First of all, I'd like to apologize for the terrible title to this article; but I'm pretty sure all of the catchy steroid-related tag lines have been used ad nauseum over the last couple years, so we'll just stick to simplicity. But on topic, thanks to Major League Baseball once again breaking its promise to not release the names of the players that tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003 and labeling Sammy Sosa as a user, the issue of steroids has once again reared its ugly head.

Thanks in part to this revelation I've decided to go ahead and post an article I wrote way back in March when Alex Rodriguez' name was leaked to the media as being part of the 2003 list of users. Before I post that, though, I want to take a second to give my $0.02 about Sosa being named as having tested positive for p.e.d.'s.

As many of the frequent users of the site know, Sosa was, is, and will likely remain my favorite baseball player of all time. His (possibly steroid fueled) home run race with Mark McGwire in 1998 is the reason I am a Cubs fan, and in a greater capacity a baseball fan, today. For that, I am eternally grateful - regardless of what substances were used to make that chase what it was. Does it take away from some of the 'magic' to know that it was probably fueled by performance enhancing drugs? Honestly - not really.

To this day I count standing on my seat cheering on September 18, 1999, the day Sosa hit his 60th HR for the second consecutive year - and my first ever Cubs game two days before my 11th birthday - as one of my greatest baseball memories ever. Furthermore, as time goes on it's becoming more and more evident that those using performance enhancing drugs were at least a large minority, if not a slight (or better) majority in baseball at that time.

In the end, the worst part of the fact that Sammy used isn't that he broke records while using, but rather that his name will now be forever linked with ridiculous pieces of 'evidence' such as 'forgetting to speak English at the congressional hearings,' which remains on my top ten list of most ridiculous things I've ever heard. He never claimed not to know English - he clearly did. However, as anyone who has ever listened to him in an interview knows - it was pretty terrible English. If you were going in front of a body of representatives, under oath, that could charge you with perjury should inaccuracies be found - wouldn't you want to speak the language you were most comfortable with?

Unfortunately, because his name was linked and he was found to be a user the above stated 'evidence' can now be backed up with proof, regardless of how irrelevant one is to the other. But now, without further ado, I present to you the aforementioned piece from March of this year. I hope you enjoy:

“The older they get the better they were when they were younger”

--Jim Bouton on old-timers’ day, in Ball Four

Thanks in large part to MLB breaking it’s promise to not release any of the names of players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003 and letting Alex Rodriguez’ name slip, the issue of steroids in baseball has been thrown directly back into our faces. The issue has been relatively dormant for some time now, at least since the weeks following the release of the Mitchell report. But now with arguably the games best, or certainly one of its most recognizable, players revealed to have used; it’s become the talk of message boards and water coolers across the nation once again.

What bothers me is not that the issue of steroids is being talked about, but rather that it is being discussed in such a manner as to imply that it is the worst thing to ever happen to the game of baseball. Case in point; last week TIME magazine published an excerpt from Joe Torre’s Book The Yankee Years about Rick Helling, a pitcher for the Texas Rangers who gave warning to the players association about the rampant steroid use in major league clubhouses in the late nineties. The excerpt contains the following line:

“…each year nothing would happen, except that more and more bodies grew unnaturally bigger and the game became twisted into a perversion, its nuances and subtleties blasted away by the naked obsession with power.”

Aside from the fact that the line is completely hyperbolic, it’s also completely incorrect in my opinion. Baseball has been through much worse than this before. Baseball has seen an era of violence that would be simply incomprehensible in today’s game. Players sharpening their cleats to spike other players and players entering the stands to fight (well, actually thanks to Ron Artest that’s not such a foreign concept) while maybe not common place, were certainly far more likely to happen than in today’s game.

Not to mention spitballs, hidden ball tricks, and the upper pills (or greenies) that players have taken since the mid 1900’s. Even Hank Aaron is rumored to have taken them. Then there were the 60 or so years that African Americans, and 70 or so years that Hispanics, were held out of Major League Baseball. On top of that there have been accusations, and admissions, of gambling involving the all time hit leader in Major League history.

What this sets up is one of two things. Either this “integrity of the game” that the excerpt alludes to has never existed outside of the ideological, romantic view of the game, or the integrity does indeed exist and is above – untouchable – by the shadow that steroids may have cast over a small portion of baseball history. Eventually I believe the records broken by players on steroids will, and should, stand mostly unblemished next to the rest of the records in baseball folklore. Just like the hit records from a player who gambled, the pitching records of players who used spitballs, and the offensive records of a man who slid sharpened-metal-spikes up into bases have in decades and eras before. It’s all part of baseball history.

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