As I listen to admissions and denials of players named in the Mitchell Report regarding steroid use in Major League Baseball, I am neither surprised nor disappointed. Since the McGwire-Sosa run at immortality in 1998, it has been apparent that Major League Baseball players had joined the ranks of Olympians and other professional athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. But for those thinking drugs in baseball began in the 90s, keep sticking your head in the sand – as most did during that fraudulent year the Maris family politely watch Roger’s record demolished by the two Hulk-like characters.
Denial is a trait most often used when it relates to oneself or a loved one. To be in denial regarding a baseball player’s use of steroids is bewildering. No one questioned the use of testosterone by the Soviet Union’s Olympic team in 1954. And lest we forget Dr. John Ziegler who aided the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company in the development of the drug Dianabol (methandrostenolone) in the mid-50s to help western Olympians compete with the Soviet Union. So, to think performance-enhancing drugs were only available to modern-day baseball players is naive.
How will all this steroid-use influence baseball writers who are entrusted with the privilege of voting for a player’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame? They negated McGwire in his first year of eligibility. What about Bonds, Sosa – and now Clemens? Is it a vote for all, or a vote for none? Are we to believe only Olympic athletes used performance-enhancing drugs during the Dianabol years?
So many questions, so many decisions for Baseball Hall of Fame voters.
Marvin Miller took the helm of the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966 and transformed the organization into the most belligerent and impenetrable labor forces in America. If baseball fans want or need to point fingers at which entity is most responsible for steroids to spawn and grow in the game, look no further than the union crafted in Miller’s image. Baseball’s Hall of Fame voters already telegraphed their sentiments when they denied Miller a slot in Cooperstown.Were I Donald Fehr, Miller’s protégé and current executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, I would not put Cooperstown on my itinerary anytime soon.
Comment by Bostonian — December 19, 2007 @ 11:00 am
The writer is right. To think baseball players were innocent of the Dianabol years is indeed naive. Who’s to say who was taking performance-enhancing drugs prior to the obvious in the 90’s? Like many before them, its the denial and lies that are worse than the crime. Fess up Bonds, McGwirer, and Clemens….
Comment by GZG — December 19, 2007 @ 11:11 am
So……we will have a Baseball Hall of Fame without the player with the most hits in the game’s history (rose)…the most home runs in the game’s history (bonds)…….and seven cy youngs (clemens)……hardly seems worth having does it…….
Comment by arnold stang — January 1, 2008 @ 1:31 pm