Now that the Mitchell Report is almost two weeks old, the fabled Grimsley Affidavit has been unsealed, and the field of our national pastime is littered with urine samples, it's fair to ask what baseball fans have gotten out of all this.
After all, it's the fans who paid for the Steroids Era at the turnstiles, funded the increasingly exorbitant, incentive-laden contracts that rewarded the impossible durability of ancient men named Clemens and Palmeiro (and please hold your tongue, Mr. Schilling): 500 plate appearances, 200 innings pitched and, of course, the ultimate barometer of fan approval, a selection to the All-Star Game. Senator Mitchell was kind enough to leave the fans out of his report, since all we were truly guilty of was that most precious of faults: naivety.
But just the same, baseball fans, like the players and management, grimly awaited Senator Mitchell's 411 pages of commandments. In a way, we were all bracing ourselves for the same spanking. I, for one, had a sinking feeling, as is all too common for sports fans, that I had made yet another poor emotional investment.
The morning of the 13th, as I sat in my car listening to Mitchell's press conference, memories of 1987 were already rushing back to me. It was winter, and I had arrived at my second grade homeroom wearing one of my several Dwight Gooden jerseys, only to be ambushed by a tall boy with a runny nose.
"You do cocaine," he said, snickering, and walked away.
It didn't matter that I didn't know what cocaine was, and it didn't matter that until that morning, when he failed his first (of several) drug tests, the 21-year-old Gooden had promised to be one of the greatest hurlers in history. Most of all, it didn't matter that Gooden and I were two different people. I might as well have failed the urine test myself.
I anticipated the same sinking feeling leading up to December 13. Which players had betrayed us without our knowledge? Which jerseys would be in the trash? And now that that (mostly) unsurprising list is out there; now that we've been treated to another round of admissions and denials; and now that a Cy Young-winner named Schilling has gone on record with a conditional demand that another Cy Young-winner named Clemens have four Cy Young Awards pulled from his mantel... what benefit have we reaped and what more are we due?
On the question of replica jerseys, let's be straight. Kids, you can keep them...but save them for an ironic Halloween costume. When you and your future college roommate go as the Giambi brothers, stuffing pillows into your vintage Oakland jerseys, some tearful schmuck your age will buy you a beer -- I guarantee it.
But on the subject of benefits -- aside from perhaps having, say, better-informed speculation as to why Roger Clemens threw a bat at Mike Piazza in the 2000 World Series -- what we've really gotten is yet another object lesson on the dark side of the American dream. Baseball is often called the most capitalistic sport -- everyone plays for himself, and the team benefits. Of course, capitalism rarely asks conscience of its actors, so whatever guilt the Pettittes, Gagnés and Grimsleys of the world felt over the decision to cheat (if indeed they felt any), such pangs were easily dismissible. They had families and mortgages, they'd never earn this much money again, and that's to say nothing of helping the team. Which, if you play for the Yankees, you're sort of expected to do.
I heard one angry caller on ESPN Radio demand that clubs lower the price of admission. "They've been cheating us for years, paying those salaries and raising ticket prices," he griped. "It's time they put some money back in our wallets."
Maybe I'm blinded by my desperate love of baseball, but I actually don't feel duped. Compared to Pete Rose, betting on games he was managing? Compared to the 1919 Black Sox, throwing the World Series? At least these fuckers were trying to win.
So I'm happy to start over, to accept Senator Mitchell's recommendation about focusing on the future. I don't much like Schilling's talk of stripping awards, as it seems hopelessly incomplete, and frankly the only reason I think Mitchell put as many names in there as he did was so the damn thing would be read. (There is of course, collateral damage to this tactic: the reputations of players who perhaps committed no sin other than paying the infamous Kurt Radomski to install their car stereos.) Let the Steroids Era fade into the rearview mirror just as the pre-9/11 one did -- as a blissful fantasy time. The real trick will be forgetting everything that came next: the accusations and denials, the historically ignorant discussion of "asterisks," and the wounded sanctimony of the sports media. The sport needs a bath, and it seems the water may have been turned on.
On a personal note, I went to see Bonds play in Dodger Stadium in July. He was one homer away from tying Hank Aaron, so naturally the games were sell-outs...but the fifty-six thousand fans had paid the price of admission as much to boo the greatest hitter of my lifetime as to catch a glimpse of history. When he would come up, every hour or so, the ballpark filled with a dense, ugly roar of disapproval. It was hideously surreal -- a gross inversion of Mark McGwire's record chase in '98. An entire stadium was on its feet, millions of flashbulbs were going off, but it was all set to a different soundtrack. If baseball gives us future respite from that roar, that will be quite enough for me.
