Friday, March 18, 2005

Taking a beating
Baseball is getting run through the mud.
The leaders look inept, the players look dishonest, and the politicians that questioned them during the hearing look and sound, for the most part, like they are fed up.
I watched a re-run of the hearing early this morning on C-Span. What was striking, and what remains striking, is how baseball's leaders have escaped accountability up until this point.
Jose Canseco hit 40 homeruns and stole 40 bases in 1988. He was, and is, the only one to accomplish that feat. But even then, when he was in his early 20s, Canseco was dirty.
He couldn't have been the only one. And baseball had good reason to be suspicious. In 1987, power numbers sky-rocketed. Mark McGwire and Andre Dawson each hit 49 home runs. The number was done in mostly pitchers parks, the long cookie cutter stadiums that dominated the sport in the 1980s.
There were many reasons to wonder, but I can't imagine the higherups didn't have suspicions.
But they looked the other way.
That also translates into condoning the act.
I was eight years old in 1988, I am now 24.
Only now are we having hearings. Some of my peers who watched Canseco and McGwire are now baseball's future and present. Baseball never said to them that steroids were wrong.
And because of that attitude, steroids have been accepted into baseball's culture.
Canseco's most important testimony in his book was not that he implicated McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez.
No, he implicated himself. And we can certainly believe that.
Had baseball acted on its suspicions some 15 years ago, they would not be in Washington now.
But they let it slide. I have no sympathy for the sport I love. They are getting exactly what they deserve.

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