Mitchell involvement in steroids probe good for baseball
April 3, 2006, Morning Sentinel
The announcement Thursday that George Mitchell will lead an investigation into steroid use in professional baseball players is welcome news.
Mitchell, a Waterville native who served Maine in the U.S. senate for 15 years and chaired the peace negotiations that resulted in the Belfast Peace Agreement, adds credibility to the effort to solve a problem that has plagued baseball for too long.
Mitchell has a well-deserved reputation for integrity and a closer's ability to bring all parties to agreement even when they are separated by centuries of violence and hatred.
Cleaning up baseball should be easy compared to brokering peace in Northern Ireland, but that doesn't make it unimportant.
Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are a cancer eating away at our national pastime. They sully the exploits of today's players and cloud the memory of those who went before.
They are a problem bigger than Barry Bonds. He just happens to be the guy caught in the spotlights when the warden finally decided to crack down on the inmates.
Major League Baseball only began testing for steroids in 2003. Penalties were introduced the next year. For decades, professional baseball turned a blind eye to a problem that has eaten away at a game with deep roots in our national psyche.
Consider the furor over the revelations of Bond's reported steroid use in the book "Game of Shadows," written by two investigative reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bonds, who seems to go out of his way to be unpopular with fans and the media, hasn't helped matters with his arrogance, but what makes the whole mess impossible to ignore is the fact that he has a shot at eclipsing the career home run totals of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, both revered heroes.
Ruth is the legend that professional baseball was built on.
A child of the Baltimore streets who was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys because he was uncontrollable, he developed into one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived.
He could run, pitch and field better than most and hit better than anyone. He became a symbol for untouchable greatness. The New York Times called Enrico Caruso the "Babe Ruth of operatic tenors." The owner of the Chicago Bulls once described Michael Jordan as "the Babe Ruth of basketball."
His home run record lasted over 30 years, until Hank Aaron, a quiet hard- working man who never graduated from high school, eclipsed Babe Ruth's record as the country was still coping with the aftermath of segregation.
He received thousands of letters a day, many from racists.
Aaron said that the thing he liked about baseball was the chance to bat.
"You stand up there alone, and if you make a mistake, it's your mistake. If you hit a home run, it's your home run."
Baseball has always been America's sport because it is inherently democratic, intrinsically fair.
Everybody gets a chance to step up to the plate.
There is no subterfuge in the duel between batter and pitcher, just two men 60 feet apart staring each other down. It is as real as real gets, or at least it was.
Now fans look at Bonds and wonder if he deserves to be in the company of Ruth and Aaron.
Steroids have robbed us of the level playing field and left every modern achievement in doubt.
Did Mark McGwire get those forearms naturally? Did he surpass Roger Maris's record with his own talent and hard work, or did he steal it with injections?
Our sports heroes are role models whether we admit it or not. Children wear the numbers of their favorite players to school. Adults wear them to the ball park.
By failing to crack down on steroids, professional baseball has made winners out of cheaters and sent a terrible message to our children.
It is hard to believe that the surge in steroid use among teens is not connected to the success of professional athletes who flout the rules.
A crackdown in professional baseball is long overdue. Mitchell, with his reputation for fairness and integrity is just the man to lead the investigation.
