In Defense of Mac and the Gang

Jon Paul Morosi wrote a scathing piece about Mark McGwire today. You can read it at:

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Morosi-mcgwire-confession-comes-too-late-for-Hall.

Let me say first that I don’t disagree with him on his specific points about steroids. McGwire stated he only used steroids to stay healthy. Translation, he was trying to keep the performance levels that he had in his twenties going for a bit longer than the abuse of professional sports will normally permit. That window is really how records are set. How many home runs can you hit before your body wears out? If you stretch that window in some unnatural way, then you’re cheating pure and simple.

However, there is one aspect of this that never seems to get discussed. More and more it seems that just about every player from the era was taking steroids. To quote Morosi:

I'm not currently a Hall voter. But if and when I join the electorate, I will apply a different standard to hitters who played during the Steroid Era. That’s the period that roughly coincides with McGwire’s playing career (1986 through 2001).

It pains me to say this, but the sluggers who played during that time are guilty until proven innocent, at least when it comes to the Hall of Fame. Through the reports and the books and the Mitchell Report, an overwhelming amount of evidence points to the same conclusion: A lot of players took steroids.

If that is the case, then one has to ask why. I’m not absolving anyone of their individual decisions, but Major League Baseball is as much a company as any other. They were rewarding players that used steroids with huge contracts and essentially punishing the utility men batting .230, making it harder to get on the team and giving them less pay. All during the “Steroid Era” there were calls for testing, and it wasn’t until Jose Canseco came out with his book and brought the wrath of congress down on MLB that anything was done.

How much money did MLB make during 1998, when McGwire and Sosa were dueling for the home run title? I know I wasn’t going to be watching the Cubs or Cardinals otherwise. Heck, at the time I hadn’t properly followed baseball since Mike Schmidt was slugging for the Phillies. To say they made millions from McGwire and Sosa’s abuse of drugs is both chilling and an understatement.

And yet, there are those such as Mr. Morosi, who believe that McGwire and his ilk should be kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Listen folks, I don’t want to reward cheating, but I don’t want to reward exploitation either. If we keep these men out of the hall of fame, this allows MLB to sweep this period of history under the rug.

What we need is a “Steroid Era” wing of the Hall, that lets people remember the most cutthroat years of baseball. Induct McGwire, and track his health progress. When he passes, note if he had cancer or heart damage from the steroids.

Have a specific display that describes the long term effects of steroids, and another that describes what MLB does to discourage their use. (To do that, first they have to discourage their use in some spectacular way. Otherwise they’ll look as lame as they are.)

The NFL went through a similar period, before the effects were understood. Those players became object lessons for athletes of every sport, as so many of them died from health problems related to steroids. They were guinea pigs that demonstrated both the upside and downsides of the drugs: fame, fortune, and an early death. There were shades of Faust in every story.

The NFL, hardly the perfect example of an organization that cares for its people, began testing for steroids in 1987. Note how close this was to the beginning of baseball’s steroid era as quoted by Morosi. Surely the NFL had more to gain by not testing than baseball did. With access to the same body of knowledge, why did MLB wait until 2004? It’s almost as if when the NFL announced they were going to test for the drugs, MLB said, “What’s that? The stuff works? Hey, I got to get some of that.”

If inducting such players sends the wrong message, then we need something else—so that this era is not forgotten. Perhaps we need to build a memorial in front of each hall of fame. We could inscribe on it the names of all the players who sacrificed their careers and life spans so that the fans could have high scoring games and sports leagues could make gobs of money from them.

Before you get high and mighty on Big Mac or anyone else, remember they did it because they knew you’d be watching.

- Vincent J. Shuta Jr.
http://www.shutamultimedia.com
http://www.shuta.com