Bartolo Colon-O-Meter: Who Will Tell The Children?

Last season, we learned that a fat guy who throws a baseball was much more than a fat guy who throws a baseball—the pitching performances of Bartolo Colon were nothing less than an ongoing assay of the human condition. One bad start against the Toronto Blue Jays was a sign that we live in a world without magic. Bartolo Colon was finished. But then he was good again, and bad again, and OK, and kind of ordinary. This year, with the weirdly good Oakland A's, he was weird and good. Until today, when we learned—to our immeasurable shock and dismay—that a professional baseball player used drugs to help him play baseball better. All that apparent meaningfulness was nothing but vulgar, lawless biochemistry. There is nothing left to believe in.