Steroid talk bad for baseball, English vocabulary, By: Danny Davis/Montana Kaimin
March 22, 2006
Throughout the years, children have learned about naughty words that start with the letter “S.” (Editor’s Note: Using the celebrity birthday method of picking winners and losers in its March Madness bracket (March 14th), the 19th hole went 21-11 in first round NCAA action. Unfortunately after a horrendous second round, only three teams on the 19th hole’s bracket are still alive. However, one of those teams is George Mason, a team the 19th hole picked to go to the championship game. On the other hand, Sports Illustrated has only two of the teams it projected to make the Final Four still alive.
In other words, the Montana Kaimin is as good as SI. Sort of.
Throughout the years, children have learned about naughty words that start with the letter “S.” Shit, suck, screw, slut-tastic and the Simpson sisters are prime examples of words that when used can result in mouths being washed out with soap.
Now we can add steroids to the list of inappropriate S-words.
Yes, sports fans, we are only 11 days away from the beginning of the 2006 major league baseball season and there is only one theme being rampantly thrown throughout the headlines.
The White Sox’ chance at a repeat World Series championship? Not a chance. Japan’s 10-6 victory over Cuba in the grand finale of the World Baseball Classic? Of course not. Roger Clemens’ possible retirement or the immensely you’ll-probably-need-sunglasses-for-this-one bright future of the Colorado Rockies? Hell no.
It’s all about that damned S-word.
All the diamond talk these days seems to be devoted to Barry Bonds and recent s**roid allegations stemming from an upcoming book by two San Francisco Chronicle writers. The book, “Game of Shadows,” which will be released on Thursday, accuses Bonds of rampantly using s**roids in a five year period from 1998 to 2003.
It should be noted that Bonds has never failed a drug test and, although he admitted to a grand jury that he unknowingly used two performance enhancing s**roids known as The Cream and The Clear, s**roids were not outlawed in baseball during the years that Bonds allegedly used them.
With these newest allegations there has been talk about everything from Bonds’ Hall of Fame chances to his pursuit of the all-time home run record.
And of course, as with all major controversies, race has managed to factor itself into the equation. However, this time it might actually have a place.
Some concern has been drawn to the fact that Bonds, an African American, has been given so much heat and responsibility for the 21st century s**roid saga.
Take for example a recent episode of ESPN’s afternoon talk show “Around the Horn.” The four-person panel was split in half on the issue with the white sports columnists essentially wanting to banish Bonds to Jupiter while the two African American panelists wanted to wait for actual proof and a positive drug test to be brought to the table.
The question is where were all of these Bonds haters when American golden boy Mark McGwire was smashing home runs out of the park at an astonishing rate in the 1990s? They were of course applauding McGwire’s efforts although it was painfully obvious that McGwire had gotten significantly larger since his rookie days in Oakland. A snooping reporter even found in McGwire’s locker a bottle of Androstene, an anabolic s**roid that, although not outlawed by Major League Baseball, was considered taboo by sporting events such as the Olympics. Yet, the accolades and juiced-up sports columns continued, praising McGwire for helping save the game of baseball.
Current Yankees slugger Jason Giambi and the late Ken Caminiti, both white men, have both admitted to taking s**roids around the time when Bonds allegedly was shooting up. However, are there 100 reporters around Giambi’s spring training locker on a daily basis or are sportswriters trying to posthumously vilify Caminiti? Even the Latino Rafael Palmerio, who failed a drug test, and the Dominican Sammy Sosa, who has been strongly suspected of using s**roids during his power surge at the turn of the century, have managed to avoid a lot of the scrutiny that Bonds has failed to escape.
One of ESPN’s staunchest Bonds critics, Around the Horn’s Jay Mariotti, has often campaigned for an asterisk to be placed by all of Bonds’ records. Granted, Mariotti is somewhat of an idiot, but this is perhaps his dumbest statement ever.
An asterisk is not going to solve anything. Then what? Should we refigure the ERA of the countless pitchers that Bonds hit a home run off of during the past few years? Should we also put an asterisk on other MLB all-stars that might or might not have taken s**roids during this era?
The s**roid era is no different than any other era in MLB history.
Babe Ruth made a name for himself during a time when blacks were not allowed to play in the major leagues. Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson had one of his finest years in 1968, going 22-9 and winning the National League CY Young award during a season that saw the pitching mounds modified, giving a significant advantage to Gibson and his fellow hurlers. Should we asterisk their records and strip these baseball immortals of their accomplishments because of the eras that they played in?
If anyone is to blame for this s**roid saga it’s us, the fans. We are the ones that hate low-scoring ballgames and fundamentals. It’s chicks that dig the long ball and sold-out ballparks that love 458-foot shots into the upper deck. It was America, and baseball itself, that chose to ignore the vastly changing physiques of our national pastime’s biggest stars.
We were taught as kids that cheating was wrong but with our heroes we ignorantly let it slide.
Now we are dealing with the consequences.
