Reexamining Baseball’s Steroid Era
In the summer of 2013, a New York Times investigation revealed that Alex Rodriguez had been obtaining steroids from a man in Miami for several years. This eventually resulted in Rodriguez being suspended for the entire 2014 season, the longest steroids suspension ever passed down in baseball. As Rodriguez prepares to return to the New York Yankees this season, I continue to be fascinated by the league’s reaction to the steroids scandals of the last 10 years.
A number of the best players in the history of MLB have been linked to steroids including Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens. These men have transitioned from being historically great players who were destined to be remembered as sports heroes to complete pariahs. Clemens has been convicted of perjury for indicating to Congress that he had never used steroids, and Bonds has been involved in a number of civil suits.
This group of players are vilified for being cheaters, and succeeding at the highest level of baseball by cheating. It is difficult to imagine that they would have succeeded to quite the level that they did without steroids. However, it is also absurd to suggest that the entirety of their successes were a result of their steroid use. It is widely accepted that even before any of these players started using steroids they were already amongst the best players of their era. They spent their careers competing against many other players who were also cheating and were still able to achieve incredible levels of success.
A number of players who today are widely detested as cheaters, were, in the late 1990s, credited for saving baseball with their exciting offensive productions. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire broke records, and returned baseball to the national consciousness after labor disruptions earlier in the decade caused fan interest to dwindle.
There is a long history in baseball of doing anything possible to gain a competitive advantage. Many players in the 1970s dosed themselves with what were called greenies to enhance performance during games. Greenies were legal at the time in the sport, and players felt that greenies boosted their focus and energy reserves. Yet, greenies are presently classified as amphetamines and banned from the game. In fact, one of the most prominent users of greenies was the great Hank Aaron, who today is remembered fondly and who by some is considered to be the true record holder of most homeruns hit in baseball. Though many suggest that Barry Bonds should have an asterisk next to his name in the record books for his use of performance enhancing drugs, very few encourage the same treatment of Hank Aaron
Just as amphetamines were allowed in the 1970s, in the 1990s steroids were not outlawed in baseball. In both situations, players were taking substances permitted within the rules of the sport to give themselves a competitive advantage. It is strange that today, one group of players is judged so much more harshly than the other.
It is stranger that pitchers from the 1960s and 1970s such as Gaylord Perry, who famously, dangerously, and illegally used to throw spitballs, are remembered fondly today. Stranger still, many players who played during baseball’s so called steroids era, and were found to have used steroids, are much less vilified than the group of great players discussed above. Using the 2014 Blue Jays as an example, both Marcus Stroman and Melky Cabrera have tested positive for steroids in their careers, and both are still regarded favorably by most fans.
Baseball has also had a much stronger reaction to steroids than the other major professional sports. The NFL does not announce the reason a player is being suspended beyond indicating that they have been caught using a banned substance. This allows players to claim that they tested positive for something innocuous such as Adderall or an additive from their cough syrup. Fans simply do not seem to care. The lack of positive drug tests in the NHL and NBA are conspicuous. It is extremely rare to hear reports of players from either league testing positive for steroids. It is possible that the players are simply not cheating, yet many have suggested that there are instead deficiencies in the respective testing programs of the other leagues. In the NBA, players are given advance warning of when to expect a drug test, and know that they will only be tested a limited number of times per year. Players can easily plan their steroid use to avoid any risk of detection in the seriously lacking testing systems. Again, fans seem to largely be indifferent.
Why then is the negative reaction to steroids so much stronger in baseball than in other sports?
Part of the explanation may be that fans of baseball are more concerned than fans of other sports about the records and the history of the game. They see the records as sacred, and now that they feel that a cheater may have broken them, these same fans view the records as tainted.
This explanation is incomplete. A significant additional reason for the vilification of these players is that they are simply not very likable. They are brash and have demonstrated on several occasions to be liars. The writers who shape public opinion never liked Rodriguez, Bonds, or Clemens, so when the opportunity arose, these same writers vilified them.
The entire reason that players like Bonds and Sosa have been vilified is ultimately difficult to discern. Regardless, many baseball fans are beginning to realize the absurdity of demonizing professional athletes who do anything in their power to win, just as they had always been trained to do. Unfortunately, this realization is too late for Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGuire and the rest. Rodriguez is the last of this group still playing professionally, but is also unlikely to be forgiven because he so resolutely refuses to fit the mold expected of him. Instead he’ll just play out the rest of his 300 million dollar contract as the villain.