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April 20, 2006

Baseball Ennui

For some reason, I just can't get myself to care about baseball at all this season. Part of the problem is time - I've been swamped with administrative work all semester, and haven't even had time yet to launch the fantasy league I organized over the winter. But I think the deeper issue must be the steroid scandals.

I've been surprised by how much this steroid stuff has bummed me out. No baseball fan awake during the home run boom of the last decade can be too surprised that it was largely powered by illicit substances. And thinking historically, this is hardly the first time the game has been widely influenced by cheaters - think of all the spitballers like Gaylord Perry who, at least in retrospect, seem more rakish than vile.

I guess it's the combination of corporate hypocrisy (it seems pretty clear now that the Yankees knew just what they were getting when they signed Giambi), institutional intertia (both MLB and the players' union sat on their hands as long as they possibly could on all this, until Giambi's cancer and the Bonds bust forced them to at least look like they were doing something), and the trashing of cherished records (Bonds chasing Ruth and Aaron).

The latter, in particular, is such a bummer that I feel like not watching any baseball highlights until Bonds retires. I'd been excited over the last few years to have the chance to see the career home run record broken in my lifetime, and now the prospect just fills me with dread.

Again, it's not really that I'm disappointed with Bonds personally - from all I'd read about his failings as a human being, juicing up never seemed out of character. And maybe in 50 years we'll remember him as another cantankerous competitor like Ty Cobb - part of the vast range of characters who makes the game's lore so rich.

But I sure wish somebody had called a halt to all this nonsense before something as central to the game as the career home run record was threatened. Maybe the worst part is how this all seems to cheapen, retrospectively, the accomplishments of Ruth and especially Hank Aaron, who handled racist harassment and even death threats with incredible poise on his way to breaking Ruth's record. Now the record may well end up just another number attached to a juiced-up cheater. Or think of the McGwire/Sosa home run race, so thrilling at the time, which now looks more like corrupt stunt than a historic rivalry.

What burns me the most, I think, is that if baseball really wanted a power explosion in the '90s, they didn't even have to go this route, one with unknowable long-term health consequences for all those scrawny middle infielders who poured god knows what into their bodies and suddenly starting pounding out 30-plus homers a year. The owners could have simply brought in the fences in more parks. Or openly juiced the ball, the way they did in the 1920s when the dead ball era gave way to the modern power game. Or allowed aluminum bats. Or whatever. Instead, major league baseball looked the other way, and in many ways encouraged, a chemical arms race that led to so many players to conclude that they needed to juice up just to stay competitive.

Hell, if MLB and the MLPA had any integrity, they could have begun research years ago on the health implications of long-term steroid use, and developed safe and legal alternatives. If so, fine - that would be just another development in the history of sports training, like the rise of nutritionists, weight trainers, and sports psychologists. But by sliding the whole mess under the table, the owners and the players union conspired to create an unfair system which penalized the players who played by the rules, while endangering the lives of players who made the perfectly rational decision to risk their health in return for the chance of a $100 million payday.

I'll probably get over all this eventually. I'd hate to give up on a pastime which has given me so much pleasure over the last 28 years. (I started following the Yankees at age 9, in 1978 - what a season!) But in the meantime, I'm stoking my thirst for competitive entertainment with reality TV, and gearing up for the basketball playoffs.

Posted by tedf at April 20, 2006 03:02 AM

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