Okay, I’m done. Since A-Rod hit his 600 career homerun, I have had to listen to baseball writers gripe and moan about PEDs once again and how they will never, ever, ever vote for anyone with any sort link to PEDS. For the better part of a decade I have had to listen to these same whining baseball writers and fans bemoan the reality of PEDs in their beloved sport. They talk about the violation to the very essence of our national pastime. The talk about how records, which apparently is the only reason to play the game, don’t mean anything. They talk about being cheated by cheaters who cheated the game (such a meaty, melodramatic argument), the fans, the writers, the players who played before them, the kids and their parents, and the very founders of our great nation. Spare me.
Yes, steroids and other PEDs have no place in baseball or any other sport for that matter. They are bad for the game, create an unlevel playing field, and have proven to be destructive to the human body. They should be banned, rigorously tested for, and eliminated from the sporting world. This includes HGH, blood packing, amphetamines, and any other PED.
But spare me the drama baseball writers. Where were you in the summer of 1998 when Mark “Paul Bunyan” McGwire and his “Giant Blue Ox” Sammy were chasing Roger Maris’ record? You were cheering, writing epic columns, getting new gigs based on your tall tales of home run hitters and strike out pitchers. You benefitted. You reveled. You celebrated too. Baseball won back a disappointed and spurned fan base still licking its wounds from a labor strike that cost us all a World Series. We all cheered the epic accomplishments of Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, A-Rod, Bonds (okay, sort of) etc, etc, etc. We cleared out space for them in Cooperstown; we anointed them heroes and saviors. We never questioned their bulk (product of hard work and better nutritional science we told ourselves) or their power but neither did you holier-than-thou baseball writers. Where were you? Didn’t you grow up on Woodward and Bernstein? You went all People magazine on us with your “softball” questions to our “hardball” Gods. Where did you go Donald Fehr and Bud Selig?
So now, we’ll just throw the cheaters out. Wipe the records books of anyone who played during the 1990s and 2000s. Baseball writers will not vote in anyone who admitted to using PEDs, who is linked to PEDs, or even some who we suspect but have no proof. We think Bonds did (see bulk, hat size, shoe size, surly personality…um, strike the last one) but can we deny his greatness before he got ripped on flax seed oil? Do we have proof such as a failed test? Oh yeah, baseball didn’t have a test for PEDs they had the honor system (sans the Mitchell Report leaks). Again, what these players did was wrong. What baseball (as in MLB) didn’t do was wrong. What the writers failed to question and uncover was wrong. So we all are wrong.
This era, the Steroid Era for lack of a better phrase, cannot be wiped off of the books. We need to move past it and use it as a cautionary tale, a teachable moment. We should put up a big ass plaque in the Baseball Hall Fame that outlines the issues of the time and allows fans, parents, and kids to judge the accomplishments of the players during this era for themselves. Fans are not stupid and baseball writers need to realize that. We get that the pitchers and the batters were both on the “juice”. We get that it was pervasive. We get that the game is cleaner and more pure now (think hit and run, first to third, sound pitching, etc) because of the previous era’s transgressions. We also get that PEDs are part of the story of baseball for better or worse. So vote the great players in if they have admitted it and said they were sorry. If you want to protest in the first year of eligibility, fine, but vote the players in. Did they benefit, probably. But again, the pitchers were using too (see Roger Clemons, Andy Pettite, etc). But most of all, baseball writers get off of your collective high horse. I want to be able to go to Cooperstown with my kids and be able to discuss the history of baseball (the whole history) because even in the sad scandals and disappointing moments in the game’s history (and some of its players) there are lessons to be learned for future generations.
By the way, when are we going to pull players out of the Hall that took amphetamines? Remember “greenies”? Anyone think that they could have been performance enhancing? Anyone? Also, since the players were on the honor system, should we pull all dishonorable characters out of the Hall? Who makes the judgment on dishonorable? The Hall could lose Cobb, Ruth, Carlton (he was a jerk to reporters so banish him too), or Rose (whoops…I forgot we have a high horse for him too).
Which leads me to give baseball writers the Col. Nathan R. Jessep Award; this is an award that goes to a group on individuals that “cannot handle the truth.” Look what happens when you modify monologue, made famous by Jack Nicholson, from a Few Good Men to fit the baseball writers and their melodramatic conundrum:
I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Baseball, and you curse the cheaters. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That PEDs in baseball, while tragic, probably saved baseball. And steroids existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saved baseball. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want the ball over the wall, you need the ball over the wall…I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to men and women who wrote columns under the blanket of the very excitement that home runs provided, and then question the manner in which players and Major League Baseball did it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a bat, and stand in the batter’s box. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
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