I didn't take to sports right away. I grew up listening to the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio. My dad was a diehard fan. But it wasn't until the "ripe old age" of nine that I finally got bitten by the sports bug.
I, too, became a passionate Cardinals fan. The 1968 heartbreaker World series was the first I ever payed attention to. The loss in seven games set me up for the long, depressing 70's, when the team would struggle.
Prior to that year, beginning in 1960, athletes from Communist nations began winning lots and lots of Olympic medals. East German female swimmers, who had V-shaped physiques when viewed from behind (and also a bit of 5 o'clock shadow on their faces) did particularly well.
I began buying baseball cards and watching NBC's Game of the Week every Saturday afternoon. I also learned to love the broadcast voices of Harry Caray and Jack Buck.
My friends were more into football. But I spent all of my time explaining to them why baseball was the better sport. I attempted to get across to them how you have to watch closely, look for the subtle nuances.
For example, to see a pitcher's best pitch, the one he has the most confidence in, look at what he throws with a 2-0 or 3-1 count. True hitting greatness is laying off the first pitch when you're down by three runs late in the game and the bases are empty. And a loss must be shaken off. After all, there are 162 games to be played, one loss, in most cases, won't end your season.
Circa 1994, I was probably the biggest baseball fan in the world. Then came the first blow: The Strike.
Baseball was riding high that year. ESPN was showing two different doubleheaders a week, and also a couple of single games. No matter what team you followed, the odds were good that you would see them from week to week. Sunday Night Baseball announced its intention of featuring a game in every ballpark in the league during the course of the season. Baseball, the sport, was at an all-time high.
I had weathered the strike in 1983. It was resolved in time to save the season, but Bowie Kuhn had concocted some bizarre scenario for the playoffs that shut out the two teams that had the best divisional records in the National League: Cincinnati, and my beloved Redbirds. Yet, I was still enough of a fan that I rooted for the Dodgers as they beat the Yankees in that year's World series.
But this time, the strike kept hanging on. Canceling the World Series over a dispute between millionaires and billionaires couldn't POSSIBLY happen, could it?
I skipped the game for a while. It was just as well. MLB, which must be the most horribly run "successful" sports organization in history, decided it wasn't good for ESPN to broadcast all of those games. So they were cut back to about half of what they were broadcasting. ESPN began going for the biggest audiences with their now meager supply of games, and soon every time Boston played New York on Sunday, the game was scheduled for a 7:00 PM broadcast.If you were a Minnesota, Pittsburgh, or Detroit fan, good luck ever seeing your team on national television.
There was still the occasional feel-good story like unassuming, hard-working Cal Ripken's dogged pursuit and eventual passing of Lou Gehrig's unbreakable record. But I was no longer a baseball fan.
I wasn't alone. The sport's popularity swooned after the World Series that was canceled by a labor dispute. But I believe the effect of baseball's becoming stingy with who could broadcast their games was just as great a factor.
Of course, we all know what happened in the late 90's. The (snicker) "Lively Ball Era" began. In 1977, George Foster hit 52 home runs. It would take 21 years before another NL'er would hit 50 again. Only he didn't just hit 50. He hit 70. And the second-place home run champ hit 68.
What in blazes was going on? That ball must be REALLY lively. Pitching must be going to pot.
How naive we were.
A bottle of Androstendione was spotted in McGwire's locker. Suddenly, his record was in question. "Just a minute!" I said to the questioners. "Andro is legal, it's not steroids!" I pointed out that McGwire hit 49 in his first full season. It wasn't drugs that made him hit homers, it was TALENT.
A few years later, I saw McGwire's rookie card. He looked as skinny as I do.
Despite the Cardinals' poor team performance, I had my interest in baseball rekindled. Right up until three years later.
Barry Bonds exemplified the anti-hero. Obnoxious, self-centered, didn't go anywhere without his posse, the kind of player who would draw the contempt of fans in every ball park except one: the brand-new one in San Francisco.
When the season was resumed in 2001 after the tragic September break, Bonds kept sailing homers over the right field wall in PacBell Park. When the line-drive hitter, whose largest home run total prior to 2001 was 46, reached 72, fans in San Francisco were ecstatic. The rest of us began to wake up from our coma.
Either that park had a ridiculously short right field wall (it didn't), or something had happened to the game.
The next year, Sports Illustrated interviewed Ken Camaniti. The former MVP was out of the game, and thus spoke freely. He claimed that at least half of the guys who played major league baseball, including him, were on steroids.
The world began to look at the ridiculous home run figures of the last few years in a new light.
Sure, we had new "homer-friendly" ballparks. The rise in home runs went all the way back to 1990, when Cecil Fielder broke the 50 barrier. Busch Stadium had brought its cavernous walls in, as did many other older parks.
But Camaniti had revealed the obvious truth: baseball's records had been irreversibly tainted. It was time for MLB to flex its muscles and clean up the mess.
Yeah, right.
The wussy new steroids policy that was adopted assured anonymity for cheaters. It was all that the Player's Union would allow. Anonymous testing began in 2003. If more than 5% of the steroid tests are positive in 2003 or 2004, players would be randomly tested for a two-year period. Players wouldn't be punished for testing positive.
Holy crackdown, Batman.
The policy grew some baby teeth in time, but it took another Sports Illustrated bombshell to force the Powers That Be to do something.
Bonds' cheating was spelled out in detail in Game of Shadows, penned by San Francisco Chronicle writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. SI carried a long excerpt from the book, and now all made sense. Jason Giambi told of trainer Greg Anderson's magical steroid combination known as the cream and the clear that would allow cheaters to sail through drug tests. And he named another Anderson trainee who benefited from the same substance: Barry Bonds.
Of course, Bonds denied all, his posse of lawyers threatened to sue, and his bitch, Anderson, preferred to sit in prison on contempt charges rather than rat out his client. So Bonds kept playing.
This last year, perjury charges were finally leveled on Bonds, after the season when he finally broke gentlemanly Henry Aaron's hard-won and honestly earned record. A year earlier, and the drug-powered muscleman might have been distracted enough to come up a bit short.
Now, what will baseball do? The Mitchell Report named many, many other players, including one at least as obnoxious as Bonds. Roger Clemens has denied (through his lawyers, of course) that he ever took steroids. Actually, at presstime, there's a Youtube video in which he denies ever using steroids or HGH. Wow, Roger, nice to finally hear from you instead of one of your lawyers. Your reputation has been trashed. You seem quite calm as you read your statement. Not quite as fired up as when you threw the bat at Mike Piazza in the Series, eh? Well, perhaps your rage that day was provoked by chemicals and hormones. Oh, and nice touch to bring up the L.A. Times fiasco to divert attention from the Mitchell Report.
First of all, barring a 180 from their past policies, the Player's Union needs to be neutered. It would likely take government intervention to cut the power that this group, basically an aid to cheating, holds over the game. These multimillionaires don't need the union's protection at the cost that has been paid by us fans. By shielding the cheaters, they have actually accomplished what Pete Rose was accused of: damaging the integrity of the game.
The concept of a commissioner needs to be rewritten, as well. Bud Selig has proven to be about as effective as a mouthful of spit directed at a burning house. That's because the commissioner is an employee of the owners, who can fire him whenever they want.
The commissioner's position is powerless largely because of one Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The fiery jurist took over oversight of the game that he didn't like in 1920. He demanded full control of his own actions. The Black Sox had just thrown the World Series. The owners, fearful for the survival of the leagues, agreed to his demands.
For better or worse, Landis threw his weight around. He banned for life a man who was arguably the game's premier player despite being acquitted in court and having MVP-type numbers in the 1919 World Series. He also stubbornly fought any attempts to integrate the game, costing Satchel Paige the chance to be known as the greatest pitcher in history (a title Clemens doesn't have to fret about ever attaining). But he did remove the stigma of gamblers tampering with game outcomes, which baseball continues to be paranoid enough about to have banned its all-time hits leader (and another obnoxious performer) from Hall of Fame consideration.
But the owners agreed that they should have the final say in matters. So now, the office of commissioner is a sterile, useless, poor imitation of a sham. Want proof? The game carried on, business as usual, for six years from 1992 to 1998 without a commissioner.
If this game hopes to survive the colossal, stench-ridden mess it's allowed itself to get into and regain former fans like myself, it MUST change the rules to give a commissioner REAL POWER. Then, that commissioner must act by expunging, or at the very least marking with asterisks, any records set in the last ten years.
That's a broad swath, I realize, but necessary. There was no bigger Mark McGwire fan on the planet than yours truly in 1998. But his muscle mass was artificial, whether because of Andro or actual steroids. And his 70 home runs, as well as Sammy Sosa's 68, were crap. I ate up the hugging and the friendly rivalry just like you did. But the numbers are still crap. Ken Griffey Jr., among the game's greatest in history, hit 56 home runs in 1997 and 1998 that smack of legitimacy. Today, the aging superstar's game isn't what it once was, but his physique is. Players like Clemens and Bonds, whose physical masses ballooned as their numbers got better with age, combined with eyewitness testimony of individuals sworn to tell the truth under penalty of law, provide compelling evidence that the game's integrity is screwed.
That asterisk placed by Ford Frick upon Roger Maris's 1961 record caused the last legitimate home run champion anguish to his dying day.
Is it too much to ask that cheaters who lack any semblance of character pay at least the same price as Mr. Maris, whose only crime was playing slightly longer seasons albeit under MUCH more intense media scrutiny than one Babe Ruth?
According to the Player's Union and the commissioner, the answer will likely be yes.
And that's why I hate baseball.
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