Baseball Gods

I tuned in with millions of others last night as Roger Clemens insisted to Mike Wallace that he never took steroids. Like everyone else watching 60 Minutes, I looked for that telltale tic or gulp or stammer, that slightly unnatural over or under-emphasis in something that Clemens said, that usually accompanies a lie. I thought I detected such things, but to me at least it was a close call, on the very edge of the plate. Here, at least, it was hard to tell whether Clemens was being straight or throwing junk.

But it reminded me of something that has been gnawing at me since the steroid issue, then the report of former Senator George Mitchell, broke. Has anyone else been struck at how the Steroid Era, as Mitchell called it, has overlapped with the increasing religiosity within the game? At the very time the players were bulking up and shooting up, they were also looking up. Skyward. To God. Once, no sparrow fell from the sky without God knowing about it. Now, no home run is hit, no called third strike thrown, without heavenly assistance. I'm not saying the two are necessary connected. In fact, quite the contrary: For all their very public protestations of faith, many, many ballplayers were apparently not content to rely on the Almighty alone. While they were down on their knees, they were also on their stomachs, getting injected in their buttocks. They were hedging their bets.

If the two things were previously unconnected, though, surely they should be so today. Where are all those team chaplains now, when a conspiracy of silence envelops the sport, when dozens and dozens of their locker room parishioners, past and present, say nothing? Aren't their sins, sins against the sport and the fans who follow it, worth confessing? What's been heard from the Baseball Chapel, the evangelical movement in the locker rooms described by Karin Tanabe a few months ago in Moment magazine? Or are walk-off homers all that matter to them?

It's time, in fact, to establish a connection between these two worlds. What is called for is another commission, this one headed not by a former judge and senator but a clergyman, in which honorable players can come forward and confess to what they did. Perhaps when a few of the more courageous ones do, others will follow suit, and we'll have testimony from more than a few former purveyors out to save their own butts. And Roger Clemens won't have to turn to Mike Wallace to talk. There's even a precedent: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Here would be an honorable marriage of baseball and religion. Baseball has now had its Patrick Fitzgerald. But who will be its Bishop Tutu?

Comments

[3fingerbrown]

What I've noticed with the rise of religiosity in baseball is the concurrent rise of on-field arrogance toward umpires.
I can't remember the last time I saw a hitter go down on a called strike three who didn't hesitate in the box, roll his eyes, and turn his head toward the umpire, as if to tell the crowd, "I didn't really strike out, the ump just blew the call," before toting his lumber back to the bench.
If these players really believe Jesus to be God, why don't they show some Christlike humility and dignity?
When Jesus took his final strike three during that big Easter-weekend road trip in Jerusalem, he didn't stand there rolling his eyes in disgust, as if to tell the crowd, "I didn't really whip the mob into an anti-Roman frenzy, Pilate just blew the call." Instead, he quietly took it like a man and toted his lumber up to Golgotha.
And one of the last things Jesus did before clearing out his earthly locker and joining the Angels was to forgive the umps, who knew not what they were doing.

[Kirin]

I don't know how school principals feature in this discussion but I watched the Mike Wallace interview last night and watched Clemens' demeanor very closely, I thought there was a sense of discomfort about him, somehow he did not convince me, he sounded too much like Armstrong, too righteous or something.­He grizzled at Wallace's comment that he may have used steroids to try and bolster his flagging capacities as he neared the end of his career, I thought he would just laugh that comment off but he didn't. He took off on it. He also announced his retirement which I thought was rather strange, you could feel the controlled anger in this segment of the interview. Wallace did manage to iritate him unnecessarily I thought several times. It was not Wallace's nicest work.
It is very sad to see Clemens' brilliant career end like this, having to defend himself in the public place.

[BobLablah]

This post is borderline racist. The number of Dominicans in baseball has increased dramatically over the last few years and they are more religious. Would you have written this same post if it were Muslim ballplayers pointing towards God or maybe bowing to mecca after each home run?

[Nonamnesiac]

It's really amazing that a nation that voraciously and consistently shovels behavior altering drugs into normal, very young children who can't act precisely the way principals want them to act -- because the expectations of decorum of lazy, incompetent principals in order to make their jobs easier are impossible for many normal, young children to meet without the drugs -- gets so upset over athletes using performance altering drugs to improve their productivity.