Since its founding and receiving its special legal status, Major League Baseball has lived in its own little world believing all of the hype about being the national pastime and even having its own anti-trust exemption. The most recent example of baseball’s playing by its own rules is how MLB has handled steroid abuse by its players. It has gotten so out of hand, that the U.S. House of Representatives convened a committee to investigate.

First off, let’s remind ourselves why steroids are bad. When professional players juice up, they screw up their own bodies. To a certain degree, that’s their prerogative. However, if enough do it, the “clean” players don’t have a chance and feel compelled to do it as well. Worse, high school players emulate the pros with disastrous consequences. In fact, there have been two recent high profile suicides by adolescent ball players screwed up by steroids. Besides the health consequences, steroids can give players big mood swings. Area Man knows this first hand and as a skinny high school freshmen cross county runner whose gym locker was directly below a slightly disturbed 240 pound linebacker on the juice, I can tell you it was no picnic when the juice intensified his anger.

Other sports deal with it much more severely. In the Olympics, first time offenders are publicly identified and suspended for two years. A second time and you face a life time suspension. Now, let’s look at baseball’s policy. First offense, mind you, “offense” means that you are caught cheating: suspension or a fine up to $10,000. Remember that $10k is chump change to these guys. They can make more than that in a few hours autographing baseballs. A player must be caught cheating at least 4 times before they face even a one-year suspension. Thereafter it is up to the commissioner. No wonder everyone considers this policy to be a joke. Compare this to criminal law in California, on the third criminal violation you face spending the rest of your life in prison (ironically called the “Three Strikes Law”).

No sport is more driven by statistics and record breaking. Every move a player makes is tracked and recorded and when a long-standing record is threatened fans and media begin a countdown instilling drama into a sport that often lacks it. Because of this, Major League Baseball has every motivation to look the other way on steroid abuse despite the adverse affects it has on the players, the high schoolers emulating them, and (least importantly) the sanctity of the game.

Take for example, the home run battle between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire of a few years ago. This season long home run derby has been credited with re-energizing the sport. Unfortunately, if Sosa and McGwire were cheating by being juiced up on steroids (and let’s face it they were) then the record breaking season was all a sham. Here is part of the considerable evidence supporting this claim.

*Both Sosa and McGwire have long been suspected of being steroid abusers. These “rumors” were fueled by natural changes in physique and other factors. (As the saying goes “where there is smoke, there is fire.”)
*Both were publicity identified as steroid users by Jose Canseco. Canseco wrote that he personally injected steroids into McGwire. (Granted Jose is no peach but he named names).
*McGwire refused to deny using steroids while under oath. (An odd thing to do for an innocent person).
*McGwire’s refused to refer to steroid use as “cheating.” (Guess he would consider it hypocritical.)

One of the best comments about this whole mess was from an old time ballplayer (whose career dated back to the pre-steroid era) “when I played with Henry Aaron, Willie Mays and Ted Williams, they didn’t put on 40 pounds and bulk up in their careers, and they didn’t hit home runs in their late 30s as they did in their late 20s. What’s happening in baseball now is not natural, and it isn’t right.”

Independent Sources recommendation: immediately implement stringent drug use testing and enforcement (no less stringent than the Olympics drug policy would be a good start). Strip all records of anyone caught, even once. Put an asterisk by all records accomplished in the past 20 years unless the record holder can prove that the records are not the result of cheating. Finally, bar the players union’s ability to set or limit drug policy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 3:35 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.