Pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, and by the end of the week, the entire membership of the Major League Baseball Players Association will be concentrated in either the state of Florida or the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. For every player in each location, there will be at least two reporters with one question to ask them: “Are you now, or have you ever been a user of steroids?” For the players who have spent more than five years on a major league roster, the next question will be “Are you on the list of 104?”
It’s been seven years since Jose Canseco washed out of baseball. It’s been five years since he published his book, Juiced. It’s been four years since baseball’s Black St. Patrick’s Day, when Congress called Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Mark McGwire to testify before them (Curt Schilling, hoping to get his picture in the paper, also tagged along).
McGwire’s silence that day destroyed his chances of being named to the Hall Of Fame. Palmeiro’s righteous – and fraudulent – indignation did the same to him. Sosa conveniently forgot how to speak English in the committee room, but the guess here is he won’t see the dais at Cooperstown anytime soon, either.
It’s been three years since San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams published Game Of Shadows, which pieced together the BALCO scandal and soon-to-be home run king Barry Bonds’, um, dabbling in steroids (allegedly). It’s been almost two years since the Mitchell Report was published, which it seems Commissioner Bud Selig thought would be the final word on the subject, and everybody would go home happy. It’s been about a year, now, since Roger Clemens went to Congress, dumped gasoline on his career, and set it on fire.
And now we have the man who was going to wipe Bonds’ asterisks out of the record book, Alex Rodriguez, in his own smarmy and insincere way, asking forgiveness for letting his cousin give him shots of a substance he didn’t understand, and taking thirty-seven seconds with a bit lip, before saying “thank you” to his teammates.
So, for the better part of a decade, one of the rites of Spring Training has been a national conversation – if that’s the right word – on steroids in baseball. It’s a time of year when the media has little to write about, and steroids have been a herd of antelope before a pride of ravenous lions. It is THE subject.
Why would you spend column space on the chances of an up-and-coming shortstop, when you can write with your own righteous, and sometimes fraudulent, indignation about what – insert fallen hero’s name here – has done to shame the game. Which topic will sell more papers, get more people to tune into the radio station, or bring more hits to the website?
I’m not saying the problem has been over-covered, or blown out of proportion. It truly is a cancer on the game. I’m saying that baseball fans deserve better. We deserve more. We fund this billion-dollar industry. We buy the papers. We go to the Web sites. We deserve real stories about real players. We deserve information, so when our kids are drifting off to sleep at night, they can do so projecting the impact of that shortstop on the Marlins’ running game. Baseball is meant to be entertainment. It’s meant to be an escape. It is NOT supposed to be the mirror we look into to remind us all of the sins we commit.
This has to stop, and it has to stop now. David Ortiz has suggested a very simple solution. Test everybody. Four times a year. If anyone tests positive, they’re banned for a year. Ozzie Guillen has endorsed that plan. So do I. I’d even suggest going further. Put the test on a permanent rotation, like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Test everyone from A-Z. As soon as you’re done with Joel Zumaya, start over again with David Aardsma. Two failed tests, and you’re banned for life. No mercy. This way, the players who experiment with it will stop, and the players who consistently use will be gone. That should eliminate the problem.
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have to understand that Rome is burning. They are killing the fattest golden goose of all time. I believe that many of the rank-and-file players agree with me. But the leadership is weak and stubborn. They don’t see how damaging it is to the game. Certainly, they understand that there is a problem, but they see it as a PR issue. And they see it as an historical issue, in that it threatens to bury the records that are the fabric of baseball.
They don’t understand that it threatens the future, as well. There are kids playing ball right now who don’t think they will have a chance at being in the big leagues without steroids. When kids start thinking that they have to take steroids to play baseball, the game is over. It will absolutely kill the game. It’s time for a scorched-earth policy.
By putting a program like that in place, they could not only save the game of baseball, but they could take the lead for every other professional sports league and amateur sports association in the world. This is an opportunity for baseball to take the lead in something. By being assertive, they could finally send the clear message that this cannot be tolerated. Cheating players cannot be tolerated. Wishy washy leadership cannot be tolerated. It is time to finally take a stand.
I love this game. For me, it’s a passion that borders on the unhealthy. There is nothing that will drive me away from baseball. Not a steroid scandal. Not a playoff canceling strike. Not a thrown World Series. Not even A.J. Pierzynski.
But I’m obsessed. And an idiot. And not normal. I’m not sure, how baseball can expect to attract fans to the game, when the game’s integrity has been compromised. And when all we hear about every February and every March is how a future Hall of Famer is not the person we thought he was. This is the time of year when baseball needs to be attracting fans, not repulsing them.
There need to be stories about up-and-coming starting pitchers, and how the Kansas City Royals absolutely believe that they are the Tampa Bay Rays of 2009. Hope needs to spring right now. And for the fifth year in a row, we get steroids. It’s unacceptable. How the leadership doesn’t see that is flabbergasting.
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Great article Rich. I am going to have to agree, the steriod problem is going to linger for a while, but damnit when I pick up the paper I want to read about Nick Punto ripping it up at short, not A-Rod juicing up.
Good luck finding that story, Brandon.
Are you suggesting that the #8 of the Minnesota Twins will not be on the All-Star ballot?
Oh, I think he’ll be on the ballot. Just the same way Marco Scutaro, Cesar Izturis and Erick Aybar will be on the ballot.
I also love to hear the “baseball” part of baseball, but the behind the scenes politics, scandal, and realism I also find interesting. Jim Bouton’s Ball Four is the best book to ever come out on the National Pastime. It has changed the way we look at the sport forever. Its too bad the media rarely looks at the sport like Bouton did (or they get too tabloid). If they started asking the right questions and doing an honest job of trying to talk about answers and solutions, then maybe it would be a little more embraceable for us (or at least bearable). I blame the players to an extent, but they were set up and are pawns in this all. Between corrupt (or ineffective) union reps, dollar sign owners, and bought off commissioners, little was done. I think in fact that the owners may have escalated the situation by making the game about runs, runs, and homeruns. Remember when pitching dominated the game? Seems like we were told that pitching wasn’t popular any more. Let’s shrink the strike zone, change the ball(allegedly), and allow (and encourage) the roids. Steroids supposedly saved baseball (you know McGwire vs. Sosa and later Bonds). Think the owners weren’t a big part of this, along with Bud “contracting” Selig? Not only that, but this “big run” baseball (fueled by steroids) bought these owners their new stadiums. Many many teams got in on this. Who paid for these freakin’ new stadiums? You did. And at what cost (education, health care, social services, etc.)? So what’s the point? What the hell you talking about in this long-winded response? Well, if you punish the players with a “scorched earth” policy of out for a year and done if caught twice, then I think the owners gotta get in on this. If a player on your team is caught then that owner/team gets fined that player’s salary. Kind of like the fine you get at a bar when you serve an underage kid. The bartender gets fined and the bar also gets fined. The owner has a place in this and why should the players have to take all the heat? This kind of policy will encourage the owners to make a very conscious effort to rid the sport of steroids. If you hit them where it matters, the pocketbook, then you might get them to actually care. And if the owners with money care, then you know the bought off commissioner will as well. As far as the commissioner goes, I don’t how you punish him. Maybe he has a limit of five suspensions and then is sent packing for being an ineffective commissioner?
I love the idea of fining the owner – or organization – the amount of a player’s salary. Not only would it shift the burden of prevention to the individual clubs, but I’d be willing to guess that it would bring a natural form of salary control to the game. I don’t think you can keep the players blameless in this thing, though. Those guys knew what they were doing. Yes, the owners marketed the crap out of home runs. They had pitchers on commercials saying “Chicks dig the long ball” for christ sakes. Pitchers! And yes, steroids had not been banned by baseball, but they were – and are – illegal. If those guys felt like they were working within the rules of the game, did they think that lifted them above the law? Why would McGwire not even discuss Androstenedione? Why did Sammy Sosa nearly punch Rick Reilly in the face when Reilly suggested he get publicly tested? Some of those guys may have not known what they were doing, but most of them did. They weren’t “pawns”. They’re as guilty as the owners. And the union leaders.
And the fans. We’re all complicit in this thing. Some of us were naive to think that when the home run numbers started going up it was because of a “juiced ball”. God how laughable does that sound now? I went out of my way to get to Wrigley Field in 1998 so I could see Mark McGwire take batting practice and then watch him and Sosa play in the same game. I supported this crap. The thing that really pisses me off is I’ve always been a pitching and defense guy. It’s like I sold my soul, because I thought it was good for the game. But I’d like to think I’ve come to my senses, too. I hope.
Really good to hear from you, man.