Summer game under a steroid cloud

April 1, 2006

Baseball season is here, signaling not only the return of the game that is a Berkshire passion but the arrival of spring and the prospect of the long hot summer. Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans are ready to resume their ancient feud, and while fans may profess hatred of the other team, where would the Red Sox be without the Yankees, and vice versa? Can you have Batman without the Joker, or Hillary Clinton without Bill O'Reilly?

A big cloud hangs over this baseball season, however, and it formed over San Francisco, where Giants slugger Barry Bonds is poised to begin a joyless pursuit of the home run records of Babe Ruth and all-time homer king Hank Aaron. A chase that should have riveted America is now looked upon with something more akin to dread.

Mr. Bonds, who is the single-season home run king, went from gifted hitter to incomparable slugger at about the same time his body swelled to unnatural proportions, and the long-held suspicion that he used steroids was given considerable credence by the recent publication of the book "Game of Shadows," which offers strong evidence that Mr. Bonds used a variety of drugs to build his body and his home run records. The season begins with the launching of an investigation by Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig into use of steroids by Mr. Bonds and other suspected players, under the auspices of former U.S. senator and diplomat George Mitchell.

It's not clear what Mr. Mitchell is supposed to do, however. The investigation will focus on those implicated in the BALCO steroid scandal, specifically Mr. Bonds and New York Yankees sluggers Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, but unless they are indicted for perjuring themselves in front of the federal BALCO grand jury, the investigation is without teeth. Its real purpose may be merely public relations, the appearance of action long after the time for action had past.

Mr. Selig and team owners looked the other way when the beefed up Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shattered the game's single-season home run records, cheered as they were by booming attendance and high TV ratings. The Players Association resisted all but token drug-testing efforts, with association head Donald Fehr smugly intoning that testing would violate the players' privacy. By protecting the guilty, of course, the association implicated everyone in baseball as potentially guilty, leading the hypocritical association to decry the steroid "witch hunts" they could have avoided.

By the time a shrunken Mr. McGwire and a Mr. Sosa whose English suddenly failed him embarrassed themselves before a congressional committee investigating steroids the damage done to baseball from its tolerance of body-building drugs may have been beyond repair. The icing on the cake was the steroid suspension last season of Baltimore slugger Rafael Palmeiro, who had wagged his finger at the committee while denying he used steroids. Good luck to Mr. Mitchell in his pursuit of an investigation that is about a decade too late.

Baseball, however, is a resilient sport, and has long survived the best efforts of those who oversee and play the game at the highest levels to ruin it. It is difficult to imagine how the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry could be even more heated, but the signing of free agent Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon by the Yankees has made it so. Mr. Damon was more than a fine leadoff hitter for Boston — with his long hair and beard and his superlative performance during the Red Sox march to the 2004 World Series he was a cult figure. Now shorn and spruced up he has done the unthinkable for a Red Sox fan — joined the Evil Empire.

Boston not only lost Mr. Damon, it has a new infield and an almost entirely new bullpen. With Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz back in the middle of the order, however, Red Sox fans will still recognize their team. The Yankees, as usual, have a ferocious lineup, but an aging and injury-riddled pitching staff may determine their fate as they pursue the World Series champion Chicago White Sox. Berkshire fans of the New York Mets, many of whose allegiance goes back to the days of the minor league Pittsfield Mets, have reason for optimism thanks to off-season trades and free agent signings.

It's too much to hope that Mr. Bonds will do the right thing and retire, sparing baseball his destruction of sacrosanct records. Nevertheless, drug scandals aside, the baseball season promises another great title chase in the American League East and many unexpected pleasures in the long march through summer. Let the games begin.