Baseball's steroid fallout

By Vincent Musco Sports Central Columnist

Our nation's pastime faces a steroid epidemic which stands to destroy the credibility of some of baseball's brightest stars. Empty accusations, implications, and hearsay have far outweighed concrete evidence thus far, but the public knows fishiness when they smell it, especially where baseball is involved.

The players heretofore implicated have all predictably denied any connection or use of illegal or banned substances, and some have warned of the dangers of concluding the worst when all the evidence has not been presented.

Consider a sample of evidence provided to the public over the past decade. Barry Bonds was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury concerning his relationship with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a company under investigation for possible distribution of the banned substance tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG. The house of Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer and a BALCO employee, was raided shortly after a raid on BALCO headquarters.

Mark McGwire admitted to using androstenedione, or andro, during his record-breaking 70-homerun season. McGwire's apprentice, Jason Giambi, was also subpoenaed in the BALCO case. Sammy Sosa, the first player in Major League history to hit at least 60 homeruns in three-straight seasons, was suspended for eight games for batting with an illegal bat, hollowed out and filled with cork.

Bonds, McGwire, Giambi, and Sosa have been MLB blue chips for years. The Sosa/McGwire race to 61 in 1998 produced fantastic sports drama that did not go unnoticed by the viewing public.

Giambi's trade from the small-market, likeable Oakland A's to the corporate behemoth New York Yankees sparked an immediate controversy over the fairness of baseball's salary structure. And Bonds has even surpassed McGwire's 70-homerun season, and is now poised to challenge the career homerun record of 755, held by Henry Aaron.

Such stars face uphill battles in clearing their names. A substantial number of older baseball fans, whose diamond icons include Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Willie Mays, have a natural distrust of new era ballplayers. Skyrocketing salaries, personal trainers, five-star hotels, luxury cross-country flights, and nutritional supplements, even the legal ones, have jaded some long-time fans who believe that the players of yore endured greater hardships than the players of today.

Such hardships are said to have a negative effect on the statistics of the old-time players, implying rampant inflation in today's offensive statistics. Any like-minded long-time baseball fan will have no use for today's records, other than discarding them as insufficient to stand the test of time.

But more damning is the thick fog that hangs in and around this so-called scandal. Did Bonds or Giambi ever use THG? If so, were they aware that they were breaking the rules of their profession? Would a clean test result clear Bonds' name? Or would it only mean that he no longer uses banned substances? And the biggest question of all: which players used steroids in their career?

The public will most likely never receive a satisfactory answer to those questions. Because of that, the cloud of doubt will live with implicated players for the rest of their careers and lives. No amount of denials will ever dispel that cloud.

Even so, a confession of guilt by a prolific player might not be as catastrophic as some players may fear. Sammy Sosa survived his aforementioned cheating incident with impressive ease, even earning praise for "standing up and admitting it," as Kerry Wood noted.

Well. If players earn praise for admitting to cheating when the evidence is strewn across the very playing field for millions of people to view and review, then there is little hope for any concessions of guilt, accidental or otherwise, in the steroid investigation which seems to be happening behind a heavy velvet curtain for none to see.

For the average fan, the steroid-use allegations have two not-so-positive results. The first is the removal of complete ignorance as to the breadth of illegal substance abuse in professional baseball. Incredulous cynicism has replaced unquestioning astonishment as 40,000 sets of eyes watch another ball launched into McCovey cove, over the Green Monster, or bouncing down Waveland Avenue.

A second, less serious effect is the added ambiguity to any cross-era debate on greatness. As if racial integration (or lack thereof), juiced balls, and expansion were insufficient to make decisive comparisons between players of the past with players of the present impossible, now try arguing the superiority of Barry Bonds to Babe Ruth to someone who once saw Ruth play, and does not trust the denials of ultra-millionaires who have everything to lose, and nothing to gain.

Article courtesy of Sports Central.