Baseball coming clean, performance enhancing drugs and Mitchell Report.
For years the standard play had always been, deny, deny till it feels real, and pretend until it goes away. Nobody believed but we accepted it, because we love the sport. Baseball, as American as apple pie and just under its golden, roasted, exterior there was some juice.
Baseball is America; it’s the crunch of earth, the feel of the grass at your feet and the clearest of blue skies on a diamond sunny day. It’s hope, the crack of the bat as it connects, the smell of the leather, the feel of the wood. As the generations passed each hero building on the last, the stakes raising ever higher, something had to give, integrity had to go, Baseball is America, call me an iconoclast, but our heroes had to die.
It started with 2003’s Mitchell Report and names like Cabrera, Cust, and Bones. What followed was Kirk Radomski’s “guilty conscience” he would not go down alone and so he brought with him dozens upon dozens. He even provided evidence. The not so well kept secret was out.
In 2000 Tony Gwynn estimated 30% of MLB players were using performance enhancing drugs. That was a conservative estimate. The blame game went under way, the coaches, the doctors, it was every one’s fault except the players. So why now, why are they coming out on prime time news and admitting their crimes. Worst yet, why are they crying about it? Well, they say steroids makes your balls shrink, and I’d say that answers the question.
Remember the glorious 1998 season? It was Sosa versus McGwire, it was the Irish working class versus the children of immigrants, it was the glorious rebirth of the great white hope, a nice, clean, emblematic competition echoing the racial tensions of the country it represented. It’s timing could not have been better. Some say it saved baseball, bringing it back to the forefront of pop-culture. The Titans had returned from their slumber and they were poised to retake the world. It turns out, like a whole lot of America, it was just a smoke screen, and mirrors showing us what we wanted to see.
Sure, looking back today, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I was a kid then, and I loved it. It’s a little like Santa-Clause, everything we’d been told was a lie, but all the joy we’d felt at the time can’t be taken away and in retrospect that’s why they did right? They did it for us.
After sanctions, legislations and witch hunts, lists were made and recently made public. And now comes the time where all the rats must either scurry towards the light, or die, drowned in a river of their own f***s. And so most are choosing the light, and how can you blame them? Just like Giambi who admitted his sins in 2005 and threw himself at the mercy of the people, hoping the truth would set him free from our pitchforks. And in return for their honesty we spare them the gauntlet, we forgive and we forget, because just like a girlfriend who years after a glorious relationship, teary eyed, admits to having cheated on you, it no longer matters and when it did, it was beautiful.
Let’s go down the list, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Cabrera, Clemens, Sheffield, Rios, Santiago, Giambi, Joyner, Palmeiro, Gonzalez, Hollins, Alvarez, Martinez, Boone, there’s too many to innumerate and if we new the truth, we’d have to sanction the entire league. If we seriously removed all the performance enhancing drug users, we’d be left having to recruit from high-schools, and even then, we’d have to worry.
They all brought different arguments, “the drugs were not illegal at the time”, “I did it for my health”, “It happened without my knowledge”. The entire story reeks of “I did not inhale”. It’s the classic case of men brought to their knees by their past indiscretions, of the untouchables brought down a peg for our viewing pleasure.
With Canseco’s “Juiced” autobiography in 2006 it was all over. The man even endorsed the use of these “supplements” he thinks they’re a good thing. It’s Machiavellian really, if you can’t win the conversation, just change the premise and put the very foundations of the argument into question. Shine a new light, we’ll see a different face, right?
At the end of the day the question here isn’t who did it, because they all did it. And the question isn’t why, because they did it for recognition, or due to pressure, they did it to further their careers, for material gain, endorsements, to be on billboards, to become heroes in the eyes of children, to be saluted at all the parties and have more money stashed than Fort Knox. If you ask me it’s about public opinion and an athlete’s willingness and ability to dance for the masses.
The train wreck that is MLB had come to a stand still, and we the people wanted a show, we wanted to be wowed. Barring any stellar performances we would take the next best thing, a massacre. We were hungry for something, and for years, they fed us, they fed us at the expense of honor, integrity, of truth, they fed us and we ate it up.
After all, this is baseball, as American as apple pie, a dessert, a guilty pleasure, all taste, little substance, representing a time that’s dead and gone.
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