The Great Steroid Witchhunt....
And yet another professional baseball player has gone through the Steroid Confession Apology Tour. Unlike Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez whose admissions and positive drug tests took everyone by surprise earlier last year (ARod because he was what everyone proclaimed to be the embodiment of a true athlete amongst a sea of dirty players and Manny because no one thought he had the know-with-all to take a multivitamin everyday much less a complicated HGH cycle), Mark McGwire’s admission yesterday to a decade of steroid use was met with as much surprise as a rock star OD.
I do not, nor would I ever, count myself among the naïve who feel like McGwire owed us an apology for spoiling the “Great 1998 Home Run Chase” that brought baseball back from the dead after the 1994 strike, restored the sport back its spot as the national pastime, reunited fathers and sons and introduced a whole new generation to this glorious game and also, I understand, cured the whooping cough. For one, I am bored to tears by baseball and second if you admire professional athletes for anything other than their athletic ability in their chose sport, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. They are as human as the rest of us except they have gobs of money, free time, groupies, and the access to the best defense lawyers that make them one step below foreign dignitaries in their abilities to evade justice.
I have no issues to what McGwire did, how long he did it for, why he waited so long to cop to it, or the reasons he really decided to admit to everything now. His arrogance in thinking that steroids only kept him healthy and did not in any way contribute to his ability to jack 70 home runs in 1998 is laughable more than anything. I do question the man’s character though. Not because he did steroids, but because he stated he never would have done them had baseball been testing back then. Isn’t that kinda like saying “I would never cheat on my wife if she could find out?” So when the needles were flying in the 1990s in baseball locker rooms, McGwire joined in the fun knowing that baseball was not looking nor testing. However, if they did, he never would have dreamed of doing them. When the day comes that my son asks me what a person’s character is, I will tell them it is what you do and how you act when nobody is watching. McGwire, by his own admission, fails the character test. Not because he did steroids mind you, but he did it because daddy had his back turned.
However, what irritates me the most about the whole Steroid Witch Hunt is the holier than thou, “we are keepers of the integrity and history of the game” reaction from the old school sports journalists from print, TV (and by TV, I mean ESPN) and the blogosphere. Bob Costas on MLB network seemed to relish in the ability to publically scold McGwire for tarnishing the game of our fathers and grandfathers. Sports journalists really lend credence to the saying: "Those who can, do. Those who cannot, bitch, judge, nitpick and record about those who can." Everyone one of these hypocritical pricks if given the opportunity to either A) Do steroids and have a chance at a professional career or B) Refuse them and submit to a life a deadlines, being blown off by athletes and press boxes that smell like Old Spice would jump on “A” quicker than VH1 on another crappy celeb-reality show. How can you judge a person who believes that if he chooses to do a couple of cycles he can inflate his stats and possibly get himself a $20 million dollar deal?
"Oh, the integrity of the game is lost." Get over yourself and enough of this mythification of professional sports.
Baseball has a history of amphetamines, doctored balls, and painkillers. Football players are glorified for being tough guys for playing in pain even though they have enough painkillers circulating through their system to stop a hippo dead. But for some reason steroids are bad because it creates an unfair advantage. But how unfair is it that some kid who works his ass off playing basketball everyday will never get beyond Div III because he is only 5'6, while some mope who just happened to be blessed with an overactive pituitary gland grows up to be 7'1 and land a $40MM contract in the NBA with 1/5 the talent? Some people no matter how hard they train will never approach other athletes who were born with genetic gifts that the vast majority can never achieve. What is fair about that?
There is too much money in professional sports for people to simply believe that their natural best was just not enough and they can walk away. And unless they somehow have the government step in and limit professional athlete salaries (not too far off of a premise either with this administration in office) steroid, HGH and doping scandals will not be going away anytime soon.
baseball, doping, hgh, mark mcgwire, mlb, sports analysts, steroids 
Reader Comments (5)
I agree with you whole-heartedly. The emphasis on steroid-use in baseball is part of some ridiculous, antiquated notion that professional sports are some how noble. Perhaps at one time (though not in my lifetime) professional athletes were stand up gentlemen and their profession was more than just a game. But in today's climate, between sex-addicted golfers, dog-slaughtering quarterbacks, 'roid-pumping sluggers, and firearm-concealing ballers, there is no room for nobility in any of the "great American pass-times."
For countless centuries humans have been entertained by sporting events in some form or another. These sports have typically involved a level of violence (ie chariot races, gladitorial combat, etc) and if some people believe that today is any different than I think they are mistaken. The difference is that today we have an insubstantial moral high ground claiming that violence is not the objective (however unconvincingly). We refuse to accept that these people choose to put their lives on the line for mere entertainment.
One argument against steroid-use is that it damages the users body as well as skewing the stats against players who choose not to juice. But why not allow it? If someone wants to destroy their body for our entertainment, why now do we stop them? Look at boxing. Look at UFC. People cheer for a person getting the stink kicked out of them for nothing other than a paycheck and entertainment. Yet we don't end these sports.
Speaking strictly in terms of sheer entertainment, steroids should stay.
What I would like, is that we have at least one steroid user come forward and be both honest and unrepentant about it. McGwire has proven that he is a moron. I am watching him on ESPN now in an interview with Bob Ley and it is unbelievable how much he is lying right now.
Who would have thought Jose Canseco 5 years ago would be proven to be the onoy guy in this whole saga that was telling the absolute truth? I completely believe everything Jose has says regarding this whole ordeal. He has been proven correct time and time again.
LOL... For once, I think I agree with everyone. Every time I watch sports I think of the Roman gladiatorial games. I was gonna make a comparison but So Crates beat me to it...
Furthermore, I don't think there was ever any "Golden Age" of sports. Ty Cobb was a dick. Supposedly he deliberately slid into the shins of infielders with his spiked cleates. Babe Ruth was a drunken, gluttonous womanizer. I forget the name of the guy, but I remember seeing an interview with a pitcher in the 1970s who pitched a perfect game while tripping on LSD...
Athletes should obviously not be held up as heroes. I kind of wonder where people ever got the idea that athletes should be worshiped as heroes? It reeks of incompetent and lazy parenting, which is one of the things that destroys our culture.
"Oh, think of the children" is always the rallying cry of the fascist hiding behind false "family values." Oh, we have to censor TV and music, for "the sake of the children". Oh, we have to drug test everyone, and violate the 4th amendment to the constitution, "for the sake of the children." Oh, we have to clean up sports, cuz "think of the poor children."
If you really want to help the children, give them a world in which their civil liberties are preserved!!! Don't give them strip-search machines that violate their constitutional rights. Don't give them police armed with civil rights abusing surveillance devices. When did we consent to live in such an Orwellian nightmare??? Wow... I really digressed
I too concur with all sentiments. However, our own culpability in creating these arrogant monsters needs to be pointed out. The absurd level of fawning and patronizing that is bestowed upon professional athletes today is matched only by their exorbitant salaries, and we are the only one's to blame. I honestly have refused to watch even a second of this coverage, but I am still inundated with it everywhere I turn.
CJ, you are right in saying that anyone who cares about these individuals beyond their athletic prowess is foolish, and Shaman, your perspective of this being a reflection of bad parenting is dead on. Sir Charles Barkley, one of the most notoriously infamous athletes of all time, yet ironically he stills shares probably the greatest respect amongst all sports' media personalities and outlets regardless of his torrent past, present, and certain future, said many years ago that he is not a role model. To further the irony, Nike took his sentiment and spun it into a commercial, thus making him more popular and influential than ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8vh2MwXZ6o
Shaman and So Crates, here's a little Orwell for you that is quite apropos:
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”- George Orwell
The comments above are a bit cynical, especially since we just had a poll on this site asking how many hours of sports do we watch a week. I do agree with you all, and I appreciate the post for its candid look and humorous tone. Why is this news? because Americans love their sports. I do but I can't stand Mark Mcquire or Sammy Sosa who when was asked by Congress to report on his steroid use, said he no longer spoke English.
But lets go back to the eighties for a minute. It was a different time. Cocaine, Crack, Reagan, trickle down economics; steroids had to be the least worried about drug in the nation. It was the time of War on Drugs and taking some pills to make you stronger really doesn't affect the game, at least I think that was Baseball's decree.
The Nineties made all drugs bad. We had steroids in high school, not because the pros used them, but because kids wanted to be big as houses. Kids smoked pot and did heroin not to be Jim Morrison from the Doors, but because they wanted to get high. And kids who dipped, well I just never quite got that.
I agree that Baseball never had a fine or classic day. Its benefit is in leisure and friendship of experiencing our own individual past time. The past time when we could play sports like baseball. It is a mirror of the society and when Congress and the news make huge stories about it, they reek havoc on the American public's mind who may actually think for one moment that the homerun record or some homerun race was important in 1998. (I was an avid fan and I was pissed when they beat the record, just as I was when Bonds did it).
Sports is still something we can enjoy and laugh at, but no one should bet on it as real life or even reality. I love baseball and I do not care if the ball or bat or players are juiced, as long as I get my peanutes and cracket jacks.
Thanks for the fun lunch in the post and the comments.