Baseball beat: Unlike NFL, MLB can't escape constant attention over steroids
Sept. 9, 2007
News item: New England Patriots safety Rodney Harrison was suspended for four games by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell after admitting to a New York prosecutor that he obtained human growth hormone. Dallas Cowboys assistant coach Wade Wilson was suspended for five games for the same offense.
Let's say for a second that this story came from baseball and it was an All-Star player from the Red Sox and a coach of the Texas Rangers. Think the news would have been treated the same?
Harrison was suspended for a quarter of the season, a significant punishment. If Manny Ramirez were caught with HGH and suspended by Bud Selig for 40 games, how would that ruling have played in Boston? Consider that for a second.
No congressmen have demanded hearings into the NFL and its drug culture. No columnists have scrambled up to the moral high ground and proclaimed that football as we know it is dead. I have yet to see anybody suggest that any games won by the Patriots should have an asterisk because Harrison was using performance-enhancing drugs. Nobody is calling for more testing of NFL players or a wider investigation.
The news was portrayed as "stunning," and Harrison was lauded for telling the truth. After all, he was only trying to get back on the field after being injured. He'll be back in October, answer a few questions and that will be that.
The NFL got a free pass from the press, public and Congress, and it always has. NFL players are disposable, around for a few years, then replaced by some other guy in a helmet. Other than the quarterbacks, fans don't really become attached to players. So what if Harrison was suspended? Bill Belichick will find somebody to play safety. Now pass me a beer and tell me who you like in the Monday night game.
We're not here to defend baseball. The steroids era is a shameful period in the game with plenty of fault to go around - including a heaping share for the media. Selig was asleep at the switch, along with the Players Association, team owners, managers, general managers, scouts and fans. Everybody looked at the home runs and looked the other way.
But baseball does not get treated equitably when compared to football. Every major drug story in baseball gets blown up, and the future of the game is questioned.
Rick Ankiel allegedly purchased HGH three years ago, before it was banned by baseball, and he is the latest baseball player to get the public enemy treatment.
Reporters and photographers tailed Jason Giambi of the Yankees around Manhattan in the days leading up to him testifying to baseball's investigators in July. Barry Bonds became a human morality play as he chased down Hank Aaron's home-run record. Mark McGwire lives in seclusion in California, afraid to show his face in public after being tied to steroid use.
Baseball is trying, we can say that much. There are programs in place capable of catching cheaters at all levels of the game. It's not perfect, but it's a far cry from what it was.
But at what point will baseball get treated like every other sport? That's what we want to know.
