Beating a Dead Horse

Raise your hand if you’re as sick of reading the never ending saga of steroids in baseball. It no longer has an appeal or redeeming qualities. We were once intrigued wondering which names the web of suspicion would ensnare. Once the stars were aligned, so to speak, there was nothing left to hold our attention.
A Congressional committee has been formed, the hearings televised, and testimony from the Snidely Whiplash’s of baseball was heard, or tuned out if you will. After a short period of relative dormancy, a new baseball season is now upon us, and with it comes tremors of discussion dotting the sports pages. On an interest scale, the steroids issue falls somewhere between pocket lint and Paris Hilton; and if it doesn’t, it should.
Drugs use in baseball is not new. Tim Keefe, a pitcher who played prior to the turn of the twentieth century. His illustrious career had five seasons of more than 30 wins. In two of those seasons Keefe had over 40 wins. In one of those remarkable years Keefe pitched 619 innings, in the other he registered 535 innings. Alas, Keefe’s playing days were cut short by injury. Keefe had once admitted that if he felt fatigued, he would pick up some “elixir” from the local pharmacy. Keefe pitched from 1880 to 1893, before the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906; long before the passage of the Harrison Drug Act in 1914. This is notable because prior to the passing of these two acts of governmental legislation opium, heroin, morphine, and cocaine were over-the counter drugs. Anyone could walk into a drugstore and purchase themselves these marvelous wonder drugs.
Please keep in mind most ballplayers during this period were not necessarily pillars of the community. The profession of ball playing had not yet gained complete social acceptance. The game itself was rife with gambling, and its step-brother cheating. The mind doesn’t have to make such a giant leap of faith to surmise ballplayers stooping to drug use to cure their ills; particularly if it meant collecting a paycheck.Notable personalities of the era were part of, not hiding underground, the drug culture. The famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote about the stimulant cocaine, and the talented but tormented writer Edgar Allen Poe, often used a variety of drugs; why would anybody think the ballplaying population would be exempt from sampling the narcotic wares of the day?
The next wave of drug use in baseball came shortly after the conclusion of World War II. Amphetamines were used extensively by soldiers to combat battle fatigue. “Next stop, the civilian population, all aboard!” In the ground breaking book Ball Four published in 1971, former New York Yankee Jim Bouton, took a candid behind the scenes look at baseball; he revealed that many notable players took these illegal narcotics in order to gain a perceived edge over their peers. Exposing this darker side of America’s game irked the fraternal hierarchy no end, prompting commissioner Bowie Kuhn to take a position of plausible deniability; denouncing Bouton’s book as a form of baseball blasphemy. Now we see that what Bouton wrote was tame, and exposed players for what they were; regular human beings with shortcomings just like the rest of us.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s cocaine made another appearance on the baseball landscape, in a new and improved form. Most Valuable Players Dave Parker and Keith Hernandez found themselves at the center of that firestorm of scandal. Tim Raines, the perennial all-star of the Montreal Expos was once asked why he slid head first so often when he stole a base. He replied that he didn’t want to break the cocaine vial in his back pocket. All these players went on with their superb careers. Again, baseball was reflecting the societal condition of the time.
And now we have steroids. But we also have smaller ballparks, and bigger salaries, and many players have personal trainers. We have weaker pitching, and we have a voyeuristic society with an insatiable desire to know the most personal details of its celebrities. If you combine those things with a “holier than thou” 21st century version of the Victorian mindset, it spells trouble; trouble for ballplayers, and trouble for our culture that loves to point fingers though the finger-pointers are far from chaste. We really needed a congressional committee to investigate steroid use? This is our government at work paid by our tax dollars? Doesn’t the government have bigger fish to fry? Christ! They can’t even police themselves, and their going to police baseball? Give me a break.
Twice before has government gotten involved with baseball, and both times it failed miserably. The first concerned baseball’s reserve clause. First challenged in 1885, it would take another 90 years for the judicial branch of the government to rule that baseball was indeed a business. The second had to do with the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when Chicago ballplayers were accused of throwing the World Series. Again our judicial system dropped the ball, pun intended, and cleared all players of any wrong doing. It took newly anointed baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis to clean baseball’s house. He suspended the suspected players for life. Strike two federal government. And now they’re going to get to the bottom of the steroids scandal. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out. Oh, wait a minute, I can wait. As a matter of fact, I don’t care.
Sports writers and news journalists, the embodiment of all that is good in the world, have taken a stance against any player suspected of steroid use. Mark McGuire falls into this category. A point has been made to show how steroid rumors hurt his chances for the Hall of Fame. It couldn’t possibly be because he was a lifetime .263 hitter who struck out frequently could it? No, let’s make steroid the reason, voters will show him.
When did sportswriters become the moral entrepreneurs for America? They call the records set during this period tainted. No more tainted than the records set before integration. No more tainted than the records that were set before night baseball. No more tainted than the records set when ballparks had foul lines less than 270 feet from home plate, or pitchers regularly doctored the ball, or when only one umpire was used, I could go on but I’m not as pompous as those throwing the stones these days. Asterisks my ass, it’s just another turbulent time in baseball; disappointing yes, the decline of our civilization as we know it, not hardly. Sadly, something will come along to take steroids place. It's the way our society works if you haven't noticed for the last two hundred years or so.
The games stars implicated in this mess haven’t fallen, they’ve just moved with baseball’s celestial sky.
Did you ever notice how cumulus clouds occasionally can resemble bellybutton lint, now that’s fascinating!