AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > December > 17
Monday, December 17, 2007
Not even steroids can kill baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Will the doomsayers ever realize one of sports’ greatest truisms?
Probably not, but here it goes anyway: Nothing can kill baseball.
You know as much, because long before the Mitchell Report revealed that the supposedly saintly Roger Clemens became just as potent through artificial means as the supposedly devilish Barry Bonds, the game survived all of those other things.
The Black Sox Scandal.
Those predicting gloom and doom after the Brooklyn Dodgers were the first to bring somebody darker than a resin bag into the major leagues.
Dead ball era.
Pittsburgh drug trials.
Hefty checks written by the owners for colluding against the players.
All of those work stoppages, including one that wiped away a World Series.
Pete Rose, as in the game’s all-time hits leader, who was banned from baseball for gambling issues before spending time in the slammer for income tax evasion.
“World wars,” said Ernie Johnson Sr., 83, chuckling and remembering. He’s a member of the Braves Hall of Fame after an impressive pitching career with the franchise in Boston and Milwaukee. Later, he completed his more than 50 years in baseball as a Braves radio and television announcer. So Johnson has seen much, especially when it comes to those doomsayers.
Added Johnson, “One sportswriter in Milwaukee wrote when our attendance was falling there [during the 1960s] that baseball was dead. There also was a time here in Atlanta one year when we didn’t draw 500,000 people. You’d meet people on the street, and they’d say, ‘Well, baseball is just gone.’ “
That’s funny. In the decades since Johnson heard and read those comments, Milwaukee lost the Braves but gained the Brewers, along with a state-of-the-art ballpark. Not only that, the Braves spent the 1990s reaching the playoffs every season while attracting 500,000 people — just after a few homestands. You’ve also had the state of baseball overall. It has set attendance records each of the past four seasons, and it has watched its revenues quadruple to $6 billion over the past 15 years.
Johnson chuckled, saying, “The game always bounces back. So I don’t know why people keep predicting otherwise. Well, unless they have a secret, or maybe it’s just that, when they say baseball is dying, they want it to happen.”
They want it to happen, but it won’t. Not even with President Bush saying the game has been “sullied” after George Mitchell delivered his findings last week on the massive use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball during the stretch drive of the last century.
There were 31 All-Star players and seven MVPs involved, said the Mitchell Report. The names ranged from former Braves David Justice, John Rocker and Gary Sheffield to current stars for other teams such as Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada and Eric Gagne. Mostly, there was Clemens, owner of seven Cy Young Awards, mentioned 82 times on nine pages of the report. As a result, Clemens joined Bonds, owner of seven MVP awards, as co-poster boys of baseball’s steroid era.
While Clemens and Bonds will remain the faces of this steroid mess forever, baseball will watch the majority of its fans suffer, but only from collective amnesia. We’re in the middle of winter, with nearly every other sport in high gear to help the Mitchell Report move closer to vanishing in the public’s mind within weeks, maybe days. In fact, by spring training, most folks will be discussing balls and strikes more than syringes and HGH.
“I don’t know if I agree with you on that, because nothing has happened in baseball to this degree,” Johnson said. “There is always going to be a question mark in people’s mind in regard to ‘what if?’ That’s why I feel sorry for guys who kept their nose clean and never took steroids. They could be hurt. I think somebody said the record book is going to be full of asterisks. I don’t know. Maybe I’m putting too much on what could become of these revelations.”
Yes, Johnson was. Then he quickly returned to that truism, saying, “In these situations for baseball, something always comes along that helps.”
Always.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Terence Moore
