Writers off base on baseball steroids, By: Dave Zweifel

Jan. 24, 2007

It's too bad that those body-enhancing substances called steroids were ever invented. Because if they weren't, then perhaps baseball writers and commentators would actually have to write and talk about the game.

The nation's baseball "experts" have spent untold broadcast hours and immeasurable column inches the past several weeks explaining why former St. Louis Cardinal slugger Mark McGwire doesn't belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Some of it was enlightening, but most of it bordered on the asinine, particularly those who commentated that "morals" have to be taken into account.

If morality is a prerequisite to be enshrined in Cooperstown, then we'd better start throwing out the plaques of all those racists, womanizers and hopeless drunks who baseball writers of old thought were perfectly fine gentlemen because they could hit, field and pitch better than their peers. So what if Cap Anson and Ty Cobb were bigots. That was something that never concerned sports writers - they just looked the other way.

And that's exactly what today's baseball writers did during this so-called "steroid era." They looked the other way when "Big Mac" got bigger and Sammy Sosa gained 30 pounds over a winter. Not until after Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti accused some of their colleagues of indulging in illegal substances did any of these new-found geniuses see a scandal. Now, it's a nonstop topic.

To this day, however, none of them knows for sure whether there really is a scandal. They all assume that the great home run race between McGwire and Sosa in 1998 was tainted by steroids. And as Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey observed a few days ago, he reserves the right to be the judge and jury. All are guilty until proven innocent. Yet many of these writers now condemning McGwire benefited themselves from the hoopla that he and Sosa generated, some even writing books about it.

And then there was that dope from the Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago paper, who refused to vote for anyone - Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn included - because he wasn't sure whether they, too, might have been on steroids. Please spare me. Steroids have proven to be destructive to the human body; that's why we don't want kids taking them. If ironman Ripken set his longevity record while on steroids, he would be a medical miracle. The Southtown baseball writer ought to have his Baseball Writers Association of America credentials revoked for stupidity.

Make no mistake, steroids aren't a good thing and, yes, those who used them are cheats, just like the spitballers who, even though their transgressions were well known, were voted into the hall anyhow. But, unlike spitballs, steroids weren't illegal when McGwire went on his spree. Besides, do any of these reborn steroid experts know for sure how many pitchers McGwire homered against may have been on steroids themselves?

The game has changed constantly. Gloves are bigger, the mound is lower, ballpark fences are shorter. A recent university study even concluded that the baseball itself had a larger rubber core during that home run barrage in '98.

All I know is that McGwire and Sosa gave baseball one heckuva show that year and the fans - and every baseball writer - hung on every at bat for the last month of the season. Today they claim they were on steroids - just look at their size. Funny, they couldn't see it then.

The writers can keep them out of the Hall of Fame if they want, but let's be honest: They really don't know what they're talking about.