Honor and the Steroid Era

In the early 90's, the issue of anabolic steroids came prominently to the surface in many professional sports. Sadly, Major League Baseball was one of the last of the most popular professional sports to address the issue. MLB's failure to get out in front of the steroid issue has come back to haunt the entire sport. The NFL, the Olympics, and Cycling publicly enhanced their testing procedures after acknowledging, at least in part, that anabolic steroids, or performance enhancing drugs, were a very real temptation to athletes. MLB categorically denied a steroid problem.


In the mid-90's we saw the season home run record shattered by a St. Louis Cardinal that looked like a lumberjack. That same year, a Chicago Cub homered nearly as many times. Flying very low under the steroid radar, was a studly starting pitcher, who would eventually win seven Cy Young Awards, the current MLB record, while playing for the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Astros, and Yankees. Then came the star of the 1989 Oakland A's and his tell-all book about rampant steroid use in MLB locker rooms across the nation. MLB still refused to fully accept that it had a problem. The money was too good. A few years later, a journeyman middle reliever told federal agents more about steroids in baseball. Meanwhile in San Francisco, homeruns continued to leap off the bat of a star left-fielder with a horrible national public image. In 2007, this player shattered the immortal Hank Aaron's record for career homers while thumbing his nose at whispers of his long-time use of the “Clear” and the “Cream”.


It took the Mitchell Report, an “independent” investigation by a former United States Senator, that was released in December 2007 to expose the true depth of the use of steroids. The Mitchell Report implicated over 80 MLB players as users of anabolic steroids or human growth hormone, nine of which were former season award winners! Players from all 30 teams were on the list!


Of all the owners, front-office personnel, managers, coaches, players, and trainers affiliated with Major League Baseball, a paltry few have handled their role with even a faint semblance of honor. The honorable thing to do is to own your behavior, take responsibility, apologize, and move on. Jason Giambi did this. Andy Pettite stated fairly close to the same thing, but they are too few. To understand the situation, we must recognize the pressure players are faced with to perform at a major league level. With Alex Rodriguez signing a contract to play for a whopping $25,000,000 per year, one multi-million dollar contract could set a player for life even with a tenth of ARod's coin. In short, fans poured into the seats, to see balls flying out of the park, and only former player's like Mike Schmidt dared question what was different. Owners remained silent while their bank accounts grew and grew. Everyone, including the media and the fans, turned a blind eye to the disparity in baseball play between the 90's and even the early 80's. New York Times Reporters wrote, “Of all the active players tied to the use of steroids and human growth hormone, which are illegal without a prescription and banned by baseball, only Jason Giambi of the Yankees cooperated with Mitchell’s 20-month investigation. The
Toronto Blue Jays' Frank Thomas, widely known for his antisteroids stance, was the only other active player who agreed to talk with Mr. Mitchell’s investigators.” The lack of honor and failure to take responsibility still remains today.


MLB is now faced with the blackest eye since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. For MLB to move on, someone needs to stand up and take collective responsibility. That person should be Bud Selig, on behalf of all owners, and by his side should be Donald Fehr, on behalf of all players. Now we are faced with the dilemma of what to do with the statistics of all the players implicated, not to mention the awards and rings. How would you record Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens in MLB history?