Kay's Korner: A Whole new perspective over the steroids hunt, By: Eric Kay

June 14, 2006

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hear about performance-enhancing drugs and baseball. While the topic is one Brady Anderson reference away from becoming background noise, I keep asking myself one question over and over: Why?

Not "why did they do it?" or "why didn’t baseball do something sooner?" -- it’s "why now?"

We all knew something was fishy in the go-go longball ‘90s, but we turned a blind eye to steroid use for so long. We saw Sammy Sosa’s exterior go from Chris Rock in CB4 to The Rock. We didn’t care. We saw Mark McGwire go from Tate Donovan to someone who could eat Tatum O’Neal. We didn’t care. And we watched Barry Bonds go from Wesley Snipes in Major League to Wesley Snipes in Blade. We sort of didn’t care.

Now we care. And it’s all Whole Foods' fault.

We didn’t care about all those super-sized athletes when we were eating genetically-modified produce and cow meat so full of hormones a ribeye would make Laverne Hooks sound like V.I. Warshawski.

Now it’s all about "organic," "natural" and foods "made with whole grains." Whole Foods isn’t just for ruffage anymore. It’s got steaks, seafood, clothing, coffee and wine. It’s a five-tool player. On top of that, it sells a greater sense of self. Because there’s no way in Hades a Whole Foods shopper is dipping their gluten-free pita bread in your preservative-laced Safeway-bought hummus. Ain’t happening.

It used to be cool when our athletes pumped themselves full of Human Growth Hormone, Andro and a mixture of British Bulldog and Scott Steiner DNA. Being big was so cool that future Hall-of-Fame pitchers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux went public with their envy, professing the cold, hard truth that chicks dig the long ball. The corollary was: Chicks dig ballpark franks made from the best lips, rump and rib cartilage our pigs, cows and rats had to offer.

But sheik is now defined by tofu dogs and speedy Scott Podsednik (Of note: He’s married to Kay’s Korner favorite Lisa Dergan). And as long as we’re paying for apples free of insecticide, there’s no way we’re going to let our athletes pick the forbidden fruit of the BALCO tree.

Whole Foods’ origins on this planet trace back to 1980 when it was a small Austin grocery outpost. Its first expansion occurred in 1984 (the same year BALCO formed, hmm...) when it opened its first store in Houston. In 1999, the chain opened its 100th store and was even pushing wheatgrass in the epicenter of the universe -- Manhattan -- by 2001.

Its slogan is "Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet." It’s certified "organic" and does all those things -- recycling, championing alternative energy and fighting poverty -- that get the Al Gore stamp of approval. It’s all part of a package aimed at giving us a sense of pride and self worth. I’m buying this baby spinach not just because it’s good for me, but because it got to this shelf the right way, unlike its cousins in the produce aisle of Kroger or Publix. It’s saying "I’m aware."

And as the old saying goes, "you are what you eat." We’re now just as concerned with how an item got to the grocery store shelf as we are with its price. But we couldn’t bring the real world to the commune, so we brought the commune to the real world. What a job we did. Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 company (No. 479) and the witch hunt to rid baseball of its cheaters is in full force.

It was only a matter of time before our new food beliefs would trickle down into baseball. After all, baseball is second fiddle only to eating in America’s hierarchy of pastimes. So who wouldn’t want their favorite sport additive-free? If anything, it would allow fans to turn their noses up at sports that didn’t exclaim their own organic nature.

But maybe it’s not really all about applying the big "O(rganic)" to all walks of life. Maybe we only dig Whole Foods because it covers up our dark, dirty little secrets.

During an interview with USA Today last year, University of Southern California psychology professor Jerald Jellison said, "Whole Foods offers a psychological absolution of our excesses. After filling your cart with sinful wine, beer, cheese and breads, you rationalize it's healthy, so that cancels out the negatives."

So maybe our love of Whole Foods isn’t so altruistic. Maybe it’s not all about eating healthy, organic foods. It’s about projecting an image that we care.

That’s what this witch hunt is. It’s not about making sure our players are healthy. It’s not about changing the future. It’s about feeling guilty for all the gorging we did in the ‘90s. It’s about cleansing ourselves for liking all those 10-7 games and 500-foot homeruns that we knew were as healthy as a jumbo Slim Jim. We hit the buffet hard then and now we’re remorseful.

It’s about us -- the consumer, not them, the players. It’s about us manifesting our collective voice to proclaim how health conscious we are. It’s about us showing off to the world how smart and savvy we are. It’s about us making sure our most visible citizens represent our new health-first society to the global community. It’s about us not letting those overpaid, over-pampered athletes take the easy road. If we’re scanning every bag of tortilla chips for fiber content, there’s no way we’re letting them take a bath in "clean" and "clear" gels.

Because no matter how fun Whole Foods founder John Mackey thinks shopping for food can be, it’s not exactly up there with wet T-shirt contests and spending a rainy Sunday watching the Fast and the Furious franchise. We’ve sucked down the Omega-III and soy milk, now it’s the ballplayers turn.

It will be interesting to see how far this organic revolution goes and what happens when the first bad bag of lettuce or mad-cow tainted beef shows up at a Whole Foods, essentially breaking the illusion of organic health. Who knows, maybe it will be the year Mark McGwire is eligible for the Hall of Fame.