{"id":3,"date":"2005-02-17T15:49:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-17T19:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2005\/02\/17\/little-known-bright-spots-in-the-shad"},"modified":"2005-02-17T15:49:28","modified_gmt":"2005-02-17T19:49:28","slug":"little-known-bright-spots-in-the-shadow-of-a-steroids-filled-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2005\/02\/17\/little-known-bright-spots-in-the-shadow-of-a-steroids-filled-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Little known bright spots in the shadow of a steroids-filled week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a107'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"3\">Last Thursday the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel<br \/>\nFernandez, hosted a luncheon at the presidential palace for Dominican<br \/>\nbaseball players.&nbsp; Among those in attendance were <\/font><font face=\"Verdana, Arial\" size=\"2\"><font size=\"3\">Julio<br \/>\nLugo, Neifi Perez, Aramis<br \/>\nRamirez, Jose Offerman, Ronnie Belliard, Albert Pujols, Julio Santana,<br \/>\nOdalis Perez, D&#8217;angelo Jimenez, Juan Carlos Cruz, Alfredo Griffin and<br \/>\nGeorge Bell.&nbsp; What distinguished this event from similar lunches<br \/>\nin previous years that were hosted by President Fernandez&#8217;s<br \/>\npredecessor, Hipolito Mejia, is that the President made the players&#8217;<br \/>\ncontribution to their country the centerpiece message.&nbsp; Fernandez<br \/>\nexhorted the players to &#8220;be ambassadors of their country and to provide<br \/>\nleadership on important issues the DR faces.&#8221;&nbsp; This coming year<br \/>\ncould bring some interesting developments in this regard.<\/p>\n<p>In a related vein, tomorrow The Wall Street Journal is running on its<br \/>\nfront page, center column an article describing how Vladimir Guerrero<br \/>\nof the Anaheim Angels has made an impact in his hometown of Don<br \/>\nGregorio (a factory, a modern supermarket, a hardware store, all with<br \/>\nassociated jobs) with a personal investment of about $100.000.&nbsp;<br \/>\nHopefully this will<br \/>\ncall attention to some of the good works that players undertake at<br \/>\nhome.&nbsp; Surely baseball could use some good news these days, in the<br \/>\naftermath of the publication of Jose Canseco&#8217;s book on steriods.<\/p>\n<p>There is both good and bad happening on the level of the individual players. <\/p>\n<p>The same can not really be said on the macro level. The players&#8217;s union and<br \/>\nMajor League Baseball&nbsp;<br \/>\nto get a forceful message about the dangers of steroids out<br \/>\nthere.&nbsp; It is way too little and way too late but certainly better<br \/>\nthan the lame denial after denial that has been coming out of the MLB<br \/>\nsound machine.<\/font><span style=\"font-family: arial;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Thursday the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, hosted a luncheon at the presidential palace for Dominican baseball players.&nbsp; Among those in attendance were Julio Lugo, Neifi Perez, Aramis Ramirez, Jose Offerman, Ronnie Belliard, Albert Pujols, Julio Santana, Odalis Perez, D&#8217;angelo Jimenez, Juan Carlos Cruz, Alfredo Griffin and George Bell.&nbsp; What distinguished this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}