So steroids are worse than racism? Please explain

So I’ve decided to try blogging again. This is my third attempt at blogging, but I feel more motivated to keep at it this time. That’s what I said last time, so we’ll see what happens. Since my first post comes during Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer in the United States, I figured baseball would be an appropriate topic to address.

I’m a big sports fan, and baseball and college basketball are my favorite sports. While pro football has gained in popularity (mainly due to gambling), the popularity of baseball has leveled off some. This is particularly the case for younger folks – anyone under 50. Attendance numbers keep going up, but it is rare for me to meet a sports fan reasonably close to my age that considers her/himself a baseball fan first and foremost. Baseball doesn’t dominate sports coverage at the national level the way football does, though it still reigns supreme in some places – New York and Boston, for example. For the past few years, the baseball stories that have garnered national attention are almost always related to steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

I’ve never really cared much about steroids and who uses them. You’re an adult and a professional athlete; shoot up horse steroids for all I care. If it allows you to do your job better, go for it; I know I would. The argument that it matters because kids follow the lead of professional athletes is simplistic and beyond asinine. If we’re looking to athletes to be role models simply because they have a particular skill set that allows them to make a living playing a game that we voluntarily pay to witness, we have much greater problems than steroids. Sir Charles was right when he said parents should be role models for their kids, not athletes.

So while self-righteous sports commentators and so-called purists have been indignantly calling Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and countless others cheaters, I’ve been enjoying the game as much as ever. I’ll always think of Bonds and Clemens as the best of my time and two of the biggest assholes ever – but not because they took steroids (allegedly).

It seems that the issue matters a whole lot more to the folks who have public voices - the media and those who decide who gets in the Baseball Hall of Fame (the voting members of the Baseball Writers Association) – than it does the average fan. People keep going to games and buying merchandise. And most folks would prefer more home runs, regardless of how it happens.

The issue of steroids and performance enhancing drugs is always framed around the concept of cheating. Baseball players who use(d) are cheating the fans and the game. Baseball is pure; and sports are supposed to be a meritocracy. Everyone starts at the same place and the finish line is visible and finite. And more than any other sport, baseball’s records and numbers are sacred, and known by more than just the casual fan. The last two decades have produced numbers that cannot be compared against those players from cleaner eras produced, or so goes the company line. And more than anything else, this all goes back to Babe Ruth and the legacy of his cult of personality.

The mythology of Babe Ruth is just that – myth. Babe Ruth was one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game, according to the numbers he put up. And beyond just the actual number of home runs he hit, most sports commentators and writers point to the difference between his production and that of his peers when (re)constructing the myth of the Bambino. But just like the today’s players, The Babe’s accomplishments must be contextualized as occurring in a particular time period. More specifically, why the fuck do we rarely hear mention of the fact that Babe never faced many of the best players of his day?

You see, we romanticize the past to the point where we forget that Babe Ruth only played against White ballplayers. This important issue is rarely mentioned by the overwhelmingly white talking heads that moralize and aggrandize daily about the purity of the game.

Players from the past 20 years will always be viewed with a lens that minimizes their accomplishments as occurring in the steroid age. But what about the fact that until 1947 all Major League baseball players compiled their statistics while only playing against other White players - this includes those put up by Babe Ruth, Cy Young, and a gaggle of other legendary names. And players from the Glory Days of the 1950s and 1960s (isn’t everything in the past considered glorious by someone?) played in an age where White ballplayers still dominated clubs’ rosters (the Red Sox didn’t integrate until 1959!). And Latino players, who know dominate the game, were virtually non-existent. This is to say nothing about the broader issue of the game becoming globalized in the past 10-20 years.

The point of all this is that we must remember our history as it occurred, not as it is told through those who wear rose-colored glasses and gloss over important issues like segregation. And much of what influences the stories that are told is who has voice to tell them.

So the next time your hear someone like Mike Lupica (he is perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to sports media) or your Grandfather wax and wane about the glory days gone by and the accomplishments of players from when the game wasn’t tainted, ask them why legalized segregation didn’t taint the game but steroids have. Get back to me with their answers; I can’t wait to hear what they have to say.