A year ago
Derrek Lee
was
Ryan Howard. He was the fresh face with the sweet swing; the tall, lean Chicago Cub who would lay the stench of baseball's drug-induced ugliness behind us. He was going to make us believe again that a man can conquer fences without being juiced. Lee closed 2005 with a career high 46 home runs -- not quite enough to stir Roger Maris' restless ghost - and the National League batting crown, and he was named an All-Star for the first time in his nine major-league seasons.
Today, the winds blow for Howard. On Sunday afternoon, Philadelphia's Bunyonesqe first baseman, hit his 57th homer of the season, four shy of Maris's single-season "record," 16 behind Bonds's mark.
His Phillies are still on postseason life-support, a game behind the suddenly struggling Los Angeles Dodgers in the wild-card race with 13 to play. Still, he's the unquestioned NL MVP. No disrespect to St. Louis Cardinals star
Albert Pujols or New York centerfielder
Carlos Beltran
, the best of the Mets this season; but 2006 belongs to Ryan Howard.
Lee's season ended Sunday. He told reporters in Chicago he'd miss the last days due to the illness of his 3-year-old daughter, Jada. There aren't many details, nor should there be. Lee and his wife Christina seek only prayers for their lone child.
In a statement, Lee said: "My daughter's lost some vision in one eye and we'll find out more at a later time; we have to go through some more tests. Right now we just ask for everyone's prayers. We need a miracle, we need your prayers. We need everyone to believe she's going to be OK."
Howard, at 22, may be too young to know that the winds can change just like that. One day it's at your back; the next it's knocking you on your ass. Lee hit only eight homers in this lost Cubs season, and played only 49 games, mostly due to a wrist injury that now seems as significant as a hang nail. Whether
Dusty Baker keeps his job, whether
Kerry Wood ever becomes the pitcher he's supposed to be, whether the Cubs ever shed their curse, all seem small when a teammate's child is ill. "Every time there's one thing you think is the most serious," Baker said Sunday, "there comes a more serious one."
Howard is learning about the winds. His personal home run derby in the second half of the season has not gone without scrutiny. He's an icon in Philly, a city always in need of one. And he's been held up as the next one who'll lead baseball out of The Steroid Era and into the Age of Clean Samples.
Bad timing. Some have, rightly or not, just wondered …
And frankly, it is too soon to simply accept what we see -- and want -- as fact and not wonder, rightly or not. Not with baseball having just begun to test for performance-jolting drugs with any credibility, and with the sport still under an investigation going nowhere. Not with tainted samples popping up like annuals in the spring. Not yet.
I want the wind to keep blowing for Ryan Howard, and I believe it will. His swing his pure and he -- along with fellow new-jacks ballers like
Joe Mauer
in Minnesota,
David Wright and
Jose Reyes, the Mets' twin bazillionaires -- seems the kind of star for the long haul, who'll be around the game long enough to outlive the ugliness.
That he's here now, that he's enduring skepticism by association as he approaches what was once baseball's most storied mark, will give him a greater appreciation for the days when he'll be able to swing without worry. And we'll no longer have to wonder.
