It is a sad day when "America's pastime" can be given such a black eye through human selfishness.
Ah, but therein lies the question: whose selfishness is to blame? Every day a new story is uncovered by an overzealous reporter who is "just doing his job." The media has been feeding off the steroid controversy. They crave scandal; it sells papers. And at the end of the day, is that not what business is all about, the almighty dollar?
It is that same dollar that has perpetuated the steroid scandal, in my humble opinion. With the new findings about Mark McGwire, it is well traceable that the "Steroid Era," as ESPN's Buster Olney calls it, began in the late 1980s. But, it is more than apparent that it really exploded in the mid-to-late 1990s.
The question is, why? Why the explosion circa, 1995? The reason is that owners need to get the fans back to the game after the strike of 1994. Fans dislike greedy athletes. We saw that with the uproar over Latrell Spreewell saying he needs to feed his family, and he makes $14.6 million per season.
When fans see greedy players, they get turned off, and rightfully so. That is why, after 1994, the owners needed something that would bring the fans back to the game; something, anything. The national pastime was being passed by because of greedy players, and less publicized greedy owners. To bring them back, there was the home run. The excitement, the drama, the breathtaking parabolas launched high into the sky, brought fans back to baseball.
This was especially evident in 1998 with a home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. It was depicted in advertisements with pitches Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux discussing how "chicks dig the long ball."
No matter the education level of the citizens of the United States, it is the simple things that will always attract their attention. Owners knew the homerun would win the fans over, and they paid copious amounts of money to home run hitters. Owners were aware that they needed people in the seats to churn a profit, and they did what it would take to get them there.
By the same token, players saw who was making the money. It was the McGwires, the Sosas, the Ken Caminitis, even the Greg Vaughns that reaped the benefits of free-agency contracts; not the Marquis Grissoms, Jeff Blausers or Omar Vizquels of Major League Baseball. So players did what they had to in order to get the big-time money from owners.
And the fans surely could not be brought back that easily by some 9-8 games between the Colorado Rockies and the St. Louis Cardinals, could they? Apparently so. They were appeased easily, and almost seamlessly they forgot that the players turned their backs on them in 1994.
But in the end, did not all the parties involved get what they want? The fans got to see baseball, albeit corrupt; the owners got fatter off big revenue deals and television contracts; and the players got their big salaries. But was it worth it, at the cost of numerous players' health and possibly ending their lives prematurely?
The fans were lied to; they saw records broken through cheating. The owners lined their wallets, with no negative ramifications. They were the undoubted winners in this situation. The players put themselves at a terrible health risk, but they got their dollars.
If someone asked you to jeopardize your life for fame and fortune, would you do it? It is a tough question, but numerous players chose that route in search of fame and more notably money. Fans had to know; I do not know how they could not.
Look at the pictures of Barry Bonds from Pittsburgh and early San Francisco to now. Look at Jason Giambi; he lost 50 pounds (that is my guesstimate) from the end of 2003 to spring training 2004. He either had a terrible case of the flu or he quit the "juice." I will give you one guess as to which it probably was.
The dollar drives everyone, from Wall Street bankers putting in 18-hour days, to our superstar athletes. I want to blame the players, but they made a life choice in search of money, and who is to say that if I had the hand-eye coordination I would not do the same.
I cannot blame the simpleton fans, myself included; we were starved for our pastime. I cannot blame the owners. They did not advocate steroids publicly; they let their checkbooks do that for them. They were trying to run a good business.
I guess, in the end, I will stick to blaming American society, and the fact that we have become driven by money.
But that's OK, I like capitalism.
