The Sports Curmudgeon

This story is like the old Frankenstein movies. Once they had a hit on their hands, the moviemakers made Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Next Door Neighbor of Frankenstein, Prom Date of Frankenstein and so on. It seemed like the monster would never die. That seems to be the case with baseball and steroids. And the latest is a book – excerpted in Sports Illustrated now and to be released later this month – that chronicles Barry Bonds’ use of a variety of steroids to bulk up and become a home run machine. The book is called Game of Shadows and its authors are Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. If you look at the list of “Pros” I have on the webstie listing sports journalists that I think are very good, you won’t find either name. The reason is they are not part of the sports staff at the San Francisco Chronicle; they are news department reporters.

Most reviews call this work a great piece of investigative journalism and the reports of the sources used in the book would make it seem very good indeed. But let me be frank here; I haven’t yet read the book and I have never knowingly been in the same room with Barry Bonds so I have zero first-hand knowledge of the details of the story here. Nevertheless, let me make a few comments that go beyond the matter of “did he or didn’t he?”

There are three other parties that are complicit in the steroid use/abuse scandal in baseball specifically. I’ve mentioned before that Donald Fehr and the Players Association are culpable here because steroid use is an unsafe working condition for the association members and the union should have been fighting hard to protect the health and safety of its members all along. Clearly, Donald Fehr and the Players Association fumbled the ball on that issue.

The owners and team management are complicit in the steroid use/abuse scandal in baseball specifically. The owners marketed the exploits of players who used steroids and may have even assisted in enhancing the feats of some players by shrinking the ballparks and making what used to be routine fly balls into home runs. Maybe they juiced the baseballs too. I doubt that any owners or team management actually provided steroids or other performance enhancers to players and there is no evidence to date of such a thing, but the owners did exploit and enhance the feats of the players to line their pockets.

But there is a third institution that is complicit in all of this and that is the Baseball Writers Association of America. These are the folks who cover baseball for a living; these are the people who guard the portals to the Hall of Fame; these are the poets who wring emotion from English words and use them about baseball in variations on odes to the game. These guys live and breathe baseball 365 days a year and they let this story go unreported for the last decade. As I said, Game of Shadows is written by news department reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle. One of the Baseball Writers Association members doesn’t write it; it isn’t even written by someone from the sports staff at the Chronicle.

How can that be? Am I supposed to believe that the poets of baseball (Peter Gammons, Tim Kirkjian, Tom Boswell, Dan Shaughnessy, Jayson Stark and a whole lot of others) never had an inkling that anything untoward was going on? Were they so mesmerized by their own poetry that they were immobilized and could not dig into the story? Or - - were they so addicted to jock sniffing that they didn’t dare break any bad news about players lest they be cut off from their “sources” and thereby lose their access to this plush gig?

The book in question cites things like court filings, transcripts of wiretaps and documents seized in the BALCO investigation. Sure, news department reporters tend to do that kind of stuff more frequently than “sports guys” do, but sports sections are still manned by people who profess to be journalists. Watch how fast any of them will wrap that flag around themselves if any were to be confronted to reveal “a source” by a prosecutor. Immediately, the fate of the First Amendment would be in their hands. Yet these guys couldn’t see what was happening around them for 10 years or so.

When any of these folks takes to the airwaves on ESPN or FOX Sports or a local radio station, the question that ought to be asked of them is how the hell did you guys get scooped on this one? It was in your backyard and you were either too dumb to notice or you were complicit in the steroid use/abuse scandal in baseball specifically. Frankly, I don’t know which option these guys would choose if forced to answer that one.

With regard to the specifics of the matter, I am on record as saying that I believe that Barry Bonds used steroids and performance enhancers. I have no evidence for that but it is my opinion and I’m entitled to it. Ignoring all the statistical evidence and all the documentary evidence, here is one thing that has led me to my belief for the past several years. Barry Bonds head got larger and larger. I’m talking physically larger and not in some metaphoric sense about his ego. Increased cranial size is one side effect of steroid use and you can work out in the gym for years on end but adding muscle bulk to your face will not increase cranial size. In fact, adding muscle to the face and scalp should tend to shrink cranial size. So, I have had my own suspicions for the past 5 years or so. But that’s all they were then and that’s all they are now – suspicions.

Now that there is more “evidence” being brought to light, the next uncomfortable thing for the baseball poets to confront is that they may indeed have to take some kind of stand about how they will deal with records and stats compiled by folks like Canseco, Palmiero, McGuire, Sosa and Bonds. At the moment, these are the “Legion of Doom” with regard to this mess. So far, the baseball poets have tap danced around the issue – possibly fearing the penalty that might befall any of them who might offend any of the players and cut them off from the sources that give them their fame and fortunes. Well, the story isn’t going away and maybe it’s time to stop the music and make these folks scurry for the seats that are available.

I’ve said this before so I’ll say it again because I’ve yet to hear anyone else go down this path. How can anyone be confident that he/she knows what any of the baseball athletes did “naturally” versus “enhanced” over the past decade or two? I certainly can’t. And if you allow for speculation to exist just because if follows a seemingly logical path, why not take umbrage at this one:

Steroid use can build bodies but it can ALSO make injuries heal faster. Why else would pitchers use them? They don’t even come to bat in the American League.

Rapid healing of injuries allows players to “play through” situations where they might otherwise have had to sit out a game or two or three.

So … did Cal Ripken use steroids to heal his injuries thereby using chemical enhancement to break Lou Gehrig’s record?

I don’t know if Cal Ripken did that or not. I am equally convinced that the baseball poets don’t know if he did that or not. But I do know that they would never dare to ask him that. And that is a major part of why they got scooped on this story by a couple of guys from the “news department” on this matter.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Watch a grandfather’s clock for just a little while and you will notice the motion of the pendulum. It goes from one side to the other and back again; it does this over and over again. Look closely and you’ll see that when it is at the mid-point of its journey – right there in the middle – that is the point at which it is traveling the fastest. It spends less time in the middle than anywhere else. Go and take freshman physics on any college campus and you’ll learn just why that statement is true.

Now consider the figure of speech we all use when we say that the pendulum is shifting or swinging in favor of one side in a continuing tug of war. What we mean is that one side had gained an advantage of some kind and now that advantage seems to be slipping away. Implicit in the figure of speech is that when the other side gains an advantage, it too will erode some day. By implication the best point is in the middle where there is no advantage - - but that is the point at which the pendulum is traveling the fastest and spends the least time.

And such seems to be the situation in sports with regard to the players and the owners. Back before there were unions and players associations, the owners were a venal and ornery bunch of folks whose dominion over the players was downright reprehensible. Curt Flood put an end to much of that and Marvin Miller showed what a tough union negotiator could do in order to bring benefits to the players. All of that was good and people who have known me for the last 25 years will attest that I have believed for that long that both Curt Flood and Marvin Miller belong in the MLB Hall of Fame for what they contributed to the game. No one in any state of sobriety can deny these two men changed the face of the game as much as Kennesaw Mountain Landis did – and he’s in the Hall of Fame.

However, that good old pendulum did swing too far in favor of the players and the unions in sports. For the past decade and a half, fans have been held hostage by preening divas and their agents who have isolated themselves as an entitled class within the society. They perceive that they are beyond the level of ordinary folks and they have enough money to put themselves above the law in many circumstances. But maybe – just maybe – that good old pendulum is beginning to swing back toward the center where it belongs.

Look at what happened to the NHL players over the past couple of years. They players and the union dominated the league such that the players salaries were about 75% of the league revenues and most of the teams were swimming in red ink. The union went into negotiations with the league taking the position that the owners were lying about profits and losses and the union sought more concessions from owners. They swore they would never – as in NEVER – accept any contract that had a salary cap in it. Later that was modified to be no contract with a salary cap tied to league revenues. Then the union turned down an offer of a salary cap in the $45M range and the league went dark for a year. Now that same union signed a deal with a salary cap tied to revenue in the $35M range. That is called capitulation; that is called a rout; in the history books that would rank right along side the Rape of the Sabines. And maybe that is the start of something good…

Look at the current collective bargaining talks between the NFL and the NFLPA. Gene Upshaw said that the percentage of revenues that had to go to the players in terms of a salary cap would “have to start with a six”. His latest offer is 59.5% and that number does not start with a six. The union wanted some form of guaranteed contracts; that’s not gonna happen. And maybe that is the continuation of something good…

Last season the Philadelphia Eagles took a malcontented – and simultaneously a highly talented – player named Terrell Owens and told him to go home and stay away from the team under all circumstances. An arbitrator ruled in their favor of the Eagles’ actions thereby rendering Drew Rosenhaus useless and silent for half a year. The only thing that the Eagles might have done to improve the atmosphere in South Philadelphia is if they had fumigated the old Veterans’ Stadium to kill all the rats before imploding the place. Some team will sign Owens in this off-season and he will be a good boy for a year and then need to be booted out of town from wherever he lands within 24 months. The precedent is set and maybe that’s something good…

The NBA players have their guaranteed contracts and seem to be on top of the world at the moment because they get paid even if they don’t play. When Steve Francis was traded to the Knicks for Penny Hardaway, people praised the Magic for dumping Francis and his outrageous contract to acquire Hardaway who cannot and does not play but whose outrageous contract expires this season. The NBA trading block has been reduced to an athletic version of the old penny-ante poker game, “Pass the Trash”. But maybe the good old pendulum is swinging there too. After a lockout in the NBA there is a cap on the percentage of revenues that the players can earn and if the revenues drop they have to pay back some of their salaries. And the Commissioner had – and used – the right to impose a dress code on those prima donnas. They squawked but he made it stick. Maybe that is something else that is good…

Even the outrageously haughty baseball union, now headed by Donald Fehr and Gene Orza got their comeuppances recently. [By the way, I’ve pointed this out before; but in case you have forgotten, both “Fehr” and “Orza” are in fact four-letter words.] At one point, we had to tolerate the smarmy Donald Fehr lecturing everyone about how any kind of drug testing for baseball players was an unconstitutional invasion of their privacy and that such action could only come about through collective bargaining. Well, when faced with legislation – which he didn’t actually think he could get ruled unconstitutional obviously – he capitulated. And the drug testing regimen for baseball is more than just steroids now; it also includes amphetamines, which were hardly the focus of media attention or Congressional inquiry last March. And that is definitely something that is good…

Lest anyone misinterpret here, I am not trying to carry water for the owners of sports franchises. I think most of them are less than honorable people who just happen to have gobs and gobs of money and egos that would envelop a small planet. If Danny Boy Snyder were to take a bath with his investment in Six Flags Amusement Parks, the only reason I’d be a bit saddened is that would give him more time to be an annoying preening schmoe with regard to his Washington Redskins’ team. I can ignore him as long as he is trying to figure out how to charge kids $8 for a watered down Coca Cola at his damned parks; I would have a lot more trouble trying to ignore him when he puts his face behind a microphone on a regular basis to offer punditry about football and his team and et cetera. I don’t want the owners of teams to get the leverage they used to have; that was merely a form of latter-day indentured servitude and that would be wrong. But it looks as if Mr. Pendulum is swinging in the owners’ direction at the moment. Now if we could just get it to slow down as it approaches the mid-point of the oscillation…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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