Steroids have had negative impact on baseball, By JAMES EWERS
June 4, 2006
Last weekend Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run, surpassing Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list.
Obviously hitting that many home runs is a pretty significant feat. Bonds hit his record-breaking home run in the Giants’ ballpark so he was given ovation after ovation by the fans.
While Barry has been getting closer and closer to catching the Babe, the animosity toward him has been growing at an equal clip. The baseball world must have taken Sominex since hardly an eye has been open as he has trotted around the base pads recently. Some of baseball’s dignitaries have been mysteriously absent during the Bonds home run derby.
Take, for example, Bud Selig who is the commissioner of baseball. Why wasn’t Commissioner Bud at Barry’s post-game press conference lauding his performance? Even his manager, Felipe Alou, was strangely absent. I mean, come on — where was everybody?
The young man who inadvertently caught the ball after going for a barbecue sandwich was whisked away from the ballpark after retrieving the ball. He wasn’t at the press conference either.
Don’t you kind of feel sorry for Bonds? He was smiling at the press conference, yet I believe there was a tinge of sadness because of the cloud of controversy around him.
Unless you have been tooling around the planet Mars on a roller coaster, you know that there is heavy suspicion that Bonds has been using performance-enhancing drugs. We know them to be called steroids. This baseball monkey has been on Bonds’ back now for over a year and has taken up residence with him.
Some months ago, Congress held hearings about steroid use among baseball players. The elite of baseball’s home run hitters showed up to make their pitch about never having used steroids. Enter Sammy Sosa who perfected the art of the two-step and the kiss to the heart and lips after each home run. Come on down, Mark McGwire, the gentle giant who hit some towering home runs while a member of the St. Louis Cardinals. And finally make room for Rafael Palmeiro of the Baltimore Orioles who swore up and down that steroids weren’t a part of his diet.
I still must chuckle when I think about parts of McGwire’s testimony. He really didn’t say a doggone thing. If anything, it is what he didn’t say. Later, Palmeiro tested positive for steroid use. Of course he denied it and said what I believe is now the official steroid phrase — “I did not knowingly put any illegal substance into my body.”
All of the men that I have just mentioned as home run kings have now faded into double plays. Sosa, a longtime player with the Chicago Cubs and most recently with the Baltimore Orioles, has retired. McGwire is keeping quiet and Palmeiro has just left the scene. I don’t think I have heard his name once this year.
The book “Game of Shadows,” written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, strongly suggests that Bonds did use steroids. Selig is now using this book as a basis for the case against Bonds.
I don’t want to argue the merits of using a book to build a case against someone. However, his harshest critics have quoted chapter and verse in the book to make their case.
How in the name of the Great American Ball Park did steroid use run so rampant in the game of baseball? Whose fault is it? I offer that it is baseball’s fault. It is my thinking that down through the years players were using steroids and baseball higher-ups were simply turning their heads. Now, within the past five years, steroid use has become a hot topic. This steroid discussion was fueled even more by the epic home run battle between McGwire and Sosa just a few years ago. It wasn’t uncommon for them to each hit two home runs a night. Was the baseball juiced? Were the bats juiced (corked)? Or were the players themselves juiced? I remember looking at the arms of both Sosa and McGwire and thinking that my multiple vitamin doesn’t do that for me.
Bonds has a long way to go to catch Hank Aaron, who hit 755 home runs during his career. It is my strong thinking that Bonds won’t catch Aaron and that he will have to be content with being No.2 on the home run list.
Now that steroids are front and center, let us hope that baseball officials keep a watchful eye on the players. In addition, meaningful sanctions will cut out a lot of steroid consumption. If players realize that they can be booted out of baseball for steroid use, then that message may resonate with them. Let us hope that this dark period is behind us so that we can keep baseball as America’s pastime.
James B. Ewers Jr. is an educational consultant and lives in Middletown.
