I know, I know. Steroids and baseball, baseball and steroids. They seem to go hand in hand now, and you can’t go a week without hearing a breaking news story about some baseball player testing positive. To some sports fans, this steroids thing is getting old—they’re tired of hearing about steroids all the time. And you know what? So am I.
That, however, will not keep me from posting this.
From the beginning of the steroids scandal, it seems like there have been two sides: those who don’t really care that steroids were used, and those who want to blacklist every steroid user, make sure they never get within reach of the Hall of Fame, and draw and quarter the offenders’ relatives for good measure. For a while, I used to be more or less in the latter group. I didn’t want any steroid scum tainting baseball’s most hallowed Hall, or the game at all. As time passed, however, I realized that baseball has been tainted by players since its inception. Baseball has had cheaters and drug users and all sorts of bad seeds—so it’s not like deviant behavior is something new.
Throughout the history of the game we have had spitballers, game throwers, sign stealers, drug users, racists, wife beaters, cheaters, drunks, gamblers, corkers, sanders, and all sorts of unsavory elements associated with the game. And yet it seems like this era’s most prominent cheaters, the ‘roiders, are reviled to where they are baseball’s pariahs. If you ever used steroids, then: you have never had any real talent, all your talent resulted from the fact that you used steroids, none of your numbers are real, you deserved to be asterisked, and that’s final. At least, that seems to be a common mentality.
Little do people realize that steroid witch-hunt is far more damaging to the game than it is positive. By constantly bringing up the steroid issue, it is keeping baseball from moving on from the steroid issue. It is my hope that as time passes, people will look more and more at this era for what it is—just an era in baseball. There were eras where pitchers had an incredible advantage over batters. They were allowed to legally throw spitballs, they threw off of pitcher-friendly mounds. Should we punish all the pitchers that found success during these eras, because they had more of an advantage? No, those were just eras, much like this is an era.
I have even heard about people wanting to kick out steroid users in the Hall of Fame, if they happen to be in it. Well, I guess that means we have to kick out Mickey Mantle. Sounds ludicrous? Well, he did use steroids once. What about other Hall of Famers that used illicit means to try and enhance their performance? Mike Schmidt used greenies, Pud Galvin drank monkey testosterone, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays took amphetamines. Should we kick them out too? They did, after all, try to enhance their performance using unethical means.
See—it would be preposterous to kick any of those Hall of Famers out of Cooperstown, because they used performance enhancing drugs. Similarly, it is just as preposterous to keep potential Hall of Famers out of the Hall of Fame, because they used performance enhancing drugs. Since baseball’s beginning, people have been trying to find an edge over the opposition. That edge might be an illegal spitball, or a ball scuffed up with sandpaper. That edge may come in chemical form, or it may come in the form of stealing signs. Whatever it is, players have always been trying to gain an advantage—and, throughout the “steroid era,” the preferred advantage was, obviously, steroids.
Many of the vehement anti-‘roiders bring up the fact that steroids are “morally bankrupt”, that they are morally wrong, et cetera. Puh-lease. Do you want to talk about “morally bankrupt”? Wade Boggs cheated on his wife—not much is more morally bankrupt than that. Fergie Jenkins dealt drugs. Grover Cleveland Alexander drank alcohol illegally during Prohibition. You want to talk about “morally bankrupt”, do you?
Yes—I am glad that baseball has cracked down on steroid use. I am glad that players cannot use them to get an edge over the opposition so easily. Of this, I am happy. What I am not happy about is how so many sports fans are treating this—as a witch-hunt, where all steroid users are pure evil and don’t deserve a shred of respect. I don’t like how people are becoming so overcome by anti-steroid hysteria that they are not viewing the situation, if one can call it that, with any shred of objectivity. So many fans are of the opinion that “steroids equal bad, steroid users equal worse, steroid users deserve no positive recognition.” In fact, they do deserve positive recognition, as they were greats of the era.
Bash mercilessly the players who cheat on and beat their wives, engage in violent crime, and deal hard drugs—not those whose decide to cheat at a game. It is, after all, just a game.
