Ease up on the `Big Mac' attack
Date: 12-12-2006
Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited States |
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The Governor of the great state of California wasn't born in California, wasn't even born in the United States, still has trouble pronouncing the name of the state he represents and wasn't much of an actor unless you consider "Conan" to be Shakespeare for Barbarians.
But I digress. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected Governor twice on the spirit of his popularity despite having likely ingested during his bodybuilding days more steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs combined than Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and their other baseball contemporaries in the BALCO era.
Back when Ah-nold was on the greased-up circuit, he and his colleagues sprinkled steroids on their Wheaties each morning. Graduating to Hollywood was easy considering the film industry doesn't ban drug use as much as encourage it.
But at the moment, McGwire is being tarred and feathered by the baseball establishment because he's the first test case in baseball's newfound morality as it relates to steroids and the Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame ballot sitting on my desk includes McGwire as well as two others associated with steroids, Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti, but this is all about the red-head who annihilated the single-season ome run record and who is on the same ballot as two exemplars of what is good about baseball, the genial hit machine Tony Gwynn and iron man Cal Ripken Jr.
Sports have emerged as one of the last bastions of morality in American culture. Politicians can get re-elected despite previous indiscretions, church priests can cop a plea on child abuse, and CEOs get government protection from bailing on pensions. But if you're a baseball hero and you get caught drinking a steroid cocktail, you're done.
That's the opinion at least of those who find it easy to put their morality on others. The issue is anything but that simple.
McGwire never failed a drug test for steroid use.
McGwire used Andro during his home run heyday, but the supplement at the time wasn't classified a steroid and you could have found it on any shelf of your local GNC at the time.
Baseball didn't even test for steroids back in 1998. Testing didn't begin until after McGwire had retired.
Baseball didn't have steroids on its list of illegal drugs when McGwire made the pros. It was included in an addendum in 1991 when baseball had to cover its butt with federal regulations. Indeed, baseball had its head buried several miles under home plate when it came to steroid use in the '90s even though the NFL had dealt with the issue years before and the Olympic Games decades before that.
If anyone needs to be indicted on the steroid issue, it's baseball commissioner Bud Selig. As thick as the former used car salesman may be, ignoring the sticky goo on baseball - and we're not talking about pine tar - was a premeditated act.
It's so much easier to just point a finger at McGwire and those that will follow and say begone.
This is Ex Post Facto morality, and if we're going to apply it to McGwire and the steroid era, then we should get out the broom and go through the various Hall of Fames and sweep a few people out who were enshrined despite their own indiscretions.
Baseball has a lineup full of reprobates. Cap Anson was a great player but he created the color barrier. Charles Comiskey treated players like chattel and led directly to the Black Sox scandal. Leo Durocher was inducted into the Hall of fame despite being once banned for consorting with gamblers and mob figures. Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker and Joe Wood were accused of throwing and/or betting on games.
The '20s produced dozens of Hall of Famers who were acknowledged drunks or heavy drinkers despite prohibition. Ferguson Jenkins and Orlando Cepeda are in the Hall of Fame despite drug incidents in their past.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame found room for Alex Karras and Paul Hornung even after they were suspended a year for gambling. There's a wing of the football hall filled with linemen from the '70s and early '80s who used steroids before the league imposed rules. O.J. Simpson, enough said.
Don't ever get me started on boxing, either, where its hall is populated with wife beaters, drug users, thieves and murderers. Don King, who killed a man, is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, so please forgive me if I have trouble drawing a line in the red clay infield dirt when it comes to McGwire.
There is only one area in which McGwire should be judged, and that's on merit of his career, and all he really has to stand on is his home run total (583, seventh all-time). His career batting average was .263, his 1,414 career RBI is pedestrian by Hall standards, and he had just ten full-time seasons because of injuries. Of his 583 home runs, 238 came from 1986 to 1994, and 345 from 1995 to 2001.
No statistic in baseball has ever become as cheap as the home run. Getting 3,000 hits in a career still requires skill and stamina, and a 200-hit season, 20-win season and 300-win career may even have more cachet today.
Of the top 100 single seasons in home run percentage in the latest edition of Total Baseball (through 2003) - a better barometer of a home run prowess - 43 came in the previous decade. And lest one think it's isolated to McGwire, Bonds and Sammy Sosa, these 43 seasons came from 24 different players.
On the career top 100, 49 different players came from this generation. Considering almost 80 years have elapsed since the home run became vogue for good (circa 1927), the lack of balance is startling.
So the question should be whether McGwire is better than his contemporaries to earn admission. Is he more worthy than Rafael Palmiero, who also had 3,000 hits and hit .291 (and has his own steroid cross to bear)? When their careers are over, no one will discuss the merits of Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez or Vladimir Guerrero, because they transcended one particular column, or Mike Piazza because of the position he played.
When Frank Thomas (487 home runs, .304), Jim Thome (472, .285), Manny Ramirez (470, .314) and even surly Gary Sheffield (455, .298) are done, they'll have similar home run numbers and more RBI and higher averages than McGwire.
If they're not Hall of Famers, then neither is McGwire. That's all he should be judged by, and not by what he may or may not have put in his body, and not by any artificial moral standards created because of the current climate.
