Something about Sosa and Steroids

Yesterday, the news broke that former Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa had tested positive for steroids or some other sort of PED in 2003.

Like many, I shrugged and moved on.


There was (and possibly still is) a time when such news would be shattering, with the potential to devastate the sport, but there were a few things working against Sosa here:

1) Sosa has been out of the game for a few years now,

2) Few, if any, fans assumed he was clean,

3) After both the Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez revelations, the story loses it's panache.


This is certainly not the conclusion of the steroid era--as long as that list with 104 names remains (largely) unknown, it will not be over--but it does shed an interesting light, perhaps, on our own views of the issue.

When the issue of steroids and PEDs first came up, even then people argued that cheating has always been part of the game and thus people are making too much of a big deal. The difference here, however, was that PEDs present a very real risk to health, and young children trying to emulate their heroes could put their lives in jeopardy.

Still, the idea that baseball players would take something to try to get through a 162-game season has ceased to surprise all but the most sanctimonious.

Now, the attitude, when someone is revealed to have used PEDs, is not so much outrage as it is disappointment, mild or bitter, depending on the player in question.

There are, of course, the rumors that if the 104 names were ever revealed, it would destroy the sport, but for something that weathered the Black Sox of 1919 and the strike of 1994, I don't see that as being the case. At the least, those who used PEDs, however wrong they may have been, tried to help themselves and thus their teams--while the Black Sox, who threw a World Series, struck at the very heart of the integrity of the game.

Sosa likely won't make it to the Hall of Fame--you can use whatever reasons you want, but for me it's easier just to look at how the Hall has treated with Mark McGwire, but by the time Alex Rodriguez retires, attittudes may have shifted so much that he gets in on first ballot. Time heals all wounds, they say, and already, there is less outrage, less hurt, and perhaps less damage than there would have been even just five years ago.

It's kind of funny, how fast things can change.

In 1998 I rooted for Sosa to beat McGwire simply because my brother chose McGwire. Then, as the rumors started, there was denial, disbelief, outrage...and then acceptance.

It hasn't changed my love for the game. I know that when I cheer for Rodriguez or when I cheered for Giambi, I actively cheer or cheered for known users. I don't agree with what they did, but, in these cases, (and one can throw in Pettitte and a few others), they admitted what they did, endured (and still) embarrassment and perhaps asterisks forever next to their statistics. Were they sincere in admission and apology? I have no idea, only they know that.

What I do know, however, is what many of the baseball fans I know and myself are thinking: it's time to move on.

Doug Mientkkiewicz Backs A-Rod

According to this story, former Yankees' first-baseman and former high school teammate of Alex Rodriguez, Doug Mientkiewicz back A-Rod and states

"From my perspective, it would be 99.9% impossible for us not to know...You're basically accusing every kid that's gone through puberty that they're on steroids, too, huh? He gained a couple of inches height-wise too, if I remember right. . . . I knew what he looked like in ninth grade. He was skinny. Who isn't in ninth grade? He was very dedicated back then, he worked harder than anyone else."

It will be interesting to see, in the coming weeks, how many players come to Rodriguez's defense.

Mientkiewicz was in a unique position to make such a comment because he played with A-Rod in high school, but this begs a bit of a question:

Did Selena Roberts talk to Mientkiewicz? She supposedly talked to one of A-Rod's roommates, but the Daily News article that has everyone in a stir does not mention who the source is.

One would hope that Roberts talked to more than just one teammate.

***

It's not really a secret that I'm not one of A-Rod's biggest fans, but the issue for me here isn't so much whether A-Rod did or did not do steroids (I'm of the belief that it's probably harder to find players who didn't use PEDs than those who did), but the way Roberts seems to have gone around, doing her reporting.

The caveat is, thus far, Roberts has yet to turn up anything false, but digging into someone's background like this?

A-Rod didn't murder babies, here.

I get that being a public figure means you relinquish some of your right to privacy, but seriously, unless you've taken a life in the past, or committed rape or genocide or some other such atrocity, what does it matter?

Seriously.

What does it matter what A-Rod did or didn't do way back when?

Look, if you caught him in the act, then yeah, make a big deal about it. What he's done in the major leagues is certainly relevant--especially anything he may have done with the Yankees.

Most crimes, however, have a thing called a Statute of Limitations. After a certain time frame, you can't prosecute the crime. Believe it or not, SoL exists even for rape (though not murder).

Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on steroid accusations? For real?

The Most Important Thing About the New A-Rod Book

Well, it has begun: the fallout from Selena Roberts' tell-all A-Rod book. Some of the stuff inside is stuff that many of us may have suspected, some not; but everything in Roberts' Sports Illustrated article was true, which makes it hard to doubt the veracity of this book.

So what now?

The most important thing that happens from here on out could very well be how the fans respond.

We saw the fans in the San Francisco Bay area not really give a crap about Bonds' steroids allegations (even if fans from 29 other franchises all did), and that Yankee fans have come out in support of Pettitte and Giambi who admitted to PED use.

A-Rod has admitted to 'roid use, but unlike Pettitte and Giambi, has yet to really fall into that 'likeable' category, for whatever reason.

So what happens now?

Do the fans embrace A-Rod, try to protect him and more or less pretend the Roberts book exist?

Do they boo A-Rod every time he comes up to the plate and make sure he knows that he's unwelcome in New York just the second year into his ten-year deal?

He's already one of the most polarizing players on the Yankees for his perceived aloofness, for his inability to get the clutch hit...

I am not his biggest fan, but this comes from the *head, meed desk*ing that goes on when he does another stupid off-field thing that only seems to distract him on it. I respect his immense baseball talent, and I mean, do you really want Cody Ransom playing third base for an entire season? Even Ramiro Peña, who is not quite such an automatic out, shortens the line up by a lot.

The Yankees seem to survive the Torre fiasco, although whether or not Torre himself would survive a return to the Bronx is another matter. He would have been welcomed as a hero had he returned before the book came out; now, I won't venture a guess.

Heh, remember when that was the big, bad story of the preseason?

I Don't Know is on third: A modest proposal

With the news that Alex Rodríguez has an injury that could require up to four months of rehabilitation, should he opt for surgery, the proposals for temporary third base replacements have been coming fast and furious from all corners of the Yankee, and indeed, baseball universe.

Now, while it's important to remember that if Rodríguez opts to go the rest and rehab route that worked oh so well for Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui, he needn't actually miss much, if any time.

The caveat is, however, that Rodríguez's injury will likely need surgery, so, at some point in time, the Yankees will have to address the issue as to who should play third base.

I have a modest proposal, and I beg you all to read it through before thinking holy deity in a handbasket, this girl's insane: The Yankees should trade for Aaron Boone.

Think about it.

After etching himself firmly in Yankee lore for all time to come in 2003 by ensuring Boston one more hard winter of misery, Boone decided to play a pick-up basketball game.

Normally, such things don't matter, except this time Boone did something that wasn't very smart from his perspective: he tore his ACL.

Torn ACLs in the world of sports are ubiquitous, and so are the lost seasons and months of rehabilitation that they entail.

The Yankees knew right away that they'd need a third baseman for the 2004 season.

Someone, and I can't tell you who, aware of the issue, must have shared a thought with the rest of the Yankees management: hey, you know, this Alex Rodríguez guy, I hear he's supposed to be pretty good, and hey, Texas doesn't want to pay the rest of his contract because they aren't winning, and hey, we don't really need Alfonso Soriano anyway...

I'm not sure what said person had been thinking, drinking, or smoking, but lo-and-behold, Alex Rodríguez became a Yankee.

And here their troubles began.

Since Alex Rodríguez became a Yankee:

• The Yankees suffered the biggest postseason choke in all of baseball history and have not been back to the League Championship Series since, and the Red Sox have won the World Series twice in that span
  
• The issue of steroids in baseball went from a 'dirty-little-open-secret' to full blown Congressional hearings
• Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodríguez have both admitted to juicing/doing HGH/using banned substances; Roger Clemens has sued for libel, but most everyone thinks he's guilty as well.
  
• The Yankees decided to build a new stadium, which isn't a bad thing until you consider that it's 4,000 seats smaller and has seats with obstructed views
• Joe Torre wrote a book trashing the Yankees
• Bob Sheppard, the legendary PA announcer at Yankee Stadium, missed all of last season due to illness
• The Tampa Rays exorcised the word 'Devil' from their name and stopped being the Yankees' favorite doormat
• Minor one here: The American economy has completely collapsed
  

So, as you see, there's a little mess that the Yankees have gotten themselves, and heck, most of the free world, into, and they need to get themselves, and the free world, out of it.

In most circumstances, proper decorum as well as coming-of-age stories all tell us that if you get someone or something into a mess, you have to get the said someone or something out of said mess.

Aaron Boone got the Yankees into their mess. It'd be nice of him to get them out of it.

Heroes and Zeroes

Over at It's About the Money, Stupid, Jason posts an excellent post on how the media ignored the steroids scandal in baseball.

At River Ave Blues, Joseph P offers his take and comments on the following Ken Rosenthal quip:

“That is our greatest sin, extolling these guys as something more than they were. Some of us had a feeling that something was amiss. We are more guilty of making McGwire and Sosa into heroes when they weren’t.”

Joe's comment:

First of all, McGwire and Sosa are not and never were heroes, even if they hit all those home runs clean. Baseball players are not heroes. They are entertainers. We might attach some narrative lore to them, especially the legendary ones, but that doesn’t make them heroes. There are people who sacrifice their lives for the betterment of others. That’s when you can get into the hero discussion. It does not apply to people who hit baseballs 400 feet.

In an ideal world, Joe is perfectly right. Baseball players aren't heroes, not in the way that firefighters, EMTs, soldiers, the members of the Coast Guard and those that risk their lives to help others are. There's no real comparison between them and guys that get paid hundreds of millions to play a game as a living.

The problem is, however, that we don't live in an ideal world.

We live in a world-and I've said this before-where what matters is not so much the reality as does the perception.

In 1998, the majority of us baseball fans perceived at least one of the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa bashing duo as a hero-and in many cases, we thought they both were. In that instance, Sosa and McGwire became de facto heroes, even if they never planned to be considered as such.

See, the thing is, when you are a marquee employee of a multi-billion dollar industry, you don't get to pick and choose what you want to be-if the fans decide you are a hero, if they think you are a hero, however misguided their notion may be, well, then, you are a hero.

So when these guys do something that's not just disallowed by the governing body of their employer, but in many cases illegal as well, you can't just brush it off and say it doesn't matter.

I wish it didn't matter. Really, I would love more than anything not to care, and if you've talked to me recently, you know that my state of delusional grandeur doesn't extend to the belief that 99% of baseball players are clean and there are only a few bad eggs. We know this wasn't and, likely, still isn't true.

An alarming percentage of baseball players likely used-a conservative estimate of 103/800 yields a percentage of 13%; there are only 750 25-man roster players active at any one time-it might seem like an inconsequential number, but over one in ten using would easily mean that yes, someone on your favorite team's roster is using as well.

The public-the paying public-will probably still pay to see the game, even if only to boo the cheaters, but much of the harm done is irreparable.

The Yankees signed Alex Rodriguez to a ten year deal, when they knew that at the tail end of the deal A-Rod is likely to be dead weight because he was the one that was supposed to "cleanly" break Hank Aaron's record. Alex might still go on to hit 800 home runs, but how many of the runs are tainted? If people demand that McGwire's numbers and Bonds' numbers be tainted with asterisks, there is no reason to think they won't demand the same of A-Rod.

I can't actually tell you that most baseball players have no interest in being heroes, but if the opportunity arose, I wouldn't hesitate to make that bet. Baseball players are, as Joe says, in reality entertainers. The perception of them as heroes is unfair...but it's still there, just the same.

As I said before, the steroids scandal isn't likely to keep fans from the game-if you see a decline in attendance figures this year, you're probably best off attributing blame to the recession/economic collapse/second great depression-but the argument that baseball players aren't heroes and thus how they do what they do shouldn't matter is fallacious.


Baseball players have tremendous ability-they can inspire kids to play and thus stay out of trouble, they can inspire kids to dream and they can provide us adults with an escape from the humdrum of every day life (well, unless you're a Nationals fan, but that's not the point). In that sense, baseball players are heroes, and as much as I have issues with Ken Rosenthal, he is not entirely off the mark.

A-Rod Conference Today's Big Draw

Alex Rodriguez is supposed to have his press conference today at 1.30 PM. I will be unable to cover it, so I figured I'd write a tiny bit before hand.


The most crucial thing for Alex to do is come clean. Pretend the Gammons interview never happened and come clean. Don't act like you're holding back, either. Come clean. Oh, and you probably should apologize, too.

After that, if you want to say that after today you never want to talk about this again, it's your right.

It might seem odd to us that Alex hired a PR firm to help him with this, but we have to remember that two years ago, this was the guy that 'opted out' of his mammoth contract during the clinching game of the World Series. Good PR is not exactly his thing.

However, as much as we might want to hope that the A-Roid saga will end today, the answer is that it won't--not when there's a book coming out, not while Alex is still a Yankee, not when the saga will continue to sell papers and magazines.

The thing the Yankees can look forward to after today, though, is that if they and Alex do this press conference thing right, they won't have to address it after today, at least, not publically.

Miguel Tejada Charged with Lying to Congress

Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada has been charged with lying to Congress about the prevalence of steroid use, ESPN is reporting.

It is going to be painfully apparent pretty soon that this goes way beyond Alex Rodriguez and perhaps strikes at the very heart of baseball.

As long as there has been a game there has been cheating, but the difference is that with the media now--TV, radio, blogs, etc--it's a hell of a lot more noticeable. Alas, many casual fans don't care if Mantle was a drunk or Cobb a racist--they care about what their players are doing now.

Is it too early to call for Selig to resign?

This did happen on his watch.

Selig's done some good for the game--look at the attendance totals and revenue sharing--but the idea that people didn't know what was going on, ranging from players to owners, is preposterous.

Oh well. Not like there are tons of things more American than a good scandal, anyway...

A-Rod A-Ruined?

With A-Rod's situation now out in the open, there are these possible courses of action for him to take:

1) Admit whatever allegations are true, even if they aren't. The Pettitte/Hamilton/Giambi route seems to be the most successful in terms of dealing with illicit substances, although it should be noted that Hamilton's situation was different.

2) Clam up and say nothing, which solves nothing.

3) Go the Clemens/Bonds/Palmeiro route and deny everything. This, I don't need to tell you, hasn't always worked very well.

However, whatever path Alex takes, there is one basic constant--rightly or wrongly, he'll never be considered a "clean" player again.

That clean break of Hank's record?

Gonna have to wait for someone else.

It sucks for everyone involved--Alex, the team, the fans, baseball as a whole.

For every argument that the anonymous names should have remained anonymous, there's the more powerful argument that Alex shouldn't have put himself in that situation in the first place.

We want to like A-Rod. We excused the stripper in Toronto incident, and then tried not to pay too much attention when he started banging Madonna and divorced from his wife, despite their two young daughters.

For everyone that argued 2006 and 2008 were subpar, we said, look at 2005 and 2007.

We welcomed him back after the op-out fiasco and only a few dared voice complaint when he signed on for ten years.

But this, this strikes at the very heart of the game. If it's true, we can't simply brush it aside, and neither can Alex.

While we hope that it's not true, unfortunately, in public perception he's already guilty (just check out that poll on ESPN.com)

You know, I have to think, for all the wishing we did that the Torre book wouldn't be a distraction during Spring Training, I think we may have to be just a little more careful about what we wish for...