A-Rod and More Anabolic Agonistes
Should we pity Alex Rodriguez? The three-time MVP, owed $275 million over the next nine years, has been exposed as a steroid user, the latest in Major League Baseball's endless series of anabolic agonistes. The creative minds at the New York Post summed up the mood of the moment with one blaring headline: "A-Fraud." ESPN senior writer Jayson Stark was no less overwrought; his headline proclaimed, "A- Rod Has Destroyed Game's History."
However, the list of frauds and history defamers extends far beyond the Yankee third baseman. Before we gather the torches and pitchforks, let us round up some of the real villains. When it comes to steroids, no one, as A-Rod’s alleged paramour Madonna might say, is like a virgin. For instance, there’s league commissioner Bud Selig, who touted A-Rod as the man who would replace the “unclean” Barry Bonds as the all-time leader in home runs. Then there is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Once arguably the most powerful union in the United States, the MLBPA has in its possession the infamous list of 104 players tested in 2003. That year a deal between the owners and the union was supposed to be based on anonymity and trust. If more than 5 percent of the players tested positive, more testing with suspensions would ensue. The union promised its members that it would destroy the list. Instead it inexplicably held onto the list long enough for the government to seize it for the BALCO investigations.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Steinbrenner family also have anabolic egg on their faces. They were depending on A-Rod to be the cherry atop the sundae of the new billion-dollar Yankee Stadium expected to open this year. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have gone into this public works project, with specious promises of economic renewal. Now it may just set the stage for a season-long, agonizing fall from grace.
Finally, there are the owners-at-large, who have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport. Stark, in his piece blaming A-Rod for shredding the very fabric of baseball history, writes:
In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn’t even understand: a crime against the once-proud history of his sport.
What Stark and his misguided minions ignore is that if we are upset about the way numbers and hallowed records have become cheapened over the past fifteen years, ownership is the problem--and it extends far beyond steroids.
Owners actually had a multifaceted strategy to try to make baseball more like beer-league softball--and it was about as subtle as a tabloid’s back page. As legendary baseball writer Bob Klapisch said, “Somewhere someone decided that baseball needed more runs. It was made at a very fundamental level. And little by little, step by step, this became the new reality. There has been too much to write it off as coincidence.”
The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past twenty years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States. They are supposed to be fan-friendly--that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.
Then there are the balls and bats. Countless baseball insiders believe that the ball is now wound tighter than it was twenty years ago. As for the bats, as recently as fifteen years ago, players used untreated ash bats. Now the bats are maple and lacquered. That means the ball goes farther.
Then there is the strike zone. The area where a pitched ball can be called a strike has shrunk, in the words of retired pitcher Greg Maddux, to “the size of a postage stamp.” The owners consciously engineered this trend toward the microscopic strike zone. When umpires refused to agree to a uniform strike zone, Major League Baseball crushed their union and instituted a machine to monitor their abilities. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, “The loss of the high strike has changed the game more than any pill.”
But an equally big reason home run numbers are up is that the game finally shed its nineteenth-century view of strength conditioning. The training standard until the 1990s was that if Joe “Ducky” Medwick didn’t do it in the ‘30s, then it shouldn’t be done. For example, it has been the conventional wisdom for most of baseball’s history that weightlifting would destroy your swing. Many teams even fined or suspended players if they were caught pumping iron. Weightlifting is now as much a part of every team’s regimen as shagging fly balls.
Alex Rodriguez is set to be the next former slugger torn to pieces by columnists, fans and the sports radio blabbocracy. They all need to crack open some Michael Phelps medicinal magic and relax. Rodriguez may not deserve your pity, but he hardly deserves your scorn. Reserve that for the owners, political leaders and Bud the commissioner--who robbed our cities blind and distracted us with dingers so we wouldn’t notice.
24 Reader Comments | Add a comment
Wonderful article, pointing out the hypocrisy of major league baseball. Two great lines. One: Bob Costas once said baseball has to be immortal when you consider how it has survived MLB's attempts to destroy it. Two: Edward Bennett Williams owned the Orioles and the Redskins and once said the dumbest NFL owner is smarter than the smartest MLB owner.
One criticism. Granting the ridiculousness of the strike zone, that is not the reason MLB set out to break the umpires' union or the reason it was crushed. That resulted from the hubris of union boss Richie Phillips and several of the umpires selling out their colleagues--a perfect storm. The strike zone was not a major part of that. It was, however, important in the PR war over the union, the umpires' contracts, etc.
Here we go again (sigh). The worst thing about the A-Rod fiasco is now we have to sit through another round of steroid moralizing. I just want it all to be over with so we can enjoy the game on the field again. Whose fault? Who cares.
Okay, according to the implied math of your article, it was steroids 20%, strike zone 20%, weightlifting 20%, bats and balls 20%, shorter fences 20%.
Which one of these involves a massive criminal conspiracy, corrupting all who derive a paycheck from the sport, including sportswriters? Which one depends on ongoing, highest echelon fraud and global manufacture and distribution of sophisticated illegal substances? Hint: it's not the fences.
I love all the people who come together and to varying degrees excuse Barry Bonds, A-Fraud, Roger Clemens, etc. for doing what Marian Jones did. Except of course, that Jones went to jail. As far as I know, she's the only big-time athlete to have been to prison in the whole BALCO deal. Until she's pardoned, Barry and Alex and all the boys better go to jail. Feel free to send the owners, too. But don't wait up for it - after all, Madoff's still not behind bars. . .
what honbestly bothers me about this whole thing is the laziness that most sportswriters have regarding the subject of anabolic steroids.
A little background. I lift 5 days a week. being in the gym that much you learn things, and i'm just a guy who lifts on the off time i have from my full-time job.
for instance.... steroids are the Z in an alphabet where A is the first time someone picks up a weight. in between is creatine, protein powder, Nitric Oxide, multivitamins, full-scale home gyms with every kind of possible weight and workout machine that exists, and strength and conditioning coaches. But hey.... if you put on muscle it's got to be because you do steroids.
Silly Sportswriters. Tricks are for kids.
"Do you want to know the awful truth Bart, or do want to see me hit some dingers!!!" No truer words were ever spoken, sadly it was on The Simpsons, not ESPN.
What about the kids????
What a load of horse sh%*....
The kids will get affected by some millionaire's PED usage...
It's all good to sit through a game with a child and for that child to watch the highly sexist commercials that promote alcohol...
That's just fine...
From a functioning alcoholic.
i think about that Simpsons line a great deal. "Dingers! Dingers!"
Also, I wrote about Marion Jones in October 2007.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071029/zirin
You forgot to add the first paragraph of this article, assuming you wanted to include all of it from The Nation.
While I enjoy discussing the factors in increasing long-ball production, my real concern with all these public trials is that it encourages a McCarthyite mentality. Athletes (celebrities more than the Hollywood 10) are made to publicly humiliate themselves and to name 'names'; this goes hand-in-hand with the 'counter-terrorism' security state, which is still with us (even with the major change in administration in DC). Colleagues turn on colleagues, racism comes into play, the union is clearly weakened- this is all bad.
Bill Balderston,
Oakland, CA
Bill:
I'm not following you on how racism comes into play concerning Arod. Originally, I felt as if the government going after Bonds was racist. Now that they're going after Clemens, however, I would downgrade it from racist to an enormous waste of time and money.
Teams (and therefore owners) should be fined the annual salary of each player that tests positive or is shown to have used steroids. Make this the rule and steroid use will immediately become a thing of the past.
Daniel,
While the reference to racism was a more general comment on such purges, I believe there is a tendency to categorize players of color as good or bad- Griffey is a "good" Black athlete and Bonds the "bad". With ARod, many of the most vociferous responses are already from Latino players, such as David Ortiz. While white players (Clemens) may face considerable humiliation in these inquiries, I believe there is always a racial agenda as well as an anti-union factor in these 'righteous' responses by the baseball establishment and the press. I agree that they are also a waste of time and resources, but certain political figures feel it will help their careers to attack such celebrities.
Bill Balderston
These folks are still chasing after 'roid abusers?! Having to come up with theories on labor talks, congressional hearings, strike zones, kids crying at the ballpark, etc. over some PED's that will not determine a ballplayers natural ability in the first place.
Athletes are just giving what these so-called journalists/fans want, though the MSM/society needs to get modern like our infrastructure should be.
Billions of dollars involved, yet much of the surrounding areas of these ball parks look like a slum lord's paradise.
Yes, Selig deserves criticism. Yes, the owners deserve criticism. Yes, the union deserves criticism. But, for god's sake, Zirin, isn't it time you acknowledged the blatantly obvious responsibility of players to NOT CHEAT. Is it the end of the world? No, it's not, but this whole problem would be behind us, if people like you had just encouraged the players and the others to tell the truth, admit they cheated and ask the fans for forgiveness.
But, instead, you have recommended denial and stonewalling, justifying it with outrageous claims of racism.
Damn.
Michael Stone
Daniel,
The government never went after Clemens. Clemens just got ensnared in the net of Kurt Radomski and the Mitchell Report. There are some (including me) who believe the entire BALCO investigation was motivated by an attempt to get Bonds. Let's not forget Barry was the face and sole focus of steroid mania before the Mitchell Report and the Congressional Hearing.
The trouble with all the hand-wringing about steroids and the sanctity of sports records is that the very near future will make this all look very quaint. With advances in biological engineering, athletes in the next 50 years will become physically super-human. What's a few hormones when you can use genetics?
Do you agree with me?
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