Mum’s the word when it comes to talking steroids, By: Doug Clarke
10/7/06
Off my chest …
It’s been brought to my attention that there is one subject I seem to be shying away from, as if it were Conan O’Brien’s forehead or pompadour hairdo — and to come in contact with it would leave me in an altered state, if not permanently damaged. Some of you have gone so far as the accuse me of shirking my responsibility as a columnist.
The subject in question is steroids. In particular, the use of steroids in baseball.
And you’re right; I have taken a very wide berth around the matter – going so far as to cross the street when I saw the topic bearing down on me – just as I would do if I saw Conan The Comic long-striding toward me from the other direction.
As for the second charge, I plead Nolo Contendre and throw myself on the mercy of the court.
My defense? Simple. It hurt too much to talk about it. If I have sinned, sinned most grievously, it would be for loving the game and its players too much. At heart, I am still the kid walking down 21st Street, approaching Lehigh Avenue, walking along with my dad toward old Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
There would be the twin spires at the corner, behind home plate, and once inside … coming up the ramp toward our seats above third base … there would be the first electric jolt of joy at seeing the emerald grass and the puffy white bags with the infield dirt still wet from the watering the ground crew gave it.
So many games inside those twin spires at 21st and Lehigh. Saw Stan The Man there … and The Splendid Splinter, hitting one into the light towers in right … and Jackie making that diving catch behind the bag on the last day of the 1951 season … and Feller and Boudreau when my dad’s team, the Indians, were in town … Roberts and Simmons and Ashburn … the A’s had Zernial and Fain and Valo and Brissie and a bad team … Raschi and Reynolds and DiMag … me tugging on Joltin’ Joe’s arm for an autograph one Sunday afternoon, following him right onto the team bus where the driver picked me up and carried me off. The time Eddie Waitkus, the Phils first baseman, climbed into a waiting car after a game with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He swore when his cigarette was knocked out of his mouth. I thought he looked like a gangster. The smoking part didn’t bother me much. My dad smoked Camels.
The years went by, me loving the game — and all the modern players — even while Bud Lite and Donald The Fehr tried their best to ruin it. Then one day the word steroids came into the language and before you knew it there was McGwire not talking in front of a Congressional committee and Raffy Palmeiro pointing his finger at the committee saying he never took steroids.
Not only did I want to believe Palmeiro, I did believe him. Did because to do otherwise would hurt too much. Palmeiro had always been among my favorite players.
Truth to tell, I always felt (and still do to a large extent) that the emergence of smaller, retro-style ballparks, along with the general decline in pitching and the really tight, hard-as-nails (and with hardly any raised seams) baseballs that had the commissioner’s stamp of approval shared the blame every bit as much as steroids for baseballs flying further and leaving the yard with greater frequency.
Steroids? The Cream? The Clear? Yup, they were in there, too, along with McGwire’s special Andro powder — while Bud Lite and Donald The Fehr looked the other way because the home runs were flying and it was bringing the fans back to the park after the ruinous ’94 Strike. Was a business decision: Make the balls tight and hard and look the other way while players drank their creatine shakes and offered their butts in bathroom stalls so a teammate could inject him. Everyone reaped the profits – Bud, Donald, the players, the owners and, golly, ain’t life grand?
Sosa hit his 66 bombs, and McGwire 70 and then Bonds his 74 and the grand old game was even grander. Except to us purists, who thought that was a little too much hitting and pointed to the juiced balls, the terrible pitching and the bandbox parks.
Then along came Jose Canseco, the Benedict Arnold of The Steroid Era. “Say hello to my little friend,” yelled Jose, holding up his book for all the world to see. Jose with his gold chains and his steroid muscles and his slicked back hair and the suits with the pin-stripes as wide as a bat. Who wanted to buy what this guy was selling? Not me.
After all, Canseco was the guy who once said of the Oakland A’s, “All they care about is winning.” Jose had other priorities: his cars, his gold chains, his women, his muscles, his tan, his home runs. Winning? Not so much.
There is, of course, Barry Bonds, the Poster Boy for steroids. Some would say Barry has taken the brunt of the abuse because he is black. Maybe. I’ll buy some of that, but not much. Barry’s such a loathsome personality filled with so much hate and anger that it wouldn’t matter if he were white or purple. You just don’t like this guy. Period. Unless, of course, you live in San Francisco, which is always in denial about one thing or another. When it isn’t, it’s drinking a nice Chardonnay and being mellow by the Bay.
Other than Balco Barry with his swollen head and neck and arms, we really don’t know for sure who did ‘roids and who didn’t. We can only guess. Guess and convict people based on unsubstantiated accusations. The latest players to be so tainted are Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Myself, I simply do not know.
One thing I do know is that steroids never helped one person hit a baseball being thrown 95 mph or a ball that is curving or sliding or knuckling. It can maybe help you throw a ball harder, but it can’t help you actually hit it. No one’s invented that kind of miracle pill yet.
It can help you hit the ball further and it can help you rebound from injuries faster, but it doesn’t make your reflexes quicker, your batting eye sharper, your coordination smoother or your batting average higher. Steroids do none of those things. A .250 hitter is still going to be a .250 hitter, only with more power.
I still marvel at the thumping the Palmeiros and the McGwires and the Sosas – and yes, even Barry Bonds – did during the Steroid Era. They were always legitimate good hitters, they just became more so and their numbers make them Hall of Fame worthy. That “worthy” being a mathematical calibration, not a character one.
They did what they did, whether they were steroid-assisted or not. If they want to put these players in a special section labeled “The Steroid Era,” fine. Do that. And also remember to put a label “The Spitball and Emory Ball Era” above the plaques of the pitchers from the 1900s, the Twenties and Thirties. And how do we know Jimmy Foxx or Rogers Hornsby didn’t cork their bats for a couple summers? We don’t. Never will.
As one writer put it, “I always kind of figured that cheating was part of the game of baseball, anyway. Its origins go back to the days when baseball players were a rough breed living in boarding houses. Cheating is part of the game’s culture.”
And it is. Steroids and amphetamines is a whole different country, though, and I’m wary of going there without proof or admissions of guilt. If you want to say that I am being too much the ostrich – burying my head in the sand – on this issue, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
I just want it to go away. All of it: the issue, the steroids, the amphetamines, the greenies, The Cream, the cheating. I flinch for myself and I flinch for the game when I read about steroids and amphetamines. It’s as wrong as rain, this business of steroids, so I’m rooting hard that we have seen all of the iceberg and not just the tip of it. I fear that’s not the case, but I still hope. I follow the game and hope for the best, because that’s what baseball is – hoping for the best.
When it comes to baseball, yeah, I plead guilty of being too much a fan, too awed by the talent it takes to play the game and too enamored of the players who play it. I am, when you get right down to it, the newsboy outside the courtroom crying in a plaintive voice, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Or Raffy, or Rajah, or Sammy, or Andy, or whoever’s name comes up next.
For that I apologize. And not at all.
