now been linked in a 20-month-long investigation to steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Lenny Dykstra, Andy Pettitte, Mo Vaughn, Gary Sheffield, it’s a long list. It has dozens of names on it, according to George Mitchell’s investigation. This is a betrayal on a massive scale. The behavior is every bit as criminal as any politician who betrays the public trust.

We came to watch you guys play baseball, and you let us down .

Lou Dobbs of Lou Dobbs Tonight took time out from writing hate mail to Univision to make this statement on the scandal:

Well, the reality is that this is a bigger scandal for baseball, in my opinion, than the Black Sox scandal of just about 90 years ago. The reality is, however, everyone, you and me and just about everyone watching of a certain age group, knew that Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were taking steroids. Major League Baseball certainly did. There is no surprise in any of this. The reality is that this is an expose of super athletes taking illegal drugs to enhance their performance. It is also just a great scandal for Major League Baseball itself and what it has permitted. The networks and all associated with Major League Baseball who knew precisely what was going on and now are clucking like, you know, aging hens at these transgressions. We should be all ashamed. It is a reflection on our broader society. And certainly, you know, obviously, a black mark against these athletes in the sport. But we all bear immense responsibility for the hypocrisy that permitted it to go on and to continue to go on I’m sure for some time to come.