A-Rod Should Have Listened Better in D.A.R.E.
February 8, 2009 by Josh Deitch · 8 Comments
Drug Awareness Resistance Education, big guy.
So…Alex Rodriguez took steroids. What do we do here? Do we feign shock and outrage? Gather our torches and sharpen our pitchforks? As a fan of the Yankees, do I start fretting over his roughly 30 year contract? How about the fact that a guy that already liked to choke on his own spittle in big spots will now never have another at-bat without hearing chants of A-Roid, A-Fraud, or any other variation?
Whatever we do, it’s pretty clear that Rodriguez’s legacy has been tainted. I could spend 5,000 words looking into all the facets that have come together to comprise this mess. I could address the arguments that steroid use in the early part of the decade was not banned by the MLB. I could talk about how the entire decade of records, numbers, and statistics should be put in its own wing in the Hall of Fame. But, honestly, Buster Olney and others have already done so better and more eloquently than I could. Like Buster Olney said, Rodriguez was supposed to be our savior, the light at the end of the tunnel guiding us through the darkness of the steroid era. Instead, he’s become another scalp on Jose Canseco’s belt.
So, what happened? One theory keeps running through my head. As a middle school teacher, I constantly see social interactions distilled to their most basic and primal forms. Think about watching a group of middle school boys during recess. You have the athletes playing a game of whatever on one side, the non-athletes chilling on the swings or flipping a ball around while they talk about world domination, and then you have the other kids. These are the kids that fall in-between. Some excel at one sport, some have other bankable skills, but for whatever reason, they don’t fit into either group. They’re the proverbial square pegs looking for a round hole. And some will do whatever it takes to fit in: insulting or bullying weaker kids, doing whatever they are told by the “cool†kids, or hoping to draw others to them with extreme behavior.
When these kids wind up in a social setting, there’s something awkward about them. They’re tolerated by their peers, but the relationships don’t go much further than that. Alex Rodriguez is one of those kids. He’s a socially awkward and aloof 34-year old man that always wanted to but never learned how to assimilate into a group of peers.
Don’t believe me? Watch him for a season. During the triumphant mosh pits that ensue after a walk-off win, he sprints around looking for someone to celebrate with, then gives whomever he’s found an awkward white guy high five. This always reminds me of Eli Manning sprinting 30 yards after the 2007-2008 playoff game in Lambeau Field, before finally 
grabbing and hugging the punter. While Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano engage in complex, 16-step handshakes, A-Rod becomes Lenny from Of Mice and Men, clapping people too hard on the back or missing their hands as they pass. Whether he’s standing at home plate of the Home Run Derby wearing a suit while his teammates wear jeans and baseball caps; trying to meekly slap a baseball out of the glove of a pitcher, whom he outweighs by 50 lbs and could have run over without a second thought; or leaving his wife and child for an aging pop star mainly because she’s an aging pop star, A-Rod is always that guy that never knew how to fit in, but desperately wanted to.
Want more proof? Watch this Guitar Hero commercial (speaking of which, between this incident and Michael Phelps’ recent issues, if you were Kobe Bryant or Tony Hawk, wouldn’t you try to bury any and all copies of this commercial? With their money, they could afford to hire Nicholas Cage from National Treasure, Jack Bauer, or The Rock to get the job done quickly and quietly).
So, what’s my point? Think back to your experiences in the D.A.R.E. classroom. Reasons 1-30 why kids resort to using and experimenting with drugs all boil down to peer pressure. If anyone ever needed to be asked if he would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if his friends did, it would be Alex Rodriguez. Is this the only reason he would have used steroids? Of course not, but it’s a theory you probably won’t get at ESPN.
In the end though, we’re a long way from being out from under the shadows of the steroid era. I honestly tried to write this piece two times before I hit on something that worked. Each time, I got a paragraph in, got disgusted, and closed my work without saving it. As a fan, I’ve become so jaded by the Mitchell Report, the BALCO investigations, and the grand jury hearings that it would take something catastrophic to astonish me. When the news comes that a ballplayer drank goat urine as a performance enhancer, a la Beer Fest, that’s when I’ll be shocked. For now, I’m going to sit back, assume that most players were guilty of something, and look forward to the day that these types of stories don’t surface every few months. Until then, I’m going to play some Guitar Hero. Do you think Alex’s mom will let him sleep over?
Great Article Josh!!
Let’s not pretend the “Juiced” Era was the only one affected statistically by some outside force. Difference with the “Juiced” Era is there is no proof yet that steroids or PEDs actually make you a better baseball player. Last time I checked, Hulk Hogan was never a prospect.
Unlike other periods of time where players had advantages (spitballs, mound height, amphetamines, etc.) this is the one we really have no real proof it helped. We just assume it did. We just seem to ignore the fact that players like Josias Manzanillo, F.P. Santangelo and David Bell showed up on the Mitchell Report, too.
Of all the major sports, baseball has a history of cheating and bending the rules. This is nothing new and really, would anybody be that upset if it weren’t for records falling.
Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s likely that many in the inner circle of MLB knew about this and let it go on because, heck, bigger and stronger athletes performing at a higher level were good for business. And maybe that’s the biggest crime of all.
Yet, we’ll waste our time de-constructing the legends of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, A-Rod and the others as their names come up but MLB will basically get a slap on the wrist here.
Let’s face it, the only reason our father’s father’s baseball didn’t have a steroids scandal was because they weren’t readily available yet.
Maybe when the MLB Network covers 1972 or 1978 and talk about Gaylord Perry’s Cy Young seasons, they’ll try not to yuck it up so much about how HOFer Perry was a habitual cheater. If only Barry, Clemens or A-Rod were a bit more humorous maybe steroids and PEDs wouldn’t be frowned on so much.
“Let’s not pretend the “Juiced†Era was the only one affected statistically by some outside force. Difference with the “Juiced†Era is there is no proof yet that steroids or PEDs actually make you a better baseball player. Last time I checked, Hulk Hogan was never a prospect.”
Ugh. I hate this argument. While I agree that we can’t equate a certain number of homers or strikeouts with a certain number of steroid cycles, but we sure can understand the impact steroids would have on professional athletes. If the steroids provided just ten more games a season where a player, run down by the 162 games, felt great instead of crappy, that’s ten more games of going 2-3 with a homer as opposed to 0-2 with a sac fly. That’s a few more starts where a pitcher worked strong into the seventh or eighth, instead of laboring through five innings.
Hulk Hogan certainly was never a prospect, but then again, Brett Boone never seemed the type to hit 50 homeruns, Eric Gagne would have been a failed hockey player without the PEDs, and men certainly don’t gain 20 lbs of muscle in their late thirties. If you want to compare steroids to spit balls and amphetamines, fine. Just don’t argue that they don’t provide an advantage.
Going along with what Josh said here, I still wonder what advantage (other than being “more awake”) was gleaned from greenies? I never saw a player gain 25 pounds of muscle and have his hat size go up 2 sizes because of greenies. If you did, that’s awesome, Brian, but I never saw it.
Now, on the other hand, let’s talk about “proof”. If Player X goes from 195 to 225 and it’s mostly muscle, Player X will – in theory, but actually in all reality – become a stronger speciman. If Player X goes from benching 225 to 325, it stands to reason that Player X, the new, stronger Player X, will increase his bat speed.
So, he can either increase bat weight and keep his same bat speed (and thus gain more power) or stay at the same bat weight and just swing faster (and thus gain more power). If Player X flies out to the warning track 12 times in a season, then ads, just hypothetically now, don’t try to make it sound like I’m accusing any one person, but would you say it is indeed possible, tha if he increases his physical strength by 25%, and then increases his bat speed by only 5%, that he could thus increase his distance on hitting a ball by only 3%? Wouldn’t that indeed be possible? Of course it would. And we’re not even taking into account here the other side benefits: increased bat speed means laying back on a ball just that much longer, which allows a hitter to be more selective; increased velocity from a steroid-ridden animal on the mound will help increase the velocity (and thus, with the right trajectory, the distance) when bat meets ball and sends it back the other way; and as Josh mentioned, if one does get banged up, he recovers that much faster allowing him to play in that many more games and extend his peak ability be that many more years. But we’re not talking about that. We don’t need to yet. We’re still just in the bat speed/strength realm, which gives us plenty of evidence.
So, let’s go back and take those 12 350 foot flyballs to the track and add 3%…that’s 10 feet. 10 feet from the warning track is…the bleachers!…which leads to 12 more dingers. Possible? Damn right it is. Go back to your youth. I’ll use mine as an example. At 13, in 7th grade, I hit homers on our Jr. High field (distance 260 ft.), but could never have dreamed of hitting one out on the H.S. field (315-360 ft.) But two years later, starting as a freshman, wieghing 45 pounds more and standing eight inches taller and able to lift a whole lot more weight, I’m hitting balls out over the 315, 345 and 360 signs easily. Why? Because I was BIGGER and STRONGER.
Why is that so hard for steroid “supporters” to understand? If a guy finds, at the age of 35, sudden strength gains through sudden muscle mass gains through sudden weight gains, it stands to reason that there will be sudden gains in the distance he can hit a ball. You guys can spin the “show me proof” all you want, but it’s not necessary. It’s quite obvious the “proof” is all around us, every time we look at homer stats in the last two decades.
And it’s a joke. A friggin’ joke. Ban ’em all. Throw out their records, clean it up, and THEN baseball will be watchable again. Ban ’em all. Fuck ’em. This game is a privilege to play, not a right.
BTW, when all is said and done, I believe the three best homerun hitters of this generation will NOT be Bonds, Sosa and McGwire, but instead they will be Griffey, Jr., Thomas, and Thome.
And the stats of those latter three are made even more impressive (if they manage to do as I believe they will and stay clean through this whole mess) when you consider that they had to face steroid-geeked pitchers while doing it.
One more thing: read the latest issue of SI, which outs Rodriguez, in the article they include an inset that says that steroids were included in all perscription-required drugs in 1971 and were explicitly named as banned substances by Commissioner Fay Vincent in an official memo in 1991. Also, the bylaws of MLB state that all its constituents must abide by state and federal regulations. For everyone that argues that steroids were not banned until recently and thus players did nothing objectionable, you are WRONG.
Exactly right, Josh. My argument back to people who say “it wasn’t illegal in MLB” is to simply say what you wrote, MLB bylaws say the players must abide by state and/or federal regulations.
For instance, nowhere in MLB rules does it say “a player should not commit murder, they will be penalized for it”. It’s pretty commonly accepted that you don’t kill people in society, therefore you shouldn’t be above the law if you’re a baseball player. (Although there appears to be an exception for football players, but I digress.)
Basically, any argument that I’ve heard about steroid use is a bad argument. The crap is illegal, it’s cheating, and it’s ruined the game. Period.
Just wait for this weekend’s article, BJ, I think you’ll like it…