Steroid Investigation beginning far too late
Trying to argue the question of steroids in Major League Baseball now seems irrelevant. New articles, new evidence and new books surface nearly every day on the topic, and it suggests anything but a clean national pastime.
Baseball seems ready to do something about its past, and ready to look at some of the stars who made the records in question.
My immediate reaction to this news is it is eight years too late. Maybe an investigator (said to be former senator George Mitchell) can, by investigating Barry Bonds and others, give some answers.
The problem here is and has always been baseball's lack of interest in the whole thing. I find it difficult to believe that Commissioner Bud Selig has had any real change of heart on the issue of steroids. It's just that what made him and so many others rich before is getting him in trouble now.
Baseball players started getting big a long time ago. Homer numbers started shooting up after the 1994 strike. Players like the Orioles' Brady Anderson, a leadoff hitter with only a tad of power, started putting up major numbers.
With the homers came the fans. With the fans came the so-called "Baseball Renaissance," and along with that came huge money.
Money for the players. Money for the owners. Money for everyone.
Well, not exactly everyone. The fans were suckered into believing they were watching something really special.
So they parted with lots of money to watch history be made. Now it appears they were watching a drug-induced mirage.
As fans, we will never know what was real and what was not. Anderson may have been clean for all we know. But his sudden power surge in the mid-90s casts a cloud of suspicion over his career, as well as that of every power hitter from the era.
No player can be safe from this scrutiny.
But if every player is under scrutiny, then every manager, general manager, scout, and owner should be as well. Their silence over the last decade has poisoned the game. Instead of taking a stand 10 years ago and preserving some level of integrity, baseball's management waited so it could make some money.
Now, here's where we are:
• One of baseball's most cherished records is gone. Roger Maris' record of 61 homers in the 1961 season lasted 37 years. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shattered the record in 1998. Then, three years later, Barry Bonds broke it again. He finished the 2001 season with 73 homers; 11 more than Maris. Bonds, Sosa and McGwire are all suspected of doping.
• Perhaps THE most cherished record in all of sports will fall this year. Bonds appears a lock to pass Babe Ruth's 714 career homers. He certainly has a shot at the 755 hit by Hank Aaron. Non-baseball fans don't understand this: Records and numbers are what make baseball different than other sports. It's what connects the present and the past. Now a cheater could hold the greatest record. In his selfishness, it appears Bonds could not only disgrace himself, but also a record.
Now baseball wants to investigate. I appreciate its desire to cleanse the sport, but I have trouble sympathizing. If the game meant as much to the leadership as it did to the fans, all of this could have been avoided.
Investigate what you want, baseball.
But all you'll find is failure.
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