SPORTS
14 Obiter Dicta
Second Shots
Reexamining Baseball’s Steroid Era
michael silver › staff writer
I
n the summer of 2013, a New York Times
investigation revealed that Alex Rodriguez had
been obtaining steroids from a man in Miami
for several years. This eventually resulted
in Rodriguez being suspended for the entire 2014
season, the longest steroids suspension ever passed
down in baseball. As Rodriguez prepares to return
to the New York Yankees this season, I continue to
be fascinated by the league’s reaction to the steroids
scandals of the last 10 years.
A number of the best players in the history of MLB
have been linked to steroids including Rodriguez,
Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens. These men have
transitioned from being historically great players who were destined to be remembered as sports
heroes to complete pariahs. Clemens has been convicted of perjury for indicating to Congress that
he had never used steroids, and Bonds has been
involved in a number of civil suits.
This group of players are vilified for being cheaters, and succeeding at the highest level of baseball by cheating. It is difficult to imagine that they
would have succeeded to quite the level that they
did without steroids. However, it is also absurd to
suggest that the entirety of their successes were a
result of their steroid use. It is widely accepted that
even before any of these players started using steroids they were already amongst the best players of
their era. They spent their careers competing against
many other players who were also cheating and were
still able to achieve incredible levels of success.
A number of players who today are widely
detested as cheaters, were, in the late 1990s, credited for saving baseball with their exciting offensive productions. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire
broke records, and returned baseball to the national
consciousness after labor disruptions earlier in the
decade caused fan interest to dwindle.
There is a long history in baseball of doing anything possible to gain a competitive advantage.
Many
pl ayers in the 1970 s
dosed themselves
with what were
called greenies to
enhance performance during games. Greenies were legal at the time
in the sport, and players felt that greenies boosted
their focus and energy reserves. Yet, greenies are
presently classified as amphetamines and banned
from the game. In fact, one of the most prominent users of greenies was the great Hank Aaron,
who today is remembered fondly and who by some
is considered to be the true record holder of most
homeruns hit in baseball. Though many suggest
that Barry Bonds should have an asterisk next to his
name in the record books for his use of performance
enhancing drugs, very few encourage the same
treatment of Hank Aaron
Just as amphetamines were allowed in the 1970s,
in the 1990s steroids were not outlawed in baseball.
In both situations, players were taking substances
permitted within the rules of the sport to give themselves a competitive advantage. It is strange that
today, one group of players is judged so much more
harshly than the other.
ê Photo credit: katchop.com
It is stranger that pitchers from the 1960s and
1970s such as Gaylord Perry, who famously, dangerously, and illegally used to throw spitballs, are
remembered fondly today. Stranger still, many players who played during baseball’s so called steroids
era, and were found to have used steroids, are much
less vilified than the group of great players discussed
above. Using the 2014 Blue Jays as an example, both
Marcus Stroman and Melky Cabrera have tested positive for steroids in their careers, and both are still
regarded favorably by most fans.
Baseball has also had a much stronger reaction
to steroids than the other major professional sports.
The NFL does not announce the reason a player
i s b ei n g su spended beyond
indicating that
they have been
caught using a
banned substance. This allows players to claim that
they tested positive for something innocuous such
as Adderall or an additive from their cough syrup.
Fans simply do not seem to care. The lack of positive
drug tests in the NHL and NBA are conspicuous. It is
extremely rare to hear reports of players from either
league testing positive for steroids. It is possible that
the players are simply not cheating, yet many have
suggested that there are instead deficiencies in the
respective testing programs of the other leagues. In
the NBA, players are given advance warning of when
to expect a drug test, and know that they will only
be tested a limited number of times per year. Players
can easily plan their steroid use to avoid any risk of
detection in the seriously lacking testing systems.
Again, fans seem to largely be indifferent.
Why then is the negative reaction to steroids so
much stronger in baseball than in other sports?
Part of the explanation may be that fans of baseball are more concerned than fans of other sports
“Baseball has also had a much
stronger reaction to steroids . . .”
about the records and the history of the game. They
see the records as sacred, and now that they feel that
a cheater may have broken them, these same fans
view the records as tainted.
This explanation is incomplete. A significant
additional reason for the vilification of these players is that they are simply not very likable. They are
brash and have demonstrated on several occasions to
be liars. The writers who shape public opinion never
liked Rodriguez, Bonds, or Clemens, so when the
opportunity arose, these same writers vilified them.
The entire reason that players like Bonds and
Sosa have been vilified is ultimately difficult to discern. Regardless, many baseball fans are beginning
to realize the absurdity of demonizing professional athletes who do anything in their power to
win, just as they had always been trained to do.
Unfortunately, this realization is too late for Bonds,
Clemens, Sosa, McGuire and the rest. Rodriguez is
the last of this group still playing professionally,
but is also unlikely to be forgiven because he so
resolutely refuses to fit the mold expected of him.
Instead he’ll just play out the rest of his 300 million
dollar contract as the villai