Just for Sport

As a baseball fan, I have something at stake in this whole steroids thing. I’ve always felt that. For the last two or three years, it seems that every time I turn on the TV, somebody’s giving their take. I hate it. Stop talking about steroids, I’ll say, and talk about the games. I know I’m probably not alone in this. But all along the way, I’ve always known that something was at stake; I just didn’t know what.

That probably explains my recent intrigue about the subject. Whenever my friends and I get together and watch baseball, the topic always comes to Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, and the rest of the alleged steroid users. Some of us are more consistent than others. I usually end up saying that all of those people need asterisks next to whatever records they have, or more preferably, that they be removed completely. My friend Jeremiah openly boos Canseco, but pledges his blind allegiance to Bonds based on the fact that A) he plays for the Giants, B) he had Lasik surgery, C) he was good before, so what does it matter?, and D) Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame, so obviously integrity doesn’t matter anyway. I would refute all four of these arguments, but I digress.

The point is that as a baseball fan, you have to deal with Barry Bonds (and all the other alleged steroid users) on some level. There are several reasons for this. One is that Bonds currently holds the single season home run record, which for a long time was widely considered the most sacred record in the American sports world, and certainly in baseball. He’s also, at this writing, 45 home runs from tying Hank Aaron for the career record. There’s always the Hall of Fame thing, but HOF voters will likely set a precedent in a year or two when Mark McGwire’s name comes up for consideration. Finally, how you deal with Barry Bonds will dictate how you deal with steroids on the whole. My friend Reno says we should require steroids use in baseball so that the entertainment value will be higher, but obviously this is a perversion. The appeal of baseball (and all sports) is that there are humans like you and me performing these acts of talent, skill, and strength.

On some level, you have to agree that the use of steroids is bad for baseball, and I think most people do. The variable is the response people have to their apparent abuse. Several sportswriters I have read want to take the easy way out and label certain years as “The Steroid Era.” That way, even if there’s no asterisk, fans and others will know that certain records are basically illegitimate because they were achieved during a certain time period, sort of how basketball has created its own set of records that coincide with “The Shot Clock Era.” I have several problems with this. My initial reaction is that such a moniker would take away from baseball what other sports don’t have: meaningful statistics and records. Baseball doesn’t need asterisks, real or understood. When Maris passed Ruth in ’61, there was a huge debate because Maris got to play in more games than Ruth did. The general consensus was that you have to have consistency in the record book. A record is a record is a record. That’s why attempts to label eras (e.g. “The Dead Ball Era,” etc.) has never really caught on with baseball fans, and it’s also why baseball has a reputation for being the only sport with meaningful records. The so-called Steroids Era threatens all of that. Not only does it threaten the unique-ness of the sport, it throws a blanket over all of the players that never did steroids, which is why you can’t go around calling all the records that took place in a certain time period illegitimate. The cases have to be treated individually. That’s what makes Bonds’ case so sticky. He has polarized people. There are those that believe the media is too hard on him, and there are those that believe he manipulates the media and cries foul against them to gain sympathy. He’s always been a jerk and treated baseball as a business rather than a game, which won’t gain any favor with baseball purists. The opinions on him are so wide and varied that it seems that 98% of what you hear about him is suspect. This is why I have decided to read the book, “Game of Shadows,” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Jeremiah told me without reading it that it’s trash because it’s written by journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle, which he believes to be notorious for ripping Bonds. I happen to hold investigative journalism in high regard, however, so I have to admit that I’m going to be more likely to believe what it says. As a matter of fact, I’d rather read a book written by reporters from San Francisco than from across the country. The fact remains that Bonds is a god to San Francisco fans, so it’s not like these guys have something to gain from their constituency by contrivances.

In any case, these are my pre-conceived notions that I have before reading the book. Hopefully reading it will help me gain more insight and a better idea of how to treat the entire situation. I will report back when I’m done.