Steroids in baseball (a rant of sorts)

Posted on 25 July 2007 | 2 Comments

Filed Under: Blog

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I am a huge baseball fan and also a huge Chicago Cubs fan. I am a baseball purist and love digging through the numbers and the history to figure out things like who the best second baseman in National League history is. I’m a big believer in sabermetrics, I don’t like the designated hitter, and I think that on base percentage is oftentimes overlooked in favor of batting average. What I don’t get is why people are so upset and surprised by steroid use in baseball. Let me explain.

The fact of the matter is that even though individual player statistics can be compared from era to era, there are distinct periods in baseball history that will never be repeated again. When the pitching mound was lowered in 1969 that marked the end of an era. When the season was lengthened from 154 to 162 games in 1962, that was the end of an era. The introduction of relief pitching also began a new era in baseball. The period from about 1993-2003 is (to me at least) just another era; the steroid era. No, I’m not happy about artificial enhancement of athletic among the athletes that play this sport. I’m not going to bitch and complain about it though. Nothing is going to change the fact that there have been just as many 50 home seasons (18) since 1993 than there were in the entire 120+ year history of baseball that preceded the steroid era.

Everyone it seems was juicing up and injecting something. This brings me to Barry Bonds. I’ve never met the man so who am I to talk, but it seems to me that no one really liked him even before he started cranking out unheard of amounts of home runs. People just didn’t like him. Perhaps that is why everyone seems to be rooting against his inevitable destruction of Henry Aaron’s hallowed record. Steroids and bad attitude included, I honestly don’t think that there is any way that Barry Bonds isn’t already considered one of the greatest players to ever put on a baseball uniform. Yes, he used steroids which inflated his offensive output. Yes, I think it he is a huge black eye on the history of baseball and I feel terrible for all the “natural” players that have played before him and since, most especially Henry Aaron.

None of that (however) stops the fact that cheating to get an edge has been part of baseball for over one hundred years. The Chicago “Black” Sox threw the World Series in 1919. Pete Rose (the all-time hits leader) bet on baseball. Pitchers have been spitting on, scuffing, oiling, and doing whatever they can to baseballs forever in order to get an edge over opposing batters. Teams steal signals from the opposing catchers from the outfield. You’ve also got pine tar, corked bats, and (now) steroids.

I don’t like Barry Bonds any more than you do, and I certainly think that the use of steroids has cheapened what were once historic achievements. Like everything else it will pass and fade with time though. Baseball will recover and it will ultimately simply be looked at as just another period in the history of the greatest sport in the world.

Go Cubbies!

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