Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sammy Sosa and steroids.
BREAKING NEWS: SAMMY SOSA TESTED POSITIVE FOR A PED IN 2003. Ok, so its true that apparently Sosa did test positive for a performance enhancing drug and it made headlines in the sports world yesterday. But lets be honest about this, is anybody actually surprised anymore when a name like Sosa's pops up testing positive? I for one am not shocked by any name that comes up from the late 90's and early 2000's anymore. And frankly did we need confirmation to know that Sosa was on them? Anybody that watched him play had to have him on their top 2 or 3 list of players most likely to be taking a shot in the butt. My top 4 list was Big Mac, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens. I have been screaming for a while now that Roger Clemens was the one pitcher I was certain of to hitting the juice, and truthfully he is the only player other than Bonds that I have felt a certain vindication and satisfaction in seeing the news come out. The question though that I feel needs to be asked is was it worth what Big Mac and Sosa did to themselves and the game? I would have to say yes. Those of you who know me well know that I am a rules nazi. I am fair to the rules to a fault, when I play softball I have actually called myself out when an umpire was umping that didn't know all the rules. I hate it when my team gets the benefit of a bad call and I tell an umpire when I think he missed a call, even if it is one that helped my team. But at the same time, 1998 was a magical season for baseball fans. Outside of hard core baseball fans, baseball was not doing well after the 1994 strike and 1995 lock out ( I do believe the owners were more at fault than the players, and they get a bum rap on this, but thats a blog for another day) and he game was struggling mightily to get butts in the seats. Sosa and McGwire's home run chase changed that. It created interest in the game on a national level that baseball had not enjoyed in a long time. That interest did not go away, it maintained through the 2000's and even though baseball can't compete with football for television ratings (this mostly has to do with the number of games) people were going to game at a great rate in most cities, Florida and Montreal of course were exceptions. Montreal baseball was destroyed by the strike, and never recovered. They had a hell of a team in 1994 and had real chances of going places that year, and their fans got their hearts ripped out. But for most teams 1998 was magical. Not only was it home runs in numbers never seen before, but it was a rivalry between two players in the same division, and each on teams that historically have one of the best rivalries in baseball. Everbody was watching, everybody wanted to know what was going to happen next, and everybody was enchanted by the fact Sosa and McGwire were pushing each other to play better via encouragment rather than animosity. Sure the steriods make the season seem a bit hollow now, but you can't take away what it did for baseball, even now baseball is doing all right and its in part due to that season. And you can take away some of the gloss on what they accomplished on the field with their numbers, but you can't take away the grace they handled themselves with during that chase and embracing what they were to baseball. And lets keep in mind that in 1998 they weren't technically even breaking any baseball rules, which means that perhaps baseball administration is far more on the hook for steroids than the individual players are. Was it worth it, yea, it probably was, without 1998 contraction was a very real and ugly possiblity, and the face of baseball could have been drastically different. Would baseball have been better if the owners and administration had been more responsible in their drug testing? Absolutely, but us and the players have to play with the hand they were dealt, and we still have to look for a silver lining in a cloudy sky.
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"perhaps baseball administration is far more on the hook for steroids than the individual players are."
ReplyDeleteExactly! And, by the way, who thinks that the the MLB didn't know it was going on. Baseball had horrible standards for controlling and testing for PED's. I have wondered if this wasn't, in part, because they knew it was going on and knew the needed it to be if the sport was going to survive.
No doubt, the steriod era is a blemish on the MLB. The entire era is now clouded in suspicion and its records will be forever in doubt. Baseball prides itself in being able to compare players across its nearly two hundred year history because the rules have changed so little, and steriods has changed all that. But:
The major leagues may not even exist today had it not been for the Sosa/McGwire home run race. So, on one hand, players like Hank Aaron may have watched their records shattered by cheaters, which is a tragedy, but, had they not, no one would care anymore about the records of a defunct league. That would have been a greater one.
Hank Aaron's generation was just filled with a PED of a different sort, greenies. Amphetamines were just as much of a PED as steroids are today. Just because it doesn't build muscle mass doesn't mean that it wasn't a PED, and every team was guilty of using amphetamines.
ReplyDeleteIt's not exactly the same. The power that steriods provide makes a big difference compared to greenies, especially in reference to the power hitter. Amphetamines were more beneficial to the pitcher (and, endecdotally at least,more widely used by them) because of the endurance they give and because of their analgesic properties. But, because they are a powerful CNS stimulant, they have a tendancy to speed up the users perception of time, so they were probably more detrimental than helpful for batters of the era. They doesn't mean they didn't use them, since we didn't know how powerful they were at the time. It does mean that they probably didn't do much for them.
ReplyDeleteI can speak from some experience on this, 80 games in a player taking greenies will have a significant advantage over the player that is not. During high school at about game 60 you start to hit a wall, day games after night games become hard to do. Even back in high school I knew guys that would start hitting some illegal stuff about july, and there is no question they had an extreme advantage over those that weren't. If you haven't played 90-110-120 games in a season you can't imagine the drain it puts on your body, and it doesn't matter how strong you are, how well conditioned you are, it takes its toll. Sometimes it takes force of will to even get up the energy to get up and pee. Those that are clean play anyway and somehow manage to slog through, those that use greenies? Well, they are functionally just about normal, personally, from my experience, its as big as steroids, if not bigger since its been going on for longer, and was even more widespread.
ReplyDeleteHeh heh, you know I actually did a huge research paper on this when I took 70's culture in undergrad. It was one of the coolest papers I ever did. Although, probably not the most unusual.
ReplyDelete