*

The record is his, and it will remain his until someone exceeds it. But if your dinner was this tainted, you’d die in the middle of calling 911.

It isn’t simply a matter of weight gain. I grew up around bodybuilders in the mid-to-late 60’s, and it took no time at all to tell the difference between lifters who were natural and those who weren’t. Once you became acquainted with a certain bodybuilder, you’d know when he was preparing to “cycle”, and when he’d actually begin juicing. Now, those were hardcore anabolics, aimed purely at muscle mass increase. But every form of steroids has its side-effects.

When Barry showed up for Spring Training one year needing a much larger hat size, and having far less of a neck, far more of a back, and tree trunks for legs instead of drumsticks, well, you can deny all you want but he didn’t gain those 40 pounds naturally. Weight training by itself doesn’t expand your skull, thankyouverymuch. And weight training by itself doesn’t give you vastly improved muscle reaction times. But there are chemicals that do exactly that combination of things.

Baseball turned a blind eye during a series of years where they were afraid of huge dropoffs in fan interest, spurred in large part by the more recent of two player strikes. It was precisely the McGwire-Sosa homerun chase that began to turn that around. In spite of all the allegations surrounding McGwire that season (and by the way, the stuff he was using had not been on a ban list prior to then), the Commissioner’s office refused to even talk about it. Getting fans to the stadiums was more important than the truth, and still is. Heck, they let Steve Howe keep returning after seven suspentions for substance abuse violations, including a LIFETIME BAN that was later rescinded. He was known variously as the Coke Machine or the Snow Man. Darryl Strawberry was another major-league junkie who was given second, third, and fourth chances in spite of a long history of domestic battery, alcohol and cocaine problems.

Baseball itself shares blame for the circumstances that allowed a Barry Bonds to become what he has become, and that’s a shame. So it’s long past time that baseball began to clean up its act instead of pretending, but celebrating a cheater’s achievement will prove harmful to that cause.

Freelancer on August 8, 2007 at 11:22 PM