...THERES ANOTHER reason Ive been skeptical of the steroids uproar: Ive been in team locker rooms.
When I covered the Raiders, 1967-71, the teams trainers would set out large Tupperware bowls of pills, obviously so they could say if asked that they never directly gave anything to players. After practice, some players would grab off handfuls of these pills. I never knew what they were, but for sure they werent M and Ms.
As long as Ive been around baseball, players have been taking amphetamines, colloquially known as greenies. Though not technically performance-enhancing, they were able to counteract the mental and physical fatigue of the long season. Now that theyre banned, many baseball people think that day games after night games will be played in relatively slow motion.
The point is, athletes are always looking for something that will give them an edge. Steroids are a logical extension of that.
Other writers, who have had similar experiences to mine, know that. They werent bothered by the power displays of the 90s, or the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998, when both McGwire and Sosa made a shambles of the Maris record. It was only when Barry Bonds started his record-breaking run that writers started zeroing in on this issue.
Its pretty clear that the writers already hated Bonds and are using the steroids issue to hammer him. Bonds first major league manager, Jim Leyland, said yesterday that Bond was being singled out. This is a hands-down, go-after-Barry Bonds thing, said Leyland, who added, Im certainly not indicating I would defend him. But I get sick of hearing about it. Theyre single-handedly going after Barry Bonds.
The charge has been led by The Chronicle, which should not surprise those who know newspaper history. The Chronicle resembles the pre-2000 newspaper only in its name. When Hearst bought the paper, the editors from the old Examiner came over with a clear agenda to turn the paper into a replica of the Examiner. Theyve succeeded, which comes under the heading of Be careful what you wish for.
The Hearst papers have a long history of crusades, starting with William Randolph Hearst. The current editors thought the steroids coverage would win them a Pulitzer. It didnt, perhaps because the Pulitzer jurors feel as I do, that a campaign that has leaked grand jury testimony as its centerpiece is not a good journalistic model.
But the hammering on Bonds continues. Like Leyland, Im not defending Bonds, who is a loathsome individual, but its ridiculous to single him out in this way.
FANS AND writers alike want to think of sports as somehow being a pure endeavor, as they did in their childhood. Sorry, people, but it wasnt true then and it isnt true now.
Records are not sancrosanct. Conditions change, players change, rules change. Football recognizes this. Though records are celebrated, nobody pretends that todays statistics can be compared to earlier eras. It is only in baseball where writers and fans alike think that its possible to compare statistics from different eras.
Forget the talk about a level playing field. In fact, baseball has always been manipulated, by pitchers using illegal pitches, by hitters putting substances into their bodies which they think will improve performance, by owners juicing the ball to get better offensive records.
Now, were seeing another artifically-induced surge in power numbers and, guess what, Bonds hasnt hit a home run yet. So, could we please just shut up about steroids and enjoy the games?
