Depression. Not frustration, but depression. That's the emotion I distinctly heard emanating from an ESPN Radio host and an ESPNEWS television anchor as they broke down the breaking news about the drug raid on now-former major league pitcher Jason Grimsley. The initial report was that he had flipped, and was telling the Feds every name of every player who had ever used steroids — like the stoolie love child of Jose Canseco and Chunk from "The Goonies," being interrogated by the Fratelli brothers.
The ESPN guys looked and sounded like someone kicked their puppy while making fun of their mothers. They looked defeated. One of them said something like "just when you thought we were going to have a steroid-less summer, now this happens." The other one, I'm pretty sure, is on a suicide watch.
Why the pity party? Obviously, it's a difficult gig for these guys, and anyone else paid to promote Major League Baseball's product as a sports journalist, to reconcile one's dedication to morals and standards while celebrating alleged, supposed, and would-be "cheaters." I can't imagine getting jacked up to report on a Tigers/Royals game when half of your time is spent trying to figure out the pronunciation of "Deca-Durabolin."
But this Grimsley thing isn't a reason to wallow in self-pity, like a Buffalo Sabres fan trying to invent reasons why his team is "cursed" in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. No, no, no: this Grimsley thing is an educational turning point for baseball fans, the media, and this entire steroid scandal. We've learned two important lessons in the last week:
1. The MLB steroid scandal has gone from a national crisis to pathetic tabloid fodder.
2. The only people who can rid this game of performance-enhancing drugs are the ones who get paid to play it.
Regarding Lesson No. 1: is anyone else surprised the Grimsley story wasn't broken on Page Six of the NY Post? Or in the National Enquirer? Or on the Drudge Report, with one of those little flashing siren lights above a screaming headline?
I am. Because this story, almost immediately, was less about the impact on baseball than it was about those blacked-out names. These scandals have turned the corner. The why and the how in relation to the integrity of the game are afterthoughts — it's now all about the "who" for us. We want the names, and we want them now ... and then, when we find out the names, we want to be able to draw loose associations to other names whom we've always expected were using steroids. The dreaded "*" is hardly in the conversation anymore — we're more concerned with that "I KNEW IT!!!" moment of self-congratulation when Slugger X is outed as a juicer.
The Grimsley situation has proven, once and for all, that these steroid scandals are the sports equivalent of blind items about gay actors on Hollywood gossip pages: "Which Southwestern team's pitcher recently copped to using human growth hormone, amphetamines, and steroids?" "Which journeyman reliever was asked to wear a wire in the investigation of a high-profile baseball slugger?" "Which former Philadelphia player with an affinity for chewing tobacco was recently the topic of conversion in a steroid interrogation of a veteran pitcher?"
Baseball fans have become a bunch of gossip queens. Concern for the integrity of the game has been replaced by the salacious need for the intensity of the details. Seriously, tell me the most amazing part of this Grimsley thing wasn't finding out that amphetamine was placed in coffee inside major league clubhouses, with one pot labeled "leaded" and the other marked "unleaded." That's stunningly hilarious news to me — it sounds like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie.
I've long thought that the steroid scandal, from a fan perspective, affects one person and one person only, and that's Barry Bonds. We generally have a problem with an asshole that didn't need the drugs using the drugs to assault one of our most cherished sports records. But everyone else who used performance-enhancing drugs is a footnote to an era in baseball that has been accepted by fans as the steroid era. The horse already left the barn, and there's no way to alter the last 15 years of baseball history, and the fans know it. If we find out tomorrow that Albert Pujols is on the juice, what happens? We all nod in acceptance that he's "one of them," and wonder how a player who's never tested positive can ever be punished for nothing more than guilt by association. That's what happens.
This brings us to who this entire scandal falls on, when all is said and done: the players.
Sure, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports can continue his assault on Bud Selig: "Maybe now commissioner Bud Selig can stop prattling on about his goal of 'eliminating' performance enhancers from MLB." But maybe Rosenthal is right: it's time for Selig to step up and tell the fans that it's the players' problem, and they're going to have to fix it. In the meantime, enjoy the home runs and the middle relievers who can pitch five games a week...
And sure, author Jeff Pearlman can take sportswriters to task for their lack of spine in steroid coverage: "Why are journalists so soft in this area? One reason: fear of being shut out. Over the course of a 162-game season, beat writers and columnists work their tails off to develop relationships with players. You grovel. You whimper. You plead. You tiptoe up to a first baseman, hoping he has five minutes to talk about that swollen toe. You share jokes and-embarrassingly-fist pounds. Wanna kill all that hard work in six seconds? Ask the following question: are you juiced? After having been duped by the men they cover, America's sportswriters are playing dumb again."
But again, what can these Woodsteins do besides wait for the trickle of court documents? It's like every other great scandal in modern American history: unless there's a leak coming from the guilty parties, the indignities will never come to light. Busting the cheaters in a major league locker room is about as easy as pinning down the Neo-cons on the weapons of mass destruction that weren't found in Iraq. (Maybe one of Tony Blair's boys has a memo somewhere about Miguel Tejada.)
But none of it speaks to the real issue, which is that major league players have been complicit in allowing all of these drugs into their clubhouses for decades. You hear the occasional player speaking out of turn — David Wells, for example, attempting to out players who happen to be wearing other uniforms. But everyone else is either using or playing with a user, and despite whatever anger they have towards this "cheating," they keep their traps shut. Million-dollar contracts have a funny way of neutering nobility.
But there's also a code, you see. A code among teammates, among competitors. A code the stretches from rookies to retired veterans. A code that's been confirmed to me and to any other sports journalist who's ever asked a big leaguer about steroids; a code that says that you don't rat on anyone ... ever. What happens in the locker room, stays in the locker room. (Or in some cases, in a toilet stall in the locker room.) That goes for drugs, sex, violence ... everything except for those stories you let slip for some good-natured media fodder. ("A-Rod called me a poopiehead...")
Unless of course you're Jason Grimsley, pinched by the Feds, singing like a caged bird. Upon hearing about Grimsley's hit list, I was reminded of that scene in "Goodfellas" where Liotta and Dr. Melfi are in the FBI office, learning about their post-testimony fate in the witness protection program. Their lives, as they knew them, were over. The Feds had the evidence, had the tapes, had the drugs. The only thing left was to take down some very important people with them. Sammy Sosa might not look like Paul Sorvino, but the same principle applies.
That's the only time, it seems, when the code is broken: to save one's hide, or for their own self-interests. Canseco's book was meant to clear his name by revealing his was not the only name. The BALCO case had trainers ratting on players in an attempt to shave years off their sentences. And Grimsley dropped a dime on at least six people, and according to Deadspin.com, one of them is Pujols' personal trainer.
Deadspin, for those who aren't turned on to one of the most original and hilarious sports sites on the web, is at its heart a brilliantly-written gossip blog. Which is exactly where this steroid stuff now belongs: along side stories about sports groupies and who Matt Leinart is dating.
We know about the steroids. We know they're part of the game. And now we just want to know the names: so we can blast them for forever tainting the game; and then gladly pay to see them play when they come to town a few days later.
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" will be published in spring 2006. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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