Why Steroids Are Cheating
Okay, so Mark McGwire (who broke Roger Maris’ home run record while I lived in St. Louis) finally comes clean and admits to being juiced during the time frame when his home run average increased by over 20% and he briefly held the title of home run king. This really isn’t news, since everyone knew what was happening in baseball at the time, and as a mea culpa it sucks. He wanted the record, so he cheated. Now we’re supposed to sympathize about his regrets? Wow.
There certainly is one positive consequence of the admission. Now MLB has to confront the issue of the “asterisk” – that the records of McGwire, Sosa and Bonds are compromised, and Maris is still the king. The reason a record is significant is that it is hard to acquire, which is not evidenced by the 30+ year record falling several times in almost as many years. What these guys did is no more exceptional than getting a perfect score on a multiple-choice take-home exam.
Cheating screws everybody: the guy who wasn’t juiced but hit 55 home runs (I’m making up that number), the record holder, the fans who want legitimate sport, and the player who breaks the record only to be eclipsed the following year by another cheater. It removes risk in the sense that cheaters don’t operate by the same rules. Like playing rugby with body armor.
Ownership should take a share of the blame, much more so than they have. After all, they are the ones to promote the gladiator-entertainment model, substituting the thrill of action for the appreciation of craft and physical prowess. Breaking Maris’ record was good for business, probably got several stadiums publicly financed, and definitely sold a bunch of corporate boxes (and catered pizzas at $45 a pop.) Don’t we already have that with WWF? Is America destined to take up Rollerball? Unfortunately, John Houseman is dead, but maybe Bud Selig could play the role.
In the meantime, McGwire is a hitting coach. Apparently, Mr. DeWitt is okay rewarding cheaters. But I’ve never known an organization that built integrity and good product on screwing its customers. I’ll stop my rant, but highly recommend Dave Zirin’s post at thenation.com.
UPDATE:
McGwire sat down with Bob Costas the other day to discuss the reasons behind his steroid use. Get this! He claims that he didn’t take steroids to enhance his performance, but instead took them to recover from injury. But if he was injured, he wouldn’t be able to play and hit home runs. You can watch the video while trying to untangle that logic. But beware, you might taste some bile in the back of your throat.
