It is painfully obvious that the steroid saga in Major League Baseball is not going to be going away anytime soon. From the ever-changing legacies of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro to the ongoing travails of Barry Bonds, the American media is licking their collective chops over the thought of inundating the country with all things controversial over the course of this summer.
The question of legitimacy will be begged by many and answered by few, and the net result will almost certainly be an even cloudier picture than the one we have now. The unfortunate side-effect is creating an entirely new set of questions somewhere along the lines of "if dirty batter A hits a homer off of dirty pitcher B, than how can we dismiss that homer as being illegitimate?"
Sadly, little will come of this current fact-finding-mission beyond a damning mountain of evidence being piled up with little to no recourse for action based on that mountain. While it is quite likely a necessary evil, MLB's current Bonds investigation and any subsequent review of the almost undeniable illegalities in the game will serve little purpose beyond turning fans off to a game that has seen an alarming resurgence over the last 10 years. Little, that is, except for a nigh recognizable paradigm shift in the sport that seemingly could allow for an entirely different (but not necessarily previously unseen) subterfuge to return to prominence.
With so much attention being spent on "greenies," HGH, and anabolic steroids, MLB will almost certainly push to the back-burner such annoyances as corked bats, doctored baseballs, and over-applied pine tar resin. Phil Neikro, Albert Belle, George Brett, and Julian Tavares (to name just a few) will no longer be the target of slanderous insults and ridicule in baseball fan circles nationwide. The plight of those once-convicted cheaters of the sport's rich history will soon be dramatically altered as their indiscretions almost appear acceptable in light of the egregious manipulation of illegalities the current stock of baseball has deigned to participate in.
(Side note: poor, unfortunate Sammy Sosa will be missing his opportunity to clear his name as a convicted corker as he and his physical metamorphosis will inevitably be found directly in Bud Selig's cross-hairs.)
Cheaters throughout the game have never felt so good about drawing the line at manipulating the tools of their trade. Heck, a pitcher needn't even consider injecting banned substances now that it is apparent a little Vaseline under his visor can do just as much to affect the outcome of any given game without making him worry about that bothersome point of getting caught in the act. Are you a MLB player feeling like you need some extra "oomph" to turn those doubles into dingers? Drill some cork into your bat ... no one will question that as long as your face doesn't change shape and your back doesn't develop into a minefield of cystic acne.
All those times the non-juicer reluctantly passed by the magazine rack with the ads touting the magical recuperative powers of BALCO products thinking all along, "Should I give that a shot?" aren't regrettable memories any longer. As those players meander their way through the drug store to pick up the No-Doze and Vaseline, they can finally let out a sigh of relief that they've made the right decision not to cheat and that they have kept themselves "clean."
So here's to you, regular-sized Joe ... you now have a shot at superstardom as long as you play by the rules and cheat legally. Or is it cheat by the rules and play legally? Or maybe it is rule by the cheat and don't worry about legal playing? No matter, the bottom line is a simple one to understand ... win at any cost, as long as that cost doesn't involve the embarrassment of league officials.
Putting all (or most, anyway) the sarcasm aside, MLB has taken a very long overdue hard-line on steroid users and abusers, which is good to see. But this "seek-and-destroy" mentality exhibited by baseball's top brass targeting the problem de jour is doing nothing to help the integrity of the game. Those who wish to circumvent the rules are still able to do so.
For the most part, nail files, hardened sweet spots on the bat, spit-balls, sign-stealing — none of that stuff is even on the radar any longer. Sure, those things won't turn you into a hulking freak of nature with the attention span of a titmouse (with gonads to match), the anger management skills of Mike Tyson, and the long-ball prowess of a Babe Ruth/Babe Didrickson Zaharias offspring, but it will serve the purpose of giving you an unfair advantage over your competitors and frankly, isn't that the ultimate goal that we all are aiming to avoid here?
The pattern that has erupted in MLB of late is a consistent transfer of focus relative to the negatives of the game, and the steroid scandal falls right into the quilting of that ideology. For every Selig-esque step forward the game makes in the name of progress (a resurgence of the home run, "this time it counts!," new stadiums popping up in every conceivable location, owners making money hand-over-fist and players following suit), there is an equally compelling backward motion (steroids, "this time it counts?," skyrocketing ticket prices, traffic jams in every major metropolitan area's downtown, world hunger ... okay, that last one isn't on Bud).
MLB policies lack focus. They gerrymander a significant blanket of issues into compartmentalized islands of interest and they address those islands as if they were frogs on a pond hopping from lily pad to lily pad. Lines like "in the best interest of the sport" and "unbeknownst to us" are thrown around like Nerf footballs at a tailgating party, but no one in baseball ever seems to want to know everything or do anything that actually is in the best interest of the sport.
Fixing things wholesale is not the necessary evil that we are led to believe it to be. Take the NFL, for instance. Owners and league management certainly are not perfect, but they do show some degree of prescience in their approach to administrating their league. When they see a problem with steroids, they create a solution that not only addresses steroids, but also any offshoot of that type of performance-enhancer. They have a comprehensive drug plan that addresses substances that may or may not have ever been detected in their sport before.
This, my friends, is called preventative maintenance and it is a concept that has kept multi-million dollar businesses afloat for decades in our country. It is a concept that keeps men and women healthy. It is something that, if ignored, can tear entire corporations apart (see NHL hockey, circa 2005).
Until MLB prescribes a full regimen of preventative maintenance, cheaters will continue to find a way to cheat. This may serve those billionaire owners well as they increase their net worth through their fleecing of the adoring public, but it won't solve the systemic problem of corruption and ignorance that could ultimate drown the sport so many of us have grown up loving.
It may just be a corked bat or a doctored ball or a fistful of over-the-counter caffeine pills today, but I think many folks said the same thing a few decades back, just before this new breed of cheater emerged. You remember the time: ticket prices were less expensive than your car note, dramas played out on the field rather than in the court room, and the children looked up to their sporting heroes with confidence and clarity that their efforts and skills wouldn't be trumped by science and compromised values.
I think we called those the "good old days." I wonder whose idea it was to change.
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