Steroids: Good For The Game?
March 22, 2008 by Brian Joseph · 16 Comments
It’s easy to mark down steroids as one of the dark eras of the National Pastime without paying attention to what this scandal did for the game and why steroids were actually good for the game of baseball.
Flashback to August 1994: The Expos were in first place, Tony Gwynn was flirting with .400 and Matt Williams was on pace to hit 61 home runs. Despite the looming strike, baseball was in store for a banner year. Unfortunately, nothing could stop the inevitable and the owners and players could not agree on a new labor agreement. In August, the season was shut down and the strike began. In September, acting-commissioner Bud Selig did the unthinkable and declared the rest of the season over. Not only were there questions left unanswered pertaining to individual achievements, baseball, for the first time, had to cancel the World Series. Not even an earthquake could do that.
The strike lingered into 1995 and soon, the ’95 season was also affected. Before the U.S. government stepped in, it looked possible that baseball would do even more damage to the game by using replacement players or miss a large portion of the ’95 season. Fortunately, the strike ended and the ’95 baseball season resumed with a shortened 144-game schedule. (Length makes a big difference).
There were repercussions, though. The collateral damage from the labor stoppage of ’94-’95 was felt around the baseball world. Attendance was down. The fans were revolting. The Expos lost so much money that the franchise looked to be in serious trouble. Fortunately, Cal Ripken’s magical run at Lou Gehrig’s Iron Man streak brought some positive light back onto a sport covered with a dark cloud for much of ’95.
The attention Ripken’s streak brought was a bandage but some fans still had not come back. Baseball needed more to heal the damage done by the ’94 labor stoppage. Three years later, baseball got the injection it needed with the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase of 1998. Ironically, the home run chase also involved Greg Vaughn and Ken Griffey Jr. for most of the season but their production died off and McGwire and Sosa stepped into the spotlight. Partnered with expansion and rumors of a “juiced” baseball, nothing could take away from the fan frenzy surrounding the chase for Maris’ record.
Featured nightly on SportsCenter, the ’98 season lived up to its high expectations with both McGwire and Sosa shattering the 61 HR mark. McGwire finished with 70 homers and Sosa right behind him with 66. And while there were some critical of the massive destruction of Maris’ long-standing HR record, baseball was back on track.
Under the smoke screen of a “juiced” baseball, home run-friendly ballparks and the ravages that expansion does to the game, steroids were not really a major concern at the end of the ’98 season. Baseball didn’t even start testing for performance-enhancing drugs until 2002. And the home run barrage continued. In 2001, Barry Bonds joined in and at age 37, Bonds decimated McGwire’s record by hitting 73 home runs. (This was one year after Roger Clemens threw a shattered bat at Mike Piazza in the spirit of being a “fierce competitor”.)
Despite the warning signs mounting, baseball was still turning a blind eye to the steroid situation although the public was beginning to notice the signs. With the BALCO scandal and federal government involvement, steroids became a more common discussion when it came to baseball than who was going to win the AL East. And the National Pastime’s reputation was under attack again.
But scandal was nothing new to baseball and while steroids are an issue that needs to be addressed, it isn’t the biggest problem facing the game today. Just the sexiest one. No one in New York wants to write about the competitve imbalance in baseball and the domination by large-market teams. Steroids weren’t a new problem. Steroids have been rumored to be used in baseball since the ’60s and ’70s.
Steroids weren’t even the biggest drug problem the game faced when it came to the forefront with the BALCO scandal. With the testing for amphetamines beginning in 2006, baseball finally fired a bullet at the #1 drug problem in baseball. This was another indirect positive effect that steroids had. Baseball’s steroids scandal made the owners look harder at all drug use in the game and finally added amphetamines to what it tested for despite estimates that 50-80% of the players in the game were using “greenies”. And while Barry Bonds cannot get another shot with a major league team and Mark McGwire’s induction into Cooperstown has been put on hold, players like Willie Stargell and Willie Mays have not been held under the same microscope despite their association with the use of a performance-enhancing drug.
The steroids scandal will continue to get attention but it is not the most damaging thing to ever happen to the game. Take a look at the effect that gambling had on the game in its first 30 years until the Black Sox scandal of 1919 caused baseball to finally open its eyes. But baseball will survive. It survived the Black Sox scandal.
In the case of steroids, players were “cheating” to improve their ability to compete. Isn’t that at least a little nobler than players throwing games for monetary gain? Pete Rose is a pet cause for many despite his manipulation of the game and his total disregard for the rules of the game by betting on baseball. Alcoholism and drug usage has had a major impact on the game. Steve Howe and Darryl Strawberry got a number of chances to overcome their problems. If Steve Howe would have had Hall of Fame numbers would he have been turned away?
It’s hard to say that steroids were good for baseball but there were a lot of positive things that came out of it. The great thing about baseball though is that it always survives. Whether it be gambling, alcohol, the DH, the All-Star game home field advantage reward or performance-enhancing drugs, baseball will always survive. And with a little assist from steroids, baseball was able to overcome one of the darkest periods to face the game. In the end, maybe steroids did a little more good than harm. When Alex Rodriguez finally overcomes Barry Bonds’ career home run record, it will make a $27 million per year player a national hero. Talk about an amazing accomplishment!
Excellent article! I remember drinking the McGwire/Sosa Kool-Aid, and I couldn’t get enough. Friends and I would adjust our schedules to ensure we’d be in front of a TV every time the Cubs or Cards were on. Every day was like a circus. Like most others, I’m sure I turned a blind eye to the whole steroids issue as well. All I cared about was watching history being made.
Isn’t it ironic that the game was “saved” by the home run in the wake of the Black Sox scandal? Babe Ruth changed the way the game was being played and the fans loved him for it. Almost a century later, the same weapon “saved” baseball again. Chicks dig the long ball and always have.
The first game I attended after the ’94 strike was in ’98. It was the Cardinals-Phillies and McGwire went yard three times in that game. I think it was 18, 19 and 20. And all three were gigantic shots. It was amazing to watch… although I’m not a big home run fan, for some reason I’m fascinated by the triple.
But greenies are just coffee in pill form!
Steroids work. Speed works too. Cocaine works, so do all the other drugs. Even placebos have worked in clinical studies.
I guess some people were ‘impressed’ with the Sosa/McGwire/Matt Williams era. I wasn’t. It was patently obvious that baseball players were suddenly blowing up to the size of football players.
It made a mockery of baseball and turned it into a video game. I’m pretty much a ‘libertarian’ kind of guy. Do whatever it is you want as long as it doesn’t effect me. Steroids FORCED other players to cheat too, so they wouldn’t be left miles behind. It’s by far the biggest disgrace baseball has had since they ended segregation.
Please though, no pushing steroids back into the distant past of the 60’s and 70’s. It started on the west coast with Brian Downing and the Oakland A’s, and spread all over. All it has done is make every guilty until proven innocent, which isn’t a great thing in my opinion. It’s killed people, it’s ruined lives. Players, Owners, Coaches and Sports writers all share some of the blame if they kept quiet. And everyone who was ‘impressed’ with Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire shares some too.
It’s part of this age of no accountability and a 10 second attention span.
Abhorrent behavior didn’t start with steroids and it won’t end there. It worked in the owner’s favor and they turned a blind eye to it for as long as they could.
And no one was forced to cheat. Frank Thomas didn’t cheat and he did ok… Jim Thome didn’t cheat and he did ok, too.
Barry Bonds was great before steroids and nearly a lock for the Hall… ironically, the ‘roids may cost him his place in history as a truly great player.
The sad part is the indictment should be on the owners as much as the players. The Mitchell Report and a number of other sources have cited that owners knew and ignored this behavior. Not only did they ignore it… they packaged it up and sold it back. Home Run contest, anyone?
The way I look at it is this. If you went to a college class tomorrow and they said to you, we don’t want you to use your book to answer the questions on the test but we aren’t going to watch you take the test, what would you expect to happen? Sure, steroids were illegal BUT they weren’t even testing for it the major leagues until 2002. That’s 4 years after the destruction of the HR record.
Jim Thome and Frank Thomas didn’t use? I find that opinion, certainly on Thome’s case, to be kinda naive. The only person in this whole mess to be reasonably truthful was Jose Canseco, one of the pioneers and pied pipers of steroids. If he said Thome and Thomas didn’t use, it’d have some credibility. Guilty until proven innoent.
And please, comparing steroids to a book? Last I checked books didn’t elevate your risk of dieing. Steroids change your body chemistry. Adk the many, many relatives of people who have died from steroid abuse if they think it was worth it that, in the end, baseball then cleaned up(partially) it’s act.
I’m sure you don’t believe that football, or baseball, or pro wrestling, is completely clean. Or body building. Because people just don’t come out that way. It’s a horrible choice to force people to make, it’s why baseball players forced their union to stop stonewalling, because most people are intelligent enough to understand that doing something to your body that has shown to have long term negative effects isn’t something you want to have to do to complete your job.
To put it another way, let’s say you are a ooal miner, and you know the risk for black lung, so you wear your mask and filters. But say your mine works on a bonus quota system, and working without a mask would make you 1/3 to 1/2 again better in mining coal. So some guys start going without masks, and they are making more money than you. Management notices this, and promotes the maskless miners, and starts hiring young guys who come in and start taking over jobs on less productive miners who wear their masks. Your family depends on you and your ability to do this job, because you started right out of high school and don’t really have any training or education to do anything else. So you face a terrible choice of doing something you know the odds say will end up hurting you.
Fair system? And yes, I grew up in an old dead coal town…. :)
Guilty until proven innocent? That’s pretty sad. Canseco will never go down a list of clean guys… it doesn’t sell books.
If we take your theory into effect than everybody cheated… and if everybody cheated then no one did because the playing field was level.
As for the health issue. You think this is going to stop people from killing themselves with chemicals? There baseball players that smoke cigarettes which obviously has ‘long term negative effects’ and doesn’t even help them perform.
What about alcohol? Alcohol’s a huge killer… and it funds the National Pastime. Want to guess the top advertiser after the automotive industry for the great game of baseball? It isnt’ Big League Chew.
If you look at the list of names on the Mitchell Report there is no true correlation between production and usage. Anyone who had to watch Jason Grimsley pitch frequently will concur.
Am I gonna have to separate you two? :)
He started it! :-P
As far as steroids are concerned, they are all guilty until proven innocent. And even then, they are probably guilty, they just had high quality chemists.
What do I think the amount of people using was? Over half. If forced to hazard a guess, I’d say 2/3rds. And that’s just because there are some guys who are afraid of needles.
But, as to the main point of your article(which I clearly enjoyed reading), sure one of the side benefits of the steroid era is that it did finally get so ridiculous that they had to clean it up, and try to steam out amphetimines too. But that’s really looking hard for a silver lining!
Christ, here we go again. ;)
The workd series wasn’t played in 1904!!! That was the first year it wasn’t played!!! FACTSSSS
“The workd series wasn’t played in 1904!!! That was the first year it wasn’t played!!! FACTSSSS”
Why don’t you reread what Brian wrote. He said it was the first time the World Series had been canceled, which is correct. In 1904, the World Series wasn’t inevitable as it is today. The National League didn’t have to play the American League in a championship series if they didn’t want to and vice versa. In fact, the New York Highlanders (Yankees) were forced to issue a challenge to the Giants in the event they won the A.L. pennant. Soon others like Charles Comiskey and A.L. president Ban Johnson got into the act. It wasn’t until December 1904 that the National League agreed to make it mandatory for its pennant winner to play the A.L. pennant winner in an official World Series. Therefore, there was no World Series in 1904 to be canceled because it was never scheduled.
i Like baseball