(This is a post that appeared yesterday as a guest post on RAB)
With the recent revelation that we now may add David Ortiz’s name to the ever-growing list of PED abusers, we come back to a nagging and somewhat uncomfortable question for Yankee fans. What do we make of all this? Steroids are every Baseball team’s version of the crazy aunt. Everybody has one, nobody likes to talk about the subject, and it’s just something we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
We as Yankee fans can’t throw around the ‘T’ word (taint) at the Red Sox without having it boomerang quickly back in our direction. Our beloved late 90’s-early 2000’s teams had their fair share of accused steroid users, including Jason Grimsley, Mike Stanton, Roger Clemens, David Justice and Mo only knows who else. Other recent Yankee teams featured Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and other accused users, the most notable being none other than Alex Rodriguez. Even Mister Steroid himself, Jose Canseco collected a ring with the Yankees after being picked up on a waiver deal late in 2000. So we as Yankee fans can’t exactly celebrate the demise of our main nemesis’ reputation(s) without realizing we are up to our knees in syringes ourselves.
As someone who grew up steeped in the history of New York baseball and the game’s sacred records, I was a fervent and outspoken critic of steroids in the game from early on and wanted to see the game cleaned up ASAP. I was recently deeply disappointed when the so-called ‘Clean HR champ’ A-Rod turned up dirty himself. I never sided with the camp that simply views Baseball as entertainment, and views PED use like some Hollywood star getting plastic surgery. Sports is and should be more than that. Hollywood produces fantasy and nobody cares whether its a level playing field or not. If sports goes the way of entertainment, then it becomes the WWE. We might as well writes scripts detailing who will win the World Series at that point.
There’s also something more pervasive and troubling about accepting PED use. For far too many athletes, steroids would become a price of admission for entrance to the big leagues. The young, talented high school star athlete would quickly realize as he rose through the minors that he’d never make a team without getting on the juice. Players with certain skill sets would be forced to choose between giving up their dreams and using drugs to become more than they could ever be naturally, with their long term health as a casualty. That makes professional sports a dirty business, and one I couldn’t encourage my son (if I had one) to play with any hopes of succeeding to the bigs. I also could not in good conscience be an ardent fan of a game where players slowly kill themselves to entertain me. That’s a little too ‘Ancient Rome’ for my tastes.
I don’t however, blame fans for cheering known steroid cheats. What these critics fail to realize is fans cheer the Home Run and the moment it creates in the context of a game. Fans rarely applaud the individual, they applaud the act itself. When fans in the 20’s and 30’s cheered Babe Ruth, they weren’t applauding his drinking, womanizing or fast living. They were cheering number 3 on the field and the moment in time when the game was won. It’s interesting to note that Babe Ruth attempted to use an early version of steroids as his body aged, only to make himself horribly sick. So it’s clear that this isn’t unique to the modern athlete, players of any era would do whatever possible to get an edge. Be it real or imagined.
But despite my long standing opposition to steroids and my desire to clean up the game, its become clear in recent years that PED use was so pervasive that it created something of a even playing field. Pitchers on steroids were facing hitters on steroids, each pumping up their stats in the process. There have also been many examples of lesser players (David Segui/Jason Grimsley) who were fringe major leaguers despite being serial steroid abusers, so its clear that being a great player requires much more than a needle in the tush.
We can’t ignore an entire era of Baseball, or keep all the accused users out of the Hall of Fame. Comparing numbers across various eras is always fraught with pitfalls, the Steroid Era just adds another wrinkle. Does anyone think we’ll see a pitcher win 511 games again? Do we really believe anyone will ever break Roger Hornby’s 1924 season when he hit .423? And that’s just the modern era, Hugh Duffy is the all time leader, having hit .440 in 1894. How do we compare those players to today? In all honesty, we can’t. Considering everything, I would favor allowing the known steroid users into the Hall of Fame, but with a caveat. If PED’s enhance performance, than simply hold these guys to a higher standard. Forget the old 500 HRs/1500 RBIs/300 Wins standards, and come up with something more. I would also take into account other factors, such as Mark McGwires spotty health history and Roger Clemens’ mid-career decline. HOF voters should look at each player on a case by case basis, and frankly if it was me I’d need to be blown away. But I can’t pretend roughly 20 years of the games history either doesn’t exist, or should be completely ignored in posterity.
Related posts:
I agree with you on your point that, in general, athletes will do whatever it takes to get an edge. These guys are no different. The baseball players of the 1960s and 1970s, guys like Mays and Aaron included, took amphetamines, illegal performance enhancing drugs. By all accounts, baseball amphetamine problem was larger than the steroid problem of the past decade. Do we hold them to a higher standard? The hall of fame standard, to me, is greatness.
The was we handle the ebb and flow of baseball, the balance between offense a pitching, and the difference between one era and another, is to compare players to those they played with and against. Maybe Dan Brouthers would not have been a great player in 2009, although he probably would have been. We just can’t know for a fact, because he never played in 2009. But what we do know, for an absolute fact, is that in the 1890s, Dan Brouthers was a great player, and therefor should be in the Hall. That is the only standard we can really use. And, to me, Bonds, Arod, Clemens, and McGwire are all great players of the last decade. Whether they did steroids, whether their competition did steriods, how we compare them to others is a difficult question. But there are many questions that are just as hard to answer. How much of an advantage did pitchers have in the 1960s? How much has the general talent level changed in the last century? How do players that used baseball gloves in the 19th century compare to those that didn’t? The use of steroids, and other PEDs, is just another analytical problem.
But the hall of fame standard is greatness, and to deny any of those players were great would prove you really didn’t follow baseball very closely during the last decade or two, because all of those players were great players.
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I don’t approve the use of any kind of drug or stetoid, but I agree with you. We can’t act like the whole steriod era just didn’t happen. Canseco just said that there’s allready a PED user in the HOF, who that might be? Rickey Henderson? Eckersley? They were Canseco’s teammates at some point.
And if that’s true, what to do with the rest of players who use them?
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:04 am
You don’t approve of any kind of drug use? So someone smoking Marijuana to deal with bone tumors is wrong? Think about things before you blanket statement them.
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Canseco meant that eventually, at some point, someone in the hall of fame will be found to have used performance enhancers, strictly because of the number of players who used during the last few decades. He didn’t have a specific name.
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Chofo Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Yes, he meant an specific name. He was not going to mention who, but it was a specific player he knew. Considering the many times he has said something that was found to be true, I’m not ready to throw that away. He said it after the Manny-Papy revelation, read it on ESPN. Anyway, at this poit, I doubt almost everybody, Pujols included.
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Steve Reply:
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
No, that’s not correct. He was asked the following day on an ESPN radio station if he was referring to anyone specific, and he said No. He was just speaking in general terms.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:03 am
I heard him say he knew of a player currently in the Hall of fame who “used” but he wouldn’t name names.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:12 am
Just went and re looked it up and yes he said THERE IS A HALL OF FAMER WHO USED STEROIDS it wasn’t one day someone will be in someone already is… I suspect Kirby Puckett, he gained weight his third season in the league and he only had 4 HRs in his first 1,248 at bats and yet hit 31 HRs in 680 at bats in one season his third year in the league seems pretty suspicious to me.
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One thing that should be taken into consideration before deciding that steroids are any worse than greenies is that most of the guys using them also spent many hours in the weight room and worked hard to get their bodies where they wanted. Meanwhile, greenies were often used by players who considered hoisting a few cocktails and spending time with groupies their most strenuous workout, and needed an artificial boost just to be able to play 9 innings.
I’ll take the guy who spends 360 days a year working at improving himself over the guy who spends 3 weeks in spring.
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Who cares about steroids! If it’s health your worried about it, well sorry it’s not your body so leave them be. If it’s kids your worried about, be a real parent and actually talk to them and teach them right from wrong and don’t let sports athletes be the ones influencing their decisions. If it’s the numbers being altered you don’t like then how can you watch baseball at all? Every generation has had massive advantages over the others even including the fact that Babe Ruth never had to hit or pitch against a person of different colored skin. I really don’t see what the big deal is, you can tell who has natural talent and who is a juice baby by what else they have done and what they continue to do. Let them in the hall and move forward with this BS!
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Jason Grimsley and Mike Stanton?? Really?? That is comparable to Ortiz and Martinez? The fact that the 90’s dynasty had a few role players on steroids is incomparable to the 2004 and 2007 Sox teams. Even if you presume Pettitte was juiced, he was the only major contributor even suspected on those teams. Clemens was a minor part of 1999, although in 2000 he was a major contributor. Still, it is not fair to paint the yankee dynasty with the same brush as the sox WS teams. Unless… you just give up and presume the vast majority of the league cheated so the 2004 and 2007 teams had no real advantage with their 2 best hitters (who carried those teams) roiding up. And, if that is your position, then you need to also start saying that Mark McGwire’s 70 HRs and Barry’s 750 are not tainted. You cant have it both ways.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 am
You aren’t a Yankee homer at all huh? The only players named so far on those teams were Pettitte and Clemens, I assume a good 80% of major league baseball (both pitcher and hitters) were either on HGH or steroids and to say one championship is tainted over another is ludicrous and the only reason anyone cares is because the Yankees choked that title away in 2004 and steroids shouldn’t even be an excuse, we had a 3 games to none lead steroids or not we chocked!
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Ortiz and Martinez = Ortiz and Ramirez. Sorry.
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Almost every great Dominican player was on steroids: Sosa, Manny, Papy, Tejada, Arod and many more. Was Pedro Martinez on PED’s too? His great years happened in that era.
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Steve Reply:
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
He doesn’t have the body type, but neither did Guilerrmo Mota or a bunch of other guys. Who knows.
BTW-A-Rod was born here. His father was of Dominican heritage and mom is Puerto Rican.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:02 am
He was born in Miami to be specific
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:01 am
You are hilariously racist!!! Have you ever heard of Mark McGwire? not quite so Dominican was he? Is Bronson Arroyo Latin or Dominican? No he’s white and American when are you going to admit this is world wide in baseball you racist.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
No reason to start with namecalling. There are rightfully some questions about the Latin American players due to relaxdd laws for these substances.
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