On even more Steroids

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful and wise and eloquent comments in the last thread.

Ban 'em I say. If that's what people want, give it to them.

If steroids are to be banned because they are hazardous to the athlete's health, OK.

If steroids are to be banned because young people might get the (possibly mistaken) idea that they improve a player's ability to compete, OK.

By the same logic, though, we'd also have to ban nicotine and caffeine. Should we put an asterisk next to Jim Leyland's managerial record because he won all those games on the performance-enhancing quality of cigarettes? Don't say there's a difference. Any serious cigarette smoker will tell you he or she just can't concentrate when they really need to smoke. Children already get the message that cigarettes will make you cool and sexy and athletic from the tobacco companies. And they've been getting that message for more than 100 years. Why shouldn't baseball recognize that cigarettes are harmful to their players and that cigarette (or chew) usage encourages children to pursue false "enhancement"? Ban 'em.

Should we invalidate all trades that are made after the GMs have stayed up all night drinking coffee? After all, there's no doubt that the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine played a role. Did Billy Beane or David Littlefield have an unfair advantage in the negotiations for Jason Kendall because the one had better or more high-potency coffee? Unless we ban coffee from the clubhouse, players will continue to sacrifice good sleep and better nutrition in the name of some false performance advantage. And young children will grow up thinking they have to consume eighteen lattes a week if they want to be General Manager.

Protect the kids, yes. Amen to that. The best way to protect the kids is to talk sense to them. They won't get the idea that juicing up will necessarily improve their ability to hit a baseball if their parents talk responsibly about the role steroids and muscle mass play in the ballplayer's ability. The way the current Hate-Barry debate is going, kids are getting the message that steroids, legal and illegal, made him a big home run hitter. They are getting the message that they need to juice up if they want to compete. That's the real shame.

Baseball isn't weightlifting or boxing or sprinting. This is a much more complicated sport. Baseball requires a far greater range of abilities than any of the more limited skill-set Olympic sports. To state categorically that legal and illegal steroids are "performance-enhancing" oversimplifies the game far too much for me. Caffeine is performance-enhancing. So is nicotine. So is Viagra. So is Prozac. So is spinach (well, maybe only for some people). LSD was performance-enhancing for Dock Ellis, to hear him talk about his experience that day. I'll agree that maybe sign-stealing is "part of the game," but putting Vaseline on the ball, or using sandpaper: that is cheating. If cheating is what this is all about, let's drag old Gaylord Perry from the Hall of Fame and give him the witch treatment too.

In the course of a year-round fitness regimen involving all the best medical and motivational advice that money can buy, an athlete uses a cream or a pill that increases the efficiency of his workouts by some unknown and unproven increment. He goes to the ballpark. Maybe he is still capable of hitting a baseball - Marty Cordova became so muscle-bound, he lost the flexibility to swing the bat as he once did. And maybe he is not facing a pitcher who, because of his own illegal perfromance-enhancing hobbies, throws just like pitchers used to throw in the old days. If he can still hit and the pitcher is not equally juiced, maybe the batter hits the ball another five or ten feet if he makes contact.

And this is more serious that applying a foreign substance to a ball that makes it dance and move in some unnatural fashion? I can't believe that.

Because I'm not all that alarmed about the way Perry cheated, I can't get upset and believe that Bonds would have hit 37 home runs instead of 73 home runs had he only worked out like mad and not used "the clear" or whatever it was he used.

The role of steroids in baseball performance is not simple. Bud Selig will serve up a simplistic solution because that's what the fans appear to want right now. No politician will ever be caught doing anything less than being "tough on drugs."

I'm sure there will be a witch hunt, the implementation of some draconian drug-testing bureaucracy, and a further increase in ticket prices to pay for Bud's crusade to look good while making the sport safe from this boogeyman.

Because I believe that sports operates as an outlet or an escape for most people, when they get really upset about something in sports, I usually suspect they are displacing some concern or anger about something else. Maybe they are pissed that their boss raided their pensions or that their son didn't get into an exclusive college. Maybe they have gotten older and can't hit a baseball out of the infield anymore. Maybe a hurricane destroyed their orange grove. Maybe they stepped in a puddle and are at work, right now, with wet socks. Maybe they can't or won't recognize or express that anger. Maybe they need a safer target. Some people kick the dog. Some take it out on their kids. Others appear to have found release in hating on the High-Tech High-Paid Disrespectful Home-Run Hitter.

I see all this as a Bad Sign. Something must be very wrong to have people so fired up about some crisis of intergrity in professional sports. The whole Ron Artest thing was just another scene in this unfolding drama. Something is Wrong with the world.

At least we aren't worried about some perceived epidemic of cheating at the circus. When I turned on the radio this morning, I did not hear someone saying, "I don't know what to tell my children now that we know the Alligator Lady is a fraud." For that I'm grateful.

P.S. If we're going to hate on Barry, and as a Pirate fan a part of me wants to do that for the 1990-1992 NLCS performance - let's pick on him for not having won a World Series. Aaron has a ring, Ruth had a bunch of them, even Mark McGwire has a ring. I'd so rather see all this anger channelled into some discussion of the efficacy of the stars & scrubs strategy. Here's the greatest player of all time, or one of the greatest players of all time, and he's unable to lead a team to the ultimate goal.

This is the last I'll write about this for a while because I find the whole subject depressing. Thanks for all your great comments, and thanks in advance for any comments you might want to leave here.