That's what Buster Olney calls the steroids issue in baseball, especially now that a new book has been released describing alleged use by the best player in the game - Barry Bonds. I think Olney nails it with this blog entry, and it's simply too bad ESPN is so idiotic to put their best writers behind the Insider firewall. However, I'll list the important parts:
ESPN The Magazine has an adaptation of Jeff Pearlman's biography on Barry Bonds, "Love Me, Hate Me," and within this piece, there is reporting of an extraordinary scene, from after the 1998 season, in which one Hall of Fame candidate tells another that he has made up his mind he's going to use steroids.
"You know what," Bonds says to Ken Griffey Jr., and three others, as reported in the book. "I had a helluva season last year, and nobody gave a crap. Nobody. As much as I've complained about [Mark] McGwire and [Jose] Canseco and all of the bull with steroids, I'm tired of fighting it. I turn 35 this year. I've got three or four good seasons left, and I wanna get paid. I'm just gonna start using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won't hurt my body. Then I'll get out of the game and be done with it."
The biography, in the wake of last week's pieces of information, will only increase the public pressure on commissioner Bud Selig to do something. And if he decides to begin an investigation into Bonds' alleged steroid use, Selig will have just about boxed himself into some subsequent course of action, such as a suspension, because let's face it, he's probably going to find something -- and if he investigates and does nothing, Selig is going to look terribly weak.
But this scene at Griffey Jr.'s house should actually help make Selig understand exactly why he shouldn't open an investigation into Bonds' alleged use of steroids. Bonds might be unlikeable, he may be surly, he may be difficult, but in this instance, Bonds was like every other player in the majors: He was under pressure to use steroids.
Bonds was different than most other players, in most respects. He probably already had a ticket into the Hall of Fame, with three Most Valuable Player Awards to his credit. He had already made a fortune. He was not some guy trying to ascend from Triple-A to the big leagues or some fringe player trying to hang on for a couple more years.
He was the game's greatest player and yet he apparently came face-to-face with the same quandary that all other players faced in the '90s: Do I take steroids and keep up with the growing number of players using performance-enhancing drugs, or do I face the possibility that I will lose my place in the game?
It might seem misguided that Bonds felt that way. It might even seem a little nuts. But that was the reality. And another reality is that the executives with the most influence in baseball, from Selig to union leaders Don Fehr and Gene Orza, share some responsibility for the fact that by the late '90s -- a full decade after Ben Johnson was famously stripped of his gold medal for steroids in the 1988 Olympics, a decade after the first report of Canseco's alleged steroid use -- players had to face that choice.
The leadership's passive-aggressiveness in dealing with the problem -- or not dealing with it -- created the vacuum in which players made choices and steroids became a dominant part of the baseball landscape. This is where any credible investigation would lead.
And any credible investigation would lead to other revelations, more skeletons falling out of the closet. What if, a week into a Bonds investigation, an ex-friend of another superstar player came forward with receipts, or some other kind of evidence, that the superstar used steroids? Selig would have no choice but to act, to broaden the scope of the investigation, again and again.
Steroids developed into a problem which involved probably thousands of big-leaguers and minor-leaguers under the umbrella of Major League Baseball, but MLB might target Barry Bonds, and Barry Bonds alone? Impossible.
And,
The leadership that baseball needs now is the kind of leadership that it didn't get on this issue in the '90s: Somebody should take responsibility. Selig and Fehr need to come forward together, acknowledge their serious mistakes in handling the issue and say flatly that baseball is moving on, devoted to cleaning up the sport now and into the future.
Even if Selig or Fehr don't really believe they share responsibility for what occurred, this is what Major League Baseball and its players need from them. Right now. Front and center. Baseball needs Selig and Fehr to take the bullet.
And,
No matter the nature of a Bonds investigation -- no matter how long, no matter how deep -- Selig could never get at the complete truth of what occurred with steroids, how records were affected. And if he can't get at the complete truth, he cannot single out one player for what was an institutional failure. [emphasis mine]
I'd say read the whole thing, but you probably can't since you most likely don't pay ESPN to read their columnists. But the above is pretty much the basic point. Hopefully ESPN won't mind that I reproduced so much of it. We'll see.
But as for Selig and Bonds...and baseball for that matter...the issue of steroids does not belong to any one person. If it is a problem now, then it should have been a problem then. If it was not a problem then, then why exactly is it a problem now? If, in fact, Bonds used steroids (which I am fairly certain he did), then what is to be done? Wipe his records off the books? Do we do this with McGwire's as well? And Sosa's? How about pitching records acheived under the influence of greenies or other substances, or reached through illegal practices like spitballs and ball manipulation? Where do you draw the line?
As Olney says, this problem belongs to everyone in baseball. We cannot go back and change the those years or change the attitude around baseball that was the norm. The home runs sure did sell the game after the idiotic strike of 1994. But now, I guess they aren't as useful. And it is entirely inappropriate to single out just one player when there are many, many more in the same boat. We can start fresh, if that is what they have finally decided to do. But if so, we need to get away from trying to play "gotcha."
I recognize that to some in the media, this is a God-send - the chance to get back at the surly Bonds that despises them so. But perhaps they should be looking a bit more at the foundation of the structure, rather than the leaves that may fall off the tree. And when one looks at the foundation, one starts to see the gardener's work - and that was not watering the tree when they should have. You cannot blame the leaf for dying and falling away in such an environment. That is all.
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