Dr. Strangelove or How Baseball Learned to Stop Worrying and Legalize Steroids
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Despite what anyone says we’re not sick of hearing about, or sickened by steroid use in Major League Baseball.
The big news was the NFL season starting soon but now the page one headline is Roger Clemens indicted for lying to Congress about using performance enhancing drugs. That’s crap. The Gulf of Mexico was nearly turned into a watery wasteland by BP’s carelessness. The economy is still teetering. Combat operations or not, we still have Troops in Iraq. Afghanistan is a quagmire. Religious kooks are going apeshit to deny Gay people the same rights to marry and serve in our military that straight people have. And the substance that like it or not, saved Major League Baseball in 1998 when Mark MaGuire and Sammy Sosa had their epic home run race.
Yeah. I said it and I’m glad. Steroids saved baseball. Bud Selig should be thanking the good people at Balco. So should Congress. They all talk glowingly about children and farmers and Labor Day and our national pasttime. Baseball wouldn’t be shit now if it weren’t for steroids. Sure Barry Bonds is an asshole. So is Roger Clemens. But look at the thrills they gave us thanks to steroids.
The last few seasons we’ve seen steroids and HGH eliminated from the game. Home runs are down. The age of the speedy player that can bunt, move runners over and get on base is back. While I appreciate that, not many others do. Outside of Albert Pujols who is this generations Joe DiMaggio, and Derek Jeter, there just aren’t any other iconic players these days. We needs steroids back. Sosa and MaGuire were iconic till steroids got the bad rap. So was Roger Clemens. Barry Bonds was always an asshole so he never would have achieved iconic status anyway. Screw him.
A good example of why we need steroids is the saga of Manny Ramirez. Along with Albert Pujols, perhaps the best right handed hitters the last twenty years. Manny always has a job because he’s just better at hitting the baseball than just about everyone. And because he’s a superstar he can shit in the owners private bathroom and boink his secretary and nothing will be done about it. When I was selling cars a rich guy bought a new Ford Explorer Limited every year from me. His wife got a new Cadillac. He explained to me once that he got a new Explorer and Cadillac every year because he could. That’s why Manny acts immature and flakey. That’s why Tiger Woods nailed all the hot blonds. Because he could. Nobody else could do what they did so they had to be tolerated.
But! If steroids were legal there could be an army of Manny Ramirezes ready to take his place in the clean up spot. And if the hitting gets too good, put some pitchers on the juice to even things up. We don’t care as long as you don’t get caught. That’s a pain in the ass cause then Congress has to feign outrage and we have to get all pissy about the sanctity of our heroes and solemn records and other bullshit. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb weren’t saints.
Great Yankee manager Casey Stengal said it best: “He don’t drink. He don’t smoke. He don’t chase women. He don’t hit either.”
Being able to “live with yourself” isn’t worth watching my beloved baseball sink into oblivion Commissioner Bud Selig. Legalize steroids and free Roger Clemens.
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Ron Santo for the HOF!!!!
Yeah. What manly man wouldn’t want to have a spot of tea while watching the cricketeers and croquet players on a Sunday afternoon?
Pretty outfits you chaps wear 4D.
I have no idea why sane people could even have the vaguest interest in what is clearly not a real sport.
Babe Ruth is a case in point…any man called Ruth is clearly suspect…;-)
Get a life America! Baseball is shite. It has always been shite and it will always be shite!
The only sane use for a baseball bat is hitting a burglar around the head.
Besides…it’s called ‘Rounders’ over here and is played exclusively by schoolgirls. Quite right too…;-)
You are full of shit Dinners and you know it.
@Hotle,
I thought it was called “Cricket,” I’ve only seen “Rounders” played on the Flintstones.
@4D,
Thanks for chumming the waters man, you are a glutton for punishment, that’s like me walking down to Exchange Square and screaming “Georgie Best was a girl!” or something similarly suicidal. Cheers 4D.
-SJ
I’d put Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame. But not until I put Gil Hodges in first.
The bigger crime to me was that Josh Gibson never got to match up against the white pitchers of his time. And guys like Cap Anson and Mountian Landis who kept this despicable policy in force are in the Baseball Hall of Fame while Ron Santo isn’t. While Mark MaGuire and Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens won’t be. They mad ebig money but they would have done steroids anyway to prolong their careers nd we all cheered them on.
I agree about the fairness issue. I tell my kids life isn’t fair. With each generation new treatments develop. What if Sandy Koufax had Tommy John surgery available. He had six great years. Could have had fifteen.
Krell: amphetimines fueled players from I think the sixties till the steroid era.. Before that it was booze, broads and caffeine. That was when men were men.
@Joe,
Agreed. I’m named after Koufax, -all I’ve ever heard from my mom is the Tommy John “what if” scenario…
Let’s not forget daily Steak and Eggs, the steroids of the early twentieth century which most players due to their meagre salaries could not afford to bulk up on like the Ruths and Gehrigs.
By the way, did I forget to mention I still somehow love this game?
-SJ
Joe,
I hear you loud and clear.
Nobody ever watched Tiger Woods play, or ever payed attention to him in commercials because he was a good husband. Now, his failed marriage is something for him to overcome in terms of his legacy etc, etc… What bullshit. I don’t see anybody asking David Letterman to atone, or any of the Late Show’s sponsor’s walking because he cheated on his wife and got outed by a blackmailer.
But I also think in terms of this conversation, it’s really important to point out what steroids can’t do.
They cannot for example turn a player like Chuck Knoblach into an Alex Rodriguez, no matter how much HGH, anabolics or what-have-you he gets pumped with. Barry Bonds was destined for the Hall of Fame whether he’d been doping enough to make his hat size and shoe size change in his mid thirties (Which he did) or whether he had not. What steroids gave him (and took away) was the ability to hit more home runs with such sustained ferrocity that he eclipsed Hank Aaron’s hallowed historic numbers. He was already a home run hitter, steroids didn’t make him one.
Ultimately what Steroid usage does is introduce a series of wrinkles into the “myth of fairness” in baseball, the myth that anybody can be as good as anybody else with the proper dedication and effort. Well, not really. Players develop differently and have entirely different sets of gifts, abilities and skills that are bestowed, inherited, developed in some unknowable mixture and degree of nature, nurture and self abuse. Steroids will not turn an inconsistent hitter into Mark MacGuire. What steroids do is allow a player like Mark MacGuire to work out longer, recover faster, and put on more lean muscle mass than with out it: and you know what? Hitting a round ball hurled at speeds of 90 to 102mph with a cylinderical bat and reversing that ball for an effective chance at getting on base is still one of the hardest things to do in all of sports. Steroids don’t help you make contact one tiny bit. If you get fooled by a curve, you’ll just be a bigger musclier guy who gets fooled by a curved pitch. Steroids won’t make Roger Clemmens more acurate conversely, just throw harder: and pitchers who throw hard dead into the strike zone are just batting practice machines, not HOF pitchers.
The “cheating” aspect of Steroid and PED usage really falls in one realm of judgment squarely, and that’s where players assess other players. -Ken Griffey Jr., one of the greatest players of any era seemed destined to break all home run records at various points early in his career, then came the back problems, knee injuries and so on. Griffey Jr. just might be one of those players who looks at the Sosas, the MacGuires of the 90s and thinks that he didn’t get a clear shot at competing with those guys, maybe some pitchers think so too when they faced a mortal power hitter one season only to see him return the following year as a juiced-up God with blinding bat speed… “I never got a fair shot at him” is what they might, justifiably think. —And yet the players themselves never spoke out about steroid use, with the exception of Jose Canseco who was universally hated for his candor. The players association fought testing and investigation everytime it came up. If they can live with it, so can the fans. These players are not all equal in ability or potential, nor can their mere dedication and effort make up for those differences.
If Selig and the fans are serious about wanting to know the truth? Have every single player show up withing two weeks to get tested, and thatt will be that…
It’ll never happen.
Baseball’s never been fair.
Babe Ruth never had to face Satchel Paige, due to one of the greatest systems of institutionalzed cheating baseball was ever subject to, and because of that we’ll never know the absolute truth of EITHER man’s worth as notable career players or record holders because of it.
-SJ
Okay, I first admit that I don’t know that much about baseball. Especially now days. But the title of this post is so alluring that I have to try with my 2 cents worth.
Since it seems that so much of the fan-dom connected with baseball is the stats, if steroids are legally entered in the game, how will they ever prevent those bar room brawls when someone says….”Well, Manny Fudgepickle in 2012 hit 3 triple plays in one game” and the other guy says…”Well, Benny Jetnozzle hit 3 triple plays in 1917 AND THAT WAS BEFORE STEROIDS”……and a huge fight breaks out.
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 Perfect 🙂