Hot Stove III

Perhaps the only good that has come out of the Schiavo fiasco--aside from people actually giving responsible thought to their own living wills--is that it has taken the media focus away from last week's Congressional obsession, the Steroid Scandal in baseball. I thought the spectacle of the hearing was rather sad. Baseball players do not generally fare well in their civvies. And poor Mark McGwire, in attempting to be noble, totally undercut his popular rep so drastically that now he is no longer a favorite to make the Hall of Fame.

I have not resolved my feelings regarding this issue. On the one hand, there is the gross hypocrisy of any drug-indictment crusade. Steroids were legal for much of the time that current ballplayers have been active. The intense competitive nature of the sport and its high stakes naturally lead to the use of any performance enhancements. Governor Arnold is unapologetic about the steroids that bulked him up and made his career. Much of this ex post facto hand-wringing stinks of the politicized sanctimony undermining the integrity of our National legislature.

Another part of me, the unregenerate baseball fan, the Rotisserie League veteran who basks uncontrollably in the statistics that festoon the history of the sport, has to be offended by the artificial inflation of power stats during the hyper-steroidal period. The spike in home run production between 1998 and 2001 is more than a coincidence. It is cheating. McGwire followed his 70 homers with 65. Sammy Sosa hit over 60 homers three years in a row. It seems all Barry Bonds has to do is make contact and his enhancements do the rest of the work (though to be fair to the surly Bonds, steroids do not help one bat .370 in the twilight of one's career). Now Bonds, under suspicion bit unindicted, is considering taking a year off for his battered knees and more battered public image. He may even retire before passing Hank Aaron, which would spare us all from one of Sport's great Embarrassing Silences.

If there are any winners in this affair, they are the players whose achievements were unsullied by this kind of suspicion. The stoical Aaron for example, and Willie Mays, and let's not forget Babe Ruth, for whom hot dogs were the supplement of choice. Also, poor Roger Maris, whose name will eventualy get lost in all of this, but at least was well-portrayed in a respectful TV-movie. I remember waching Maris's homer when I was a kid, and though it was the '60s, it did qualify as a more innocent era. I also fondly recall watching McGwire's 62nd homer, from a seat at a blackjack table at Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City. Mom was sitting next to me, in fact, and I was pleased to share that baseball spectator highlight with her. I don't think the recent revelations will stain that memory at all.

Because, lest we forget, baseball is an entertainment. If we were to investigate the pre-performance antics of other entertainers, how many would involve the use of "illegal" drugs, or other substances like alcohol, purportedly to enhance their performance? They can work for or against. Cocaine can make John Belushi hysterical, then deposit him in the morgue. LSD could lead Diane Linkleter to dive out a window, but it could also help Dock Ellis pitch a no-hitter. Steroids can help Jose Canseco to early Superstardom, but they can kill Ken Caminiti and make hash out of Jason Giambi's pituitary gland. It seems we need to be concerned more about personal responsibility and less about selective policing--or don't make the rewards for enhanced performance so damn tempting.