I was a senior in college in the fall of 1998, and as a die-hard Chicago Cubs’ fan I was riveted as baseball’s regular season came to the final stretch. But it wasn’t for same reason as many other fans. I wasn’t glued to the screen for every Sammy Sosa at-bat to see how far he might hit the ball; and I certainly wasn’t going to turn the channel when his plate appearance ended. For one of the few times in my life, the Cubs were legitimately competing for a playoff spot. It kept me on the edge of my seat … while the season-long, artificially-enhanced home run derby was getting all of the attention elsewhere.
Widely considered “The Season That Saved Baseball,” I always thought the summer of 1998 was cheap theater. My favorite sport, long considered a thinking man’s game, had been reduced to a somewhat mindless slugfest. A generation that had already been simplified down to the 60-second Sportscenter highlight package was watered down even further, now merely a “How far can he hit it?” spectacle.
Nine years later, the proverbial feces has officially hit the fan. Uber-villain Barry Bonds is not the game’s only active bad guy anymore. There are other former MVPs and Cy Youngs under the black cloud created by the now-famous Mitchell Report. So can this great game recover?
Baseball’s records have been tainted, and the overall talent pool has been diluted over two decades thanks to unnecessary expansion. But the growth of the game financially has been great. That’s why many argue that Commissioner Bud Selig and the fraternity of team owners have so willingly turned blind eyes to the bloated sluggers and celebrated the fallen records. It is, of course, time to bring that strategy to an end.
In my opinion, the best part of the Mitchell Report was that the blame was spread out. Everyone was called out for looking the other way and letting this become “The Steriod Era.” But what’s unacceptable is Selig’s perhaps predictable response. He became the Capitol Hill version of Mark McGwire, ready to focus on the present and unwilling to really talk about the troubled past. What’s conspicuously absent from Selig, as pointed out by FoxSports.com’s Mark Kriegel, is an apology.
Baseball needed the Mitchell Report before it could possibly move forward from what had clearly become an era of impurity in the game. But a report so damning can’t possibly bring closure; it has instead merely kicked open the door of suspicion and brought on even more speculation.
But, looking for a single takeaway from the former Senator’s findings, I say this: This is why we test for performance-enhancing drugs, and this is why we must continue to test. Violators must be identified and swiftly punished, or the game risks further damage to its reputation and its records.
The best hitter and now the best pitcher of our generation are now mentioned in the same sentence with the word ‘asterisk.’
It’s time for everyone to get serious.
1 Comment
December 19, 2007 at 7:37 am
We respectfully disagree on this topic as I say they’re gonna keep inventing things for these guys to get an edge with that tests won’t catch…people have to “medicate” just to get to their businesses each day, which directly affects their abilities to do their jobs and do them better, etc. One of the new “fads” developing from the Mitchell Report is those named come out and admit their guilt, but claim it was just to heal and not to get an edge, etc. Who can draw the line? Who cares? Let everybody have at it with whatever they want to do to their bodies to earn as much money as possible. The whole sports world unfortunately has a big asterisk now (i.e. New England Patriots).
Wish it was not that way, but to be honest, even if the pro leagues claimed their sports were clean at this point, no one would believe ‘em.