Blame Major League Baseball for Steroid Era, Not Players
If baseball is America's past time then cheating at baseball runs a close second. Gaylord Perry entitled his autobiography Me and the Spitter and brazenly released it during the middle of his playing career. Pitcher Whitey Ford used his wedding ring to cut the baseball, third baseman John McGraw grabbed players' belts as they rounded for home, George Brett loved the pine tar and Ty Cobb was so famous for spiking second basemen that his spikes up slide has forever been immortalized in bronze outside Comerica Park.
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What do these cheaters have in common? They're all members of baseball's most hallowed institution: the Hall of Fame. Their cheating is dismissed as "boys being boys". We even laud guys like Gaylord Perry for their cunning and ability to pull a fast one on the ump.
It's not cheating if you don't get caught is a maxim we baseball fans used to live by. Not anymore. Ever since the congressional hearing on steroids, we've been living in the greatest witch hunt since Salem. Enough already.
This is not an apologia for Manny Ramirez. He broke the rules that were in place. But guys like Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens used steroids before Major League Baseball implemented a penalty for steroid use in 2005.
Think back to your school days. Did you ever have a respected teacher take a maternity leave and the principal hired a weak-willed substitute to take her place? Of course the students are going to act out and take advantage of the substitute for those two months. When there are no rules in place, people will take advantage. It's called human nature.
So put Mark McGwire in the Hall of Fame already. The same goes for Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, A-Rod and the Rocket when they become eligible. Don't blame the students for the substitute's incompetence. Issue a general clemency and move on.
Critics argue that steroid use made a mockery of the record book. But which is the bigger travesty: Bonds hitting 73 homers on the juice or Babe Ruth hitting 60 in an all-white league?
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Comments
It may be human nature for some people but not all. Not all kids take advantage of that substitute teacher. Not all kids cheat and not all adults do either. It does seem to be more accepted than it once was though. U.S. society does not shun a cheater. Many are rewarded. Not just in sports.
Also, allow me to expand upon the substitute teacher analogy from the post. Imagine the teacher is called out of the room during a test. A student goes up to the desk and begins reading answers off the key. Would you not write them down knowing there would be no penalty if you did?
Now imagine you're a major league baseball player. You're well-paid and want to keep your job. Seemingly everyone around you is juicing. Do you take a moral stand or do you juice too, knowing that jobs that pay in the millions only come along once in a lifetime?
And if Ruth's Ruthian achievements are to be discounted because he played when the sport was "all white" then all records prior to, let's say, 1960 (when the numbers of African American players was growing) should be suspect, replaced or ignored.
Does that mean that records should change again when at minimum the plurality of major leaguers are Latin American?
But steroids and performance enhancing drugs; as far as I'm concerned, that's something else altogether. It's an "external" performance enhancement used, arguably, to augment skill but it also removes a "level playing field". Perhaps, as in professional wrestling, steroids should be required of all players. A player who does not want to take them would need a special waiver.
There's no place in any sport for these substances.
Thought provoking post