Shortly after former Senator George Mitchell released his report on performance-enhancing drug use by major league baseball players, he suggested those singled out be granted amnesty. But he had to know that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig was planning to take each violation "case by case" and dole out penalties as he saw fit. By outing a couple of teams worth of players and then washing his hands of the consequences, Mitchell couldn't have been more disingenuous.
Why name names in the first place? It's hard to tell which paragon of good government he resembles more: J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy. Which sets a worse example for young T-ball players? Drug use or a witch hunt?
Among them is Mitchell's compromising affiliation with the Boston Red Sox (none on the list), from whose board of directors he's been on hiatus during the investigation and its aftermath. More to the point, in the absence of cooperation by players and their union, he's opted for law enforcement's usual path of least resistance -- squeezing the little guy.
Team trainers, strength coaches and clubhouse attendants feared for their jobs if they didn't cooperate. Worse, Mitchell's investigators pressured them to rat out not only those they knew used performance-enhancing drugs, but to speculate on those who might have.
Crime-stopper Mitchell got his Public Enemy Number One all right: Roger Clemens. While he's at it, why not send Clemens to Gitmo for the threat he poses to our national pastime?
We asked Rich Herschlag, co-author of "Before the Glory," a recent book chronicling baseball players' childhoods and the paths they took to the major leagues, about the effect on lesser-known players whose names cropped up on the list.
"Brian Roberts is the poster boy for what is wrong with the process and the report it produced," he responded. "So let me get this straight -- a one-time roommate. . . says he never saw Roberts doing the stuff or buying the stuff [but] remembers a conversation from at least a couple of years back during which Roberts says he tried it 'once or twice in 2003.'
"And for this, a guy who is 5'8", 165 lbs., who hit between 10 and 18 home runs a year. . . and who spends his free time visiting sick kids in the hospital, is thrown onto a list with the likes of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire? Talk about due process. How about due hearsay?"
In fact, Roberts's team, the Baltimore Orioles, recently released a statement in which they cautioned, "observers to resist the temptation to accept collective judgments based upon unsubstantiated allegations."
Before high-profile players, not to mention their contracts, were inflated with steroids, baseball was the sport of the working man. Tickets were affordable and teams played almost every day, like he worked.
Also, smaller than football and basketball players and less muscular than boxers, baseball players shared body types with their fans. For example, the most notable feature of the all-time greatest slugger, Hank Aaron, wasn't his build, but wrists and forearms like a construction worker.
That may be ancient history, but any thoughts of culling users from the record books would only be a legalistic exercise in revisionist history. True, many fans agree that current home records are tainted. But, much of the backlash against steroids boils down to a profound dislike for Barry Bonds. His arrogance and insularity are a far cry from the graciousness of Aaron and the rabble-reveling Ruth.
In fact, the bar has been raised on baseball as a spectacle. Fans would feel cheated if their sports heroes weren't bursting at the seams and busting the ball out of the park. Even infielders are expected to be ripped these days.
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
But they're sure as hell not gong to let Pete Rose in
the Hall--not because of any crime higher than betting on his team to WIN.
I don't personally care what sports figures are 'on' when they compete--mostly because it's such a slippery slope of testing inaccuracy and altogether too much a game of 'gotcha.'
One still has to slide into 2nd ahead of the tag, hit a 98mph fastball or throw a perfect sinker that just catches the outside of the plate. Win the Tour de France on something? Yeah--why not?
Because of the 'integrity' of sports? Give me a break. $250 million for A-Rod and you're going to preach to me about integrity?
"Selig repeated previous assertions that baseball leaders did all they could do to fight the steroid problem," except of course to set down their major stars like Clemens. Baseball 'leaders' have taken the sport to fraudulently financed mega-stadiums, impossible salaries and ticket prices that keep a dad from taking his kid to see a game.
There are no 'leaders' in major-league baseball--just co-conspirators.
And, in the face of all this dancing around the issues, Pete Rose--one of the game's most outstanding players--is kept out of the Hall of Fame. Because he bet on his team to win.
The likes of Bud Selig and George Steinbrenner have put the entire game on steroids, financial steroids. In the process they've taken away from the fans one of America's (formerly) greatest sports.
by
Jim Freeman (107 articles, 40 quicklinks, 150 diaries, 326 comments)
on Monday, December 24, 2007 at 10:27:09 AM
When baseball first started cocaine was legal. During the rest of the time we've had everything from meth, to LSD, to steroids being taken by athletes if they thought it would improve their performance.
If you want to purge the records you can go back and do autopsies on all the record holders and I'd predict you'd have a handful that were pure of any drugs.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 1024 comments)
on Monday, December 24, 2007 at 12:29:46 PM
It will be tremendously satisfying to me if Roger Clemens can take this to court, prove the trainer lied and win his case. Of course you know what the brainless jock sportcasters will do to him, do you not? They will OJ him. It does not make a difference if the government and baseball spends twice as much money as him to hang it on him and a jury finds him innocent. He is guilty no matter what the jury says because that is the way those in the press want the public to see him.
I will laugh my head off if Clemens can cram this report down Mitchell's and Selig's throat while speaking up for all those who are railroaded time and again by almost every DA in the US.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Thursday, December 27, 2007 at 8:17:42 AM
