Less is More

Well, the Rocket has flown. Shocker.

So the G-Men are 0-for-2 when facing the juggernaut that is professional baseball. Both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have shown federal lawyers to be rather, shall we say, prone to the breaking ball. Lord knows they and their gaggle of highly-paid councilors threw plenty of curveballs at the federals, turning what the prosecutors thought was a foolproof approach into, quite frankly, merely proof of a fool. Certainly, fools they seemed, and fools they will continue to be, as long as they insist on pursuing their attack to its ultimately ridiculous and pointless conclusion.

With all the talk about steroids, human growth hormone, and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, what is missing has little to do with drugs. Or so it would seem, on the surface.

Now then, let's get to the point of this whole exercise. It's not drugs, and it's not cheating. It is, in fact, the game itself. Rather, I should say, it is the length of the season of said game which is the point.

162 games. 162 games in 183 days. That leaves 21 days off in just over six months. That means less than four days off per month. Now, what exactly does that mean?

Well, let's say you're a pro ballplayer. If you're a starting position player, you can expect to play around eight or nine days in a row before you get a day off. Throw in a cross-country flight, late arrivals, sleeping in hotels instead of your home, room service (a real crap shoot, in some hotels), day games after night games, the stresses of plying your trade in front of 35 or 40 thousand screaming, rabid, often venomous fans, facing three or four different pitchers per game, studying game film, scouting reports, and (of course) your Web Gems and/or "agony of defeat" moments on cable, satellite, Internet ... and repeat the whole process almost every single day for half a year. This is assuming that you don't make the playoffs.

So what is it that keeps you going? Just how many miles can you run, how many bench presses, leg presses, squat thrusts, jumping jacks, what have you, can you do to keep your body in prime condition? What does it take to weather the physical and psychological toll that such a long, grueling season would inevitably take on even the strongest and most well-conditioned athlete?

That, dear reader, is the ultimate question. That's where drugs come in, at least for some.

You see, the obvious point have been covered ad nauseum when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs: players use them to push their stats ever higher, driving towards the nine-digit contract, the obscene amounts of cash normally reserved only for the elite, players like Clemens and Bonds. It could easily be argued, and indeed has already been, a thousand times over, that this was a case of greatness being less than adequate for some too vain and shortsighted to understand the true consequences of their actions. But what about this? Players use them simply to survive the rigors of the expansive MLB schedule.

That's right. Players are using steroids, HGH, amphetamines, even cocaine and opiates, simply to make it to the end of the year without breaking down.

I'm certainly not the first to suggest that this could be the case, and I won't be the last. Football seasons are far shorter, hockey is half as long, and in both sports there are longer periods between games than there is in baseball. Surely an athlete is more likely to suffer a career-ending injury in either of those sports than they are in a comparatively softer game such as baseball? But that's not the point. We're talking about continuous erosion, not hammering and chiseling, and a very long period of erosion, at that. The average starting baseball player has virtually no time whatsoever to recover from ordinary wear and tear before he heads back out on the field to do it all over again. And any pro athlete would tell you that their body, their physical prowess and skill is their greatest asset. How does a baseball player protect that asset?

Sure, every professional sports team has their own private army of physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons, trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, even psychiatrists, but breakdowns will still occur, and frequently. Simply put, the MLB season is just too long. Expansion is partly to blame, of course; more teams, more games. But if you want to know what the real reason is, it's money, which is of course why expansion came about in the first place. You're smart enough that I don't have to tell you that, I know. Nevertheless, it bears saying.

Money drives the sports machine, always has, always will. The players are only doing what they can, what they feel they must, in order to adapt. Does that make it right? Of course not. Wrong is wrong, regardless of the circumstances. Or is it?

The shame of it is, if the powers-that-be would simply consider shortening the regular season, perhaps going back to the old 154-game schedule, it could lead to less player-games lost, which could mean that the stars are on the field more often, which means more tickets would be sold ... you see where this is going, yes?

Now, I know there will be some dissenting points of view when it comes to this way of seeing the drug problem in baseball, and that's as it should be. The court of public opinion is the birthplace of policy, regulation, and ultimately, law. Who knows? Maybe someday the cocoon in which professional baseball resides in relative security and safety will be penetrated, and maybe then we'll see some real change in the grand old game.

Until then, public opinion is the only court in which players like Clemens and Bonds will receive true justice. But perhaps, just perhaps, we should be more careful to consider the crime before we pass judgment.