The only logical solution to the Steroid Problem
With all the ongoing steroid debate, there have been many suggestions as to how it can be solved. Some have campaigned for longer suspensions, harsher fines and even expulsion from baseball altogether. But how effective will those punishments be? We've learned from the prohibitions on Alcohol and marijuana (among others) that making a drug illegal doesn't make it go away. Marijuana is illegal in the NFL and has been since Ricky Williams entered the league, but he keeps lighting up and getting suspended. So making roids illegal doesn't change anything. It only puts them in the hands of those willing to break the rules and gives the cheaters a huge advantage over the rest of the competition. So what I propose is that instead of making steroids against the rules in the Majors, they should make them MANDATORY.
Think about it, if they were mandatory, they wouldn't be an advantage. It would make it a lot harder to cheat in that manner and the players would have to start cheating the old-fashioned way: trick pitches, stealing signs, spiking shortstops...and it would end this stupid debate over steroids as an added bonus. It's not like the older generations didn't have their ways around the rules of fair competition. On a recent episode of the great HBO series CostasNOW there were some interviews with former players who all said that they would take steroids if it was prevalent in the game in their era. Mike Schmidt said there was no question that he would do them, and Willie Mays was on speed for parts of his career; I say this because he admitted that he was willing to try anything that would give him a leg up if other guys were doing it, and we all know how prevalent "greenies" were in his era. So if we're chastizing Bonds for cheating, we should chastize his godfather too, since he surely was on speed for at least one of his games.
Athletes are competitors, and when they see their peers with some magic pill, cream or juice, they wont let that advantage tip the scales away from them. It's not always performance enhancing drugs too, Bill "Spaceman" Lee once pitched a no-hitter while tripping on LSD. Drugs and cheating are part of human nature, and this is not the first generation to be guilty of either. It's just the first generation to have the resources of genetic engineering available to help their cheating. Basically, this problem will never go away because there will always be a BALCO working to develop the next "Clear" or "Cream" and the Barry Bonds/Jason Giambi types will prosper at the expense of the guys without the same superstar talent. Making them mandatory would eliminate the whining from players who aren't willing to take them. If you don't want to take roids to be in the MLB, move to Japan and play out there. Ask any ballplayer who can't reach that upper echelon if they'd be willing to take roids if it meant they'd be a major leaguer with a minimum of $300,000 a year. You won't hear too many say no. And baseball players are notorious for being druggies anyway, so for most it'd be a welcome change from Oxycontin or Meth.
But why do we really care anyway? I love sports, but as I have gotten older, I have become less of a fantatical fan, though I am still a participant. I play baseball and basketball every week, but I generally only watch the final few minutes of NBA games that aren't being played by the Warriors. Baseball I can watch as long as it's not a blowout and is a well played game. I used to love watching NFL games on TV, but I've just grown bored of the shift from blue-collar guys who leave everything on the field to the superstars of today. We have these 20 year old kids who are basically illiterate, yet they make more money on one day (draft day...well the day they end their holdout) than most Ivy Leaguers make in a career. And what about teachers? Alex Smith got $50,000,000 to spend a season losing and throwing interceptions. I think that the priorities have gone seriously out of whack in the past couple of decades. Go back to 1991 and the highest paid Major Leaguer was a cokehead named Darryl Strawberry (also a famed guest-star on the Simpsons around that year in one of the all time classic episodes) who was making a whole $3,800,000 a year. I'd take 1/100 of that to play baseball 162 games a year. But now (2005, actually), the AVERAGE salary is 2,632,655 and the MINIMUM is 316,000. Just 15 years earlier the AVERAGE was $578,930 and the MINIMUM was $100,000. Wouldn't those numbers be enough today?
Baseball is continuing to shoot itself in the foot. The strike in 1994-5 almost killed the sport (look at Ice Hockey now, playoff games on OLN?) and they used the steroid era to bring obscene amounts of money and advertising to the game. But instead of embracing this new era of baseball, they are using it to solly the good name of baseball. No longer is it America's pastime, not to watch, not to play. Basketball is played more, football and NASCAR (are you kidding me?) are watched more. People think baseball is too slow and boring (but they like NASCAR?), so either baseball has to spice things up with Mammoth homers every inning like the late 90s, or they can move the mound back up to the 1968 level and let pitchers dominate again. I'd take the latter, make games last 2:00 instead of 3:00. It just seems crazy to me that baseball could have such a public steroid controversy and sports that actually have those freakish athletes as the standard do not. Where are the stories about NFL and NBA stars juicing? You can't tell me that all of those guys have 4% body fat on a 6'1" 255 frame without a little outside help. They have a hardcore testing policy, but BALCO was all about beating those tests. The less we're able to relate to the players (millionaire, muscle-bound freaks instead of alcoholic, corn-fed Oklahoma farm boys) the more professional sports will suffer. Free agency has eliminated loyalty and the "Career Oriole (or Cub or Giant...)", the fans will only keep loyal for so long. After all, if the players, owners and league administrators aren't loyal to the fans, they'll realize that they are just wasting their money to fatten the pockets of greedy owners and players.
Think about it, if they were mandatory, they wouldn't be an advantage. It would make it a lot harder to cheat in that manner and the players would have to start cheating the old-fashioned way: trick pitches, stealing signs, spiking shortstops...and it would end this stupid debate over steroids as an added bonus. It's not like the older generations didn't have their ways around the rules of fair competition. On a recent episode of the great HBO series CostasNOW there were some interviews with former players who all said that they would take steroids if it was prevalent in the game in their era. Mike Schmidt said there was no question that he would do them, and Willie Mays was on speed for parts of his career; I say this because he admitted that he was willing to try anything that would give him a leg up if other guys were doing it, and we all know how prevalent "greenies" were in his era. So if we're chastizing Bonds for cheating, we should chastize his godfather too, since he surely was on speed for at least one of his games.
Athletes are competitors, and when they see their peers with some magic pill, cream or juice, they wont let that advantage tip the scales away from them. It's not always performance enhancing drugs too, Bill "Spaceman" Lee once pitched a no-hitter while tripping on LSD. Drugs and cheating are part of human nature, and this is not the first generation to be guilty of either. It's just the first generation to have the resources of genetic engineering available to help their cheating. Basically, this problem will never go away because there will always be a BALCO working to develop the next "Clear" or "Cream" and the Barry Bonds/Jason Giambi types will prosper at the expense of the guys without the same superstar talent. Making them mandatory would eliminate the whining from players who aren't willing to take them. If you don't want to take roids to be in the MLB, move to Japan and play out there. Ask any ballplayer who can't reach that upper echelon if they'd be willing to take roids if it meant they'd be a major leaguer with a minimum of $300,000 a year. You won't hear too many say no. And baseball players are notorious for being druggies anyway, so for most it'd be a welcome change from Oxycontin or Meth.
But why do we really care anyway? I love sports, but as I have gotten older, I have become less of a fantatical fan, though I am still a participant. I play baseball and basketball every week, but I generally only watch the final few minutes of NBA games that aren't being played by the Warriors. Baseball I can watch as long as it's not a blowout and is a well played game. I used to love watching NFL games on TV, but I've just grown bored of the shift from blue-collar guys who leave everything on the field to the superstars of today. We have these 20 year old kids who are basically illiterate, yet they make more money on one day (draft day...well the day they end their holdout) than most Ivy Leaguers make in a career. And what about teachers? Alex Smith got $50,000,000 to spend a season losing and throwing interceptions. I think that the priorities have gone seriously out of whack in the past couple of decades. Go back to 1991 and the highest paid Major Leaguer was a cokehead named Darryl Strawberry (also a famed guest-star on the Simpsons around that year in one of the all time classic episodes) who was making a whole $3,800,000 a year. I'd take 1/100 of that to play baseball 162 games a year. But now (2005, actually), the AVERAGE salary is 2,632,655 and the MINIMUM is 316,000. Just 15 years earlier the AVERAGE was $578,930 and the MINIMUM was $100,000. Wouldn't those numbers be enough today?
Baseball is continuing to shoot itself in the foot. The strike in 1994-5 almost killed the sport (look at Ice Hockey now, playoff games on OLN?) and they used the steroid era to bring obscene amounts of money and advertising to the game. But instead of embracing this new era of baseball, they are using it to solly the good name of baseball. No longer is it America's pastime, not to watch, not to play. Basketball is played more, football and NASCAR (are you kidding me?) are watched more. People think baseball is too slow and boring (but they like NASCAR?), so either baseball has to spice things up with Mammoth homers every inning like the late 90s, or they can move the mound back up to the 1968 level and let pitchers dominate again. I'd take the latter, make games last 2:00 instead of 3:00. It just seems crazy to me that baseball could have such a public steroid controversy and sports that actually have those freakish athletes as the standard do not. Where are the stories about NFL and NBA stars juicing? You can't tell me that all of those guys have 4% body fat on a 6'1" 255 frame without a little outside help. They have a hardcore testing policy, but BALCO was all about beating those tests. The less we're able to relate to the players (millionaire, muscle-bound freaks instead of alcoholic, corn-fed Oklahoma farm boys) the more professional sports will suffer. Free agency has eliminated loyalty and the "Career Oriole (or Cub or Giant...)", the fans will only keep loyal for so long. After all, if the players, owners and league administrators aren't loyal to the fans, they'll realize that they are just wasting their money to fatten the pockets of greedy owners and players.
posted by Dan Pasternack at 1:39 PM
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