Disgusted with the cheaters? You know what you can do about it.
Boycott baseball.
Don’t go to any more games until baseball cleans up its act.
To borrow from former First Lady Nancy Reagan, “Just say no.”
That’ll send a message. If enough fans stay away from ballparks, it’ll send a powerful message.
That’s the only way these clowns – and I’m talking about the steroid users, the Jason Giambis, the Barry Bonds and the Gary Sheffields of the baseball world, and Lord knows who else – will wake up to the fact that fans are outraged and aren’t going to take it anymore.
Get steroids out of the game and make the penalties tough for anyone stupid or low enough to use them. Three strikes and you’re out. Of the game. For life.
I’m sick of the cheaters. I’m sick of their artificially produced numbers. I’m sick of their gargantuan home runs. I’m sick of how fans and the media fawn over them.
I still get a bad taste in my mouth when I think back to Mark McGwire breaking Roger Maris’ record. McGwire was using a substance that had been declared a steroid in some sports but not in baseball (it has since been made illegal).
But did fans and the media care? Hell, no. They treated him like some conquering hero. He conquered, all right. He brought down one of the most hallowed records in baseball, Maris’ single-season home run mark.
Now we discover that the guy who wiped out McGwire’s record – Bonds – is a cheater, too.
We don’t know if he cheated the year he set the record. He’d undoubtedly say he didn’t or if he did, he didn’t realize the stuff he was using was steroids. After all, he’s a very honest fellow, as we all know. And I’m the tooth fairy.
Even if he was using when he hit 73 homers in 2001, he’d have gotten off scott-free because baseball didn’t ban steroids until 2002. And so he goes into the record books.
Life, like hitting, is all about timing.
I think the saddest thing is that Maris’ achievement has almost been wiped out of the public’s conscience. But then a lot of people had never even heard of Maris until they jumped on the McGwire bandwagon in 1998. Maris’ name seldom is mentioned when the big bombers go to work swatting balls out of the parks today.
Maris didn’t put up Hall of Fame numbers, and even his record 61 home runs went into the history books for a while with an asterisk beside it because he played in 161 games while Babe Ruth played in only 151 in setting the original record.
What numbers Maris did put up, he did it with pure skill, pure muscle, and not some artificial aid.
How many of today’s players can say that? My guess is most of them. My hope is most of them.
An old friend called the other day and left a message about a great ballplayer who passed through here and made a permanent imprint on our psyches.
We can take comfort, he said, in knowing that Ken Griffey Jr. played the game with passion and with respect.
When players respect the game, they play it cleanly.
They play it with the gifts they were born with. They hit home runs with proper timing and real muscle, and they don’t care how far they travel, just as long as they get out of the ballpark.
We put far too much emphasis on muscle in baseball today, how far the ball is hit or how hard it is pitched.
Baseball is much more than that. It is bunting, it is running, it is stealing, it is catching, it is throwing.
For pitchers, it is out-thinking hitters.
It’s a beautiful game when played right.
It needs to be a pure game.
It may need your help to clean it up.
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