Baseball's Pattern of Denial
The issue before baseball is not Alex Rodriguez. It is the other 103 names on the list of players who for reasons that boggle the mind were assured of confidentiality if testing revealed that they had used performance-enhancing drugs.
The issue cuts to the heart of what has ailed baseball for much of its history: an inability to see beyond the moment. It is as if baseball, like the men who play the game, measures life a pitch at a time.
Baseball's enduring lack of foresight has undermined the great game, time and again. It kept the sport from drawing upon the vast source of remarkable athletes it consigned to the Negro Leagues because it could not see beyond the shameful limitations of its racism. It allowed the sport to be overtaken by professional football as the nation's most popular sport because it insisted that an alignment fashioned in 1903 still worked for a changing America. It could not accept that its players might have claim to the wealth that the owners kept to themselves -- and as a result created a tradition of profound mistrust with the players' union.
Most recently the game was woefully slow to appreciate the damage done by the use of performance enhancing drugs -- a blight for which the players and their union share responsibilities with the owners.
There is history to this pattern of denial. For years baseball operated as a legally-sanctioned monopoly: in 1922 the Supreme Court, in a decision by the other-wise revered Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, ruled that because baseball did not represent interstate commerce it was exempt from anti-trust laws. That ruling, baffling its reasoning, allowed the owners who ran the game to slip into an enduring state of lassitude and smugness. Yet even with its fall in popularity, with scandal, and strikes, the men who run the game seem incapable of seeing beyond the moment.
The wise course today, tomorrow at the latest, would be to make a full accounting of what happened before, to show what had gone wrong and what, in good measure, has been made right.
That, however, would mean a decision that would stand in marked contrast to what has come before. If baseball has a collective character it is expedience, and an eye to the short-term bottom line. To show boldness now would be the act of a different breed.
Alex Rodriguez has looked to the past and seen the impact it might have upon his own, damaged future. He has seen the public humiliation of Mark McGwire, the perjury case against Barry Bonds, the shame of Roger Clemens but also the redemption of Andy Pettitte, a pious man who may have cheated but who would not lie about it.
Baseball would be wise to follow that lead. But wisdom is a quality that the men who have run the game have struggled to exhibit.
Perhaps this, at long last, might be a good time to start.
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The issue is not the rest of the list. The issue is that MLB finds profit in steroids because fans don't care about what they put into their bodies but do care that a player like Bonds is out there knocking out dingers another 10 years longer than his body might have otherwise tolerated, or that a Clemens kind of hurler is still playing into their 40s. As I mention in my HuffPo piece on this subject, until fans vote with their pocket books, you will see zero done by MLB to curb steroid use, or by the players to live within the rules beyond the eleventh baseball commandment: "Thou shalt not get caught."
(Major League Baseball) HEY, do we wanna sit around and talk about who lied to who or what records are now meaningles
(American public) DINGERS DINGERS DINGERS
Nice work, Michael. I was surprised A-rod 'fessed up so fast (it wasn't perfect, but faster than almost anyone else - and better than I'd hoped for, with my looooow standards).
i have been critical of congress for years but they and they alone deserve credit for the progress thats been made with regard to steroids and baseball.
__________
Miguel Tejeda is about to hauled before Congress for lying to them under oath. But as one wag on ESPN put it: "what's wrong with lying to Congress? They've been doing it to us forever."
WMDs. Someone lied. Now haul that one's ass before Congress.
Professional baseball is first and foremost a business. Whether or not top tier players are using performance enhansing substances will make very little difference in the grand scheme of things. Breaking records brings more viewers; little will change. Don't look to baseball players for rolemodels, there is no there there.
Amen to the idea that baseball is suffering because of its near term focus. Baseball is not, however, the only institution that suffers from measuring "life a pitch at a time." A little long term focus would have benefitted Wall Street (did anyone ask - is the housing market sustainable?), corporate America (do you really need a "hemi"?, are we really accounting for all of the costs associated with off-shoring jobs?, etc.) and Washington politicians (is trickle-down really working? don't we need a little regulation
The beauty (and curse) of baseball is that its history is stitched into the fabric of the U.S. It feels good to go to Fenway Park with my kids and know that my grandfather took my mom to the same place to watch Ted Williams 60 years ago. Baseball's soundrels and foibles have mirrored those of the country for over 100 years. I choose to be optimistic and view baseball as a canary in a coal mine. Mr. Shapiro notes baseball's shameful segregated era, but doesn't mention that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier before the Johnson's Civil Rights Act and the end of Jim Crow. Maybe baseball can once again be ahead of the country.
Baseball (management and players) have an opportunity to showcase some long-term thinking. In other words, both sides need to think about the institution (instead of (i) this season's profits with respect to management and (ii) the size of the next contract with respect to players). Each side needs to do whatever it takes to restore confidence in competition and the relevance of current statistics. The union and players should consent (with appropriate safeguards) to extensive testing and procedures that could in other cases raise privacy concerns (e.g. the union and league hire statisticians to look for anomalies and get access to a player's phone records when that player gains 20 pounds of muscle in the off-season, increases production by 10%, etc.)
i have been critical of congress for years but they and they alone deserve credit for the progress thats been made with regard to steroids and baseball. bud selig,(salary, eighteen million)and donald fehr are bigger frauds than a fraud. they have consistently lied to congress.g
Are you joking! If you really want baseball cleaned up, stop going to the games. Remember the strike and how fed up the public became with baseball? Why not repeat that? You'll see how fast things change. Why should tax payer money be wasted by Congress on this crap when there are much more serious problems?
Public money in sport venues talk the talk and walk the walk. If you feel that strongly about this issue, stop going to the games! MLB will listen.
In my opinion, the Hall of Fame should either seek to ban those who have tested positive for steroids or disregard the issue altogether. I would prefer that they just let it go. It has become apparent that performance enhancing drugs were widespread in baseball and many other professional sports. Why can't we accept it as part of the era and accept these players, with or without the benefit of steroids, as the era's best? What is more important: A Hall of Fame that prizes a sport of integrity or a sport that prizes a Hall of Fame of Integrity? We already don't have the all time hits leader in the hall of fame, how can we also not add the all time home run leader? The Hall itself isn't void of any controversy, there are plenty racists and bad characters enshrined there. Why stop admitting questionable people now?
Simple solution, only count games that are fair.
If one player on a team uses steroids, that team is considered to have forfeited any games that player played. This is retroactive-has to be since the team could otherwise play the player than bench them once use was discovered-and applies to playoff games as well. Also, if a team qualified for a pennant, but would not after wins are turned into forfeits, they lose the pennant and it goes to the next team with a claim, example below.
So if team A from the western wins 100 games and become national league champs after beating first the central division champs, and then the eastern division, and then 42 of their wins become forfeits, it would work like this. The team with the highest number of wins after the discovery becomes western division champ. The eastern division champs become national league champs, and the central division IS credited a playoff win, even though it doesn't mean anything because they were eliminated first.
The objective of punishing the team is that team owners, managers, and fellow players will have incentive to not "look the other way."
...and the collective record of the league would be 0-2430 for years...
...oh, and since it's retroactive include the last 3-4 decades too. Gosh your solution just makes so much darn sense. I can't see any reason why it's not already in place!
wonder will A-Rod be hounded out of baseball like Barry Bonds ? I wonder if Anyone will call for A-Rod's home runs not to count as they have done with Barry Bonds?
I wonder if Major League Baseball teams will conspire against A-Rod and not allow him to play baseball as they did Barry Bonds this year?
Oh........
weak.
Don't kid yourself, this isn't racism. A-Rod is a minority (and probably a less popular minority in America nowadays) too.
Bonds' Career Stats:
http://www
Now, is he really worth $15 mil/year post-knee injury? I don't think so. He only played on '07 because San Fransiscans kept paying a lot of money to see him hit homers, but after only 59 in his last three seasons he couldn't even get a contract because of the crowd draw. It's not some conspiracy between teams--it's smart business sense. Even the Giants' owner knew he was trading [very] short-term profits for long-term team effectiveness when he signed Barry for '07.
Additionally, A-Rod's stats didn't really spike during his (known/admitted) period of use http://new
But it's not about steroids. Their actions post-revelation are also indicative of how they will be treated in the future; while A-Rod did deny, once it was reported he came clean almost immediately. Compare that to Bonds and Clemens, who continue to deny.
Actually the Clemens example completely kills your attempt at crying 'racism'. Clemens was infinitely more popular than Barry Bonds, yet he too was eviscerated publicly when he continued to deny sound allegations. Clemens's race? White. Non-minority, unlike A-Rod, if you didn't notice.
Bottom line is that fans really do not care about this. Attendance is good every year. The crusaders and holier-than-thou writers love to see themselves in print but, like most news pundits, they pretty much just talk to each other and whip up the hype and hysteria. The media has damaged Baseball as much as drug use has. But both entities will survive, and both will continue to become sleazier as the bosses sensationalize and pander to get more attention, and, the real quest, make more money.
Exactly!
To me Selig and the head of the Players Union ought to both retire and be replaced by more reasoned leaders. They have both been there too long and from the time of the extended use of PED's before their banning. The next Commissioner needs to stop mainly representing the owners and their demands for huge subsides from taxpayers for new venues. The next Union leader need to stop reaching for CEO salaries for top players. To me in all major league sports, their commissioners and union leaders ought to have term limits of 5 or so years to give more opportunities for others as well as keep up with the times. I realize you are not going to end the use of all PED's as new ones develop well ahead of any detection curbs, but we need to look at new ways to limit their influence and keep it fairer for all - players and fans.
You miss the point completely. The mistake made here is not a full accounting it is an amnesty, or rather a lack of one. Two years ago the commish should have granted a general amnesty to any player using peds Performance Enhancing Drugs. The amnesty would be general, allow full participation in the hall of fame, work for baseball etc., but from the moment the amnesty is announced every player caught with any form of PED would be given the sports death penalty. No Hall, no eligibility to play at any level, banned from every stadium at all levels so there would be no announcing career. In other words every instance, from the moment of amnesty, would be treated like gambling on the sport. That is how they should have solved the problem. It would have worked, it still might. Oh, and if you really really want an investigation, the amnesty is contingent on full open and honest allecution. If called before the committee you have to confess everything, everything confessed falls under the amnesty, any thing you leave out gets you the death penalty.
How ironic that this has become the cause celebre re: fairness and drugs. Rodriguez will be tainted but continue to earn another 200 million. What of Michael Phelps' indiscretion but far less damaging and dishonest revelation?
Daniel Weiner
www.goodgo
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