So what are we to make of baseball? Is it the sport that waited too long to admit that performance-enhancing drugs had skewed its product or the sport determined to root out PEDs? Is Bud Selig the dithering commissioner who once saw no evil or the aging avenger bent on scouring his sport before he leaves?
And if MLB and Selig stand revealed as both — ham-handed enabler turned iron-fisted prosecutor — we need to ask another question: Can we ever trust baseball again?
We stipulate that not everyone in the sport cheats … but sometimes it seems that way. Monday’s round of suspensions brought the total of Most Valuable Player awards won by players currently deemed ineligible — though the weasel Alex Rodriguez is appealing his 211-game ban — to four: A-Rod has three and Ryan Braun was the 2011 National League MVP. Last season Melky Cabrera was suspended five weeks after being named the All-Star Game’s MVP.
And then there are the disgraced alums: Barry Bonds, at worst the second-best everyday player (behind Babe Ruth) ever; Roger Clemens, at worst the second-best pitcher (behind Greg Maddux) of his generation; Mark McGwire, briefly the holder of the single-season home run record; Sammy Sosa, who chased McGwire in the tarnished summer of ‘98, and Rafael Palmeiro, who hit 569 homers but who’s known mostly for pointing his finger on Capitol Hill.
That poisoned legacy means that nothing in baseball can be taken at face value. The journeyman Chris Davis starts hitting home runs by the bushel and people wonder how. The same thing happened with Raul Ibanez four years ago. The same thing will happen for the next few decades because, for too many, the way to play baseball is to cheat until you get caught and deny it when you do.
Braun escaped a ban after his MVP season on a technicality — the sample collector waited until Monday to mail the envelope — but took his reprieve as license to profess his innocence and besmirch the reputation of the lowly collector. Last month Braun accepted a second suspension without a fight, surely because he’d seen the evidence arrayed against him.
In 2009, A-Rod admitted using steroids in 2003, his first MVP season, and proclaimed himself “young” and “stupid” and “naïve.” On Friday, with rumors of a possible lifetime ban looming, the same A-Rod told reporters: “I think we all agree that we want to get rid of PEDs; that’s a must. All the players, we feel that way.”
Sure they do. That’s why so many of them patronized Biogenesis, the now-defunct “anti-aging” clinic. They were worried about wrinkle lines around the eyes.
The integrity quotient of baseball could fit on the head of a pin. Bonds went from being the best player of his generation to the best player since Ruth by turning a slender frame into a superstructure laughable in its dimensions. Cabrera went from being a fourth outfielder deemed extraneous by the Braves in 2010 to the All-Star MVP as a Giant in 2012.
Trouble is, PEDs do what they’re supposed to do — they enhance performance. It takes a man of strong will not to try them when he sees industry competitors taking the path of least resistance. And it sets no great example when Oakland’s Bartolo Colon, who was 10-9 when suspended last August, is 14-3 (and was an All-Star) for the same team this season.
In seeking to preserve its future, baseball struggles most against its past. By letting PED use take root and lead to demonstrable success, the sport — and the players’ union, which resisted drug testing for far too long — essentially turned itself into a den of cheats. We regard the numbers amassed in the ’90s and into the new century as fraudulent. We’ve renamed that period “The Steroids Era,” as if that explains everything.
And even now, six years after Bonds last played a game, we noted that two key players on playoff-caliber teams — Nelson Cruz of Texas and Jhonny Peralta of Detroit — got suspended Monday. Did their apparently enhanced contributions put those teams jockeying with the Rangers and Tigers for position at a competitive disadvantage? What if the Rangers finish a game ahead of Cleveland for the second American League wild card?
This is what MLB is fighting — the chilling notion that the sport, no matter how hard it tries, can never put the evil genie of PEDs back in its bottle. If you thought The Steroids Era ended with Bonds, Braun proved you wrong. If you think Braun and these latest miscreants are the last of their ilk, you’ll be wrong again.
About the Author
