SAN FRANCISCO – The news that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 is another example of the hypocrisy that surrounds baseball’s Steroids Era.
That hypocrisy starts at the top. Commissioner Bud Selig claims he hadn’t heard of steroids in baseball until 1998. Apparently, he can’t read because 10 years earlier, Thomas Boswell had written a broadly distributed column in The Washington Post identifying Jose Canseco as a steroids user. In the playoffs that year, Boston Red Sox fans chanted, “Ster-oids, ster-oids,” at Canseco.
Jose just smiled and flexed his muscles — and hit three home runs in a four-game A’s sweep.
Selig didn’t want to know because home runs — caused by a combination of steroids, smaller parks, juiced baseballs and overexpansion — saved baseball after a crippling strike in 1994 that wiped out the World Series. Fans were flocking to the ballparks to see the power displays, especially the great race in 1998 by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, as McGwire set the single-season home run record with 70.
Three years later, Barry Bonds blasted past McGwire’s record with 73 homers, and Bonds was suddenly demonized by the media, as if he were the only one getting chemical help.
Throughout this period, I have been in regular contact with managers, executives, players and scouts. Then and now, I have heard the whispers about widespread steroids use.
It isn’t just hitters, of course. Pitchers have benefited, too. Suddenly, there were several pitchers throwing 100 mph fastballs. Hmmm. Roger Clemens had a stretch, starting when he was 31, when his career seemed to flatten out, as he won just 40 games in four years. The next two years, he won 21 and 20, with strikeout levels similar to what he had early in his career. Double hmmm.
But after 2001, all you heard was Bonds. Why? Because so many in the media absolutely hated Bonds. He had committed the unpardonable sin: letting writers and broadcasters know it wasn’t important what they wrote or said about him.
I had a different opinion of Bonds, perhaps because I try to avoid letting my personal opinions influence my professional evaluations, as I watched Bonds morph from a great all-around athlete into the best hitter I’ve seen in half a century of watching Major League Baseball.
Bonds taught himself to be totally disciplined at the plate, not swinging at pitches even barely out of the strike zone. He might only get one good pitch to hit in a game — but he hammered that pitch. He would sit at his locker for 30 minutes before each game, visualizing what he’d see from the opposing starter. At home games, after the seventh inning, he would set the pitching machine behind the dugout for left-handed pitches, because he knew he’d face a left-handed reliever.
But according to my colleagues, his success all came from chemicals.
Rodriguez was supposed to be the anti-Bonds, a “clean” player who would erase his home run record. But when I talked to baseball people, his claims that he hadn’t taken anything were greeted skeptically.
Rodriguez admitted Monday that he has taken steroids and we know that 104 players tested positive in 2003. Bonds is hardly alone.
Many people in the media owe Bonds an apology, but don’t expect that to happen. Hypocrisy rules in baseball on the steroids issue, and the commissioner is at the top of the chain.
Even if he hadn't been governor, he still would have been right.
I think blaming Selig for distribution is a bit much but that he definitely knew what was going on and tolerated it.
Though not a good one.