Pee No EvilWhy are sportswriters pretending baseball's steroids era is over?
Posted Friday, June 2, 2006, at 5:12 PM ET
It's easy to understand the media's love-fest with Albert Pujols. The St. Louis Cardinals slugger crushes baseballs into the outer realms. And more important in the wake of the BALCO fiasco, he has yet to be tainted by evidence of steroid use.
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StumbleUponPujols has 25 homers in 51 games played, putting him on pace to break Barry Bonds' record of 73 home runs in a single season. Both fans and rival players breathlessly praise Pujols as they once did Bonds. St. Louis' marketing department is constantly churning with new ideas for milking the Albert cash cow. And within baseball's press boxes, writers and reporters check their e-mail, drink free sodas, and question, well, nothing.
Two weeks ago, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Pujols "is being touted as the first P.S. slugger, post-steroids." The paper also categorized speculation that Pujols might be juicing as an "errant rumor." The New York Times followed up with this Pujols quote: "My testing is proving a lot. It's working really good."
Is Pujols abusing steroids or human growth hormones? I don't know. But what's alarming in this era of deceit is that nobody seems interested in finding out. A little more than one year removed from congressional hearings that produced the most humiliating images in the game's history, baseball writers have a duty to second-guess everything. Instead, everyone is taking Pujols' test results at face value. Have we forgotten that Barry Bonds has never failed one of Major League Baseball's drug tests?
In Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue, Tom Verducci, who has done great work exposing the proliferation of steroids in baseball, credulously praised the likes of Pujols and Twins catcher Joe Mauer. Verducci exclaimed that baseball is now "a young man's game, belonging to new stars who, certified by the sport's tougher drug policy, have replaced their juiced-up, broken-down elders who aged so ungracefully. It's baseball as it ought to be. A fresh start." In other words: Masking agents? What masking agents?
Last year, editors at the Post-Dispatch assembled a task force to investigate whether Mark McGwire had ingested performance-enhancing drugs. After a short stretch of fruitless reporting, the effort died. One would think that Pujols—a 13th-round draft pick who has put on 20 pounds of muscle since his debut in 2001—would at least warrant a gander, or perhaps a flight or two to his native Dominican Republic to check out the friendly neighborhood pharmacies. Yet the paper has lifted nary a finger in examining Pujols' background. "Albert isn't an enhanced thug like some of the other suspects," explains Rick Hummel, the longtime Post-Dispatch baseball writer. "He hasn't grown significantly and he's always had a lot of power. So what's there to look into?"
What's there to look into? How about this: For the past decade, baseball has been routinely pulling the bait-and-switch with its fan base. When McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in "The Chase" for the home-run record during 1998, we were told the game was being saved, that two great men with selfless hearts were doing the impossible. Oops, it was all a lie. Three years later, we were asked to suspend belief yet again as the 37-year-old Bonds, with a head the size of Jupiter, effortlessly broke McGwire's standard.
Why are journalists so soft in this area? One reason: fear of being shut out. Over the course of a 162-game season, beat writers and columnists work their tails off to develop relationships with players. You grovel. You whimper. You plead. You tiptoe up to a first baseman, hoping he has five minutes to talk about that swollen toe. You share jokes and—embarrassingly—fist pounds. Wanna kill all that hard work in six seconds? Ask the following question: Are you juiced?
After having been duped by the men they cover, America's sportswriters are playing dumb again. One year after being dismissed as a has-been, steroid-using fibber, Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi is the toast of New York. Recent articles in metropolitan newspapers have praised the steadfastness and resiliency that have led him to hit a team-high 14 home runs. But where, oh where, are the doubters? At the start of spring training in 2005, Giambi looked smaller than in seasons past. Now, he has muscles atop muscles atop muscles. Yet unlike the San Francisco Chronicle, which dedicated itself (journalistically and financially) to learning the truth about Bonds, none of the New York dailies have assigned an investigative team to the case. The closest we've come is Joel Sherman of the New York Post, who recently wrote a piece titled "Clean Machine—Giambi Says Fast Start Is Untainted." The article dies with this whimper of a quote: "The big thing I learned during all my problems was that I can only control what I can control. I can't stand on a soapbox every day. I am working my tail off."
I, for one, don't believe him. During my six years at Sports Illustrated, I fell for the trick and covered Giambi as the hulking, lovable lug who cracked jokes and hit monstrous homers. All the while, he was cheating to gain an edge. So, why—when MLB doesn't administer a test for human growth hormone—should I believe Giambi is clean?
Likewise, when I look at Roger Clemens, I wonder: Where's the investigative digging? Like Bonds, Clemens is a larger-than-life athletic specimen. Like Bonds, Clemens is producing at an age when most of his peers are knitting. Unlike Bonds, Clemens does not have journalists breathing down his neck. Instead, the hometown Houston Chronicle has covered his recent re-signing with the Astros as a time for unmitigated celebration. Forget combing through his garbage for vials—I just want the Chronicle to ask Clemens whether he's used. Is the Rocket cheating? Again, I don't know. But doesn't someone have to at least try and find out?
"A lot of baseball writers are drunks or cheat on their wives," says Jose de Jesus Ortiz, the Chronicle's Astros beat writer. "I would never question anybody unless I have evidence. It's unfair to feel that just because of Bonds now we're required to question everyone about their methods."
Is it unfair to pester individual athletes about steroids? Maybe. Is it the right thing to do journalistically? Without a doubt.
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Remarks from the Fray:
There were plenty of warning signs with Barry Bonds. First, he was a scrawny player whose biggest asset was base stealing when he came into the league. Then, at the point when most players careers tail off, Bonds suddenly resurrected as the msot dominant power hitter in the game. Second, there are no exercises that can increase the bulk in a man's forehead. Third, Bonds' personal trainer was the focus of a federal investigation into steroids.
Now, because of Bond's complete flaunting of his chemical assistance, every homerun hitter is supposed to be dirty? Pujols deserves better. For one, Pujols was a powerhitter from the moment he entered the Major Leagues. (Coming out of the minor leagues where testing has always happened.) Also, Pujols has not made dramatic leaps in his production. He has improved incrementally each year. (Bonds went from decent homerun hitter with a career high in the lower forties to all-time single season record holder.) Then there is the crazy thought that "Hey, Pujols is reaching the age where most players peak. Perhaps he is just in his prime." But I guess that's crazy talk because journalists should treat everyone as a criminal.
--Okie
(To reply, click here.)
Thank you, Mr. Pearlman, for informing baseball's fawning press and fans that the emperor indeed has no clothes.
My chosen sport, olympic weightlifting, has battled steroids from those drugs' very inception. I have observed decades of that most depressing of cycles: "new drug, new test to identify drug, newer drug outstrips test, etc".
As a battle-scarred (steroid-scarred?) weightlifting fan, it is just stunning - nay mindblowing - to witness the delusion of writers and fans. A "post-steroid" era...Amazing!
Indeed, pronouncements of a post-steroid era are almost more depressing to witness than the initial steroid accusations. As someone who purports to be a "true fan", wouldn't one want to know the absolute truth? As you, Mr. Pearlman, pointed out, baseball doesn't even test for everything we KNOW about.
From my perspective as a baseball non-fan, these slavish writers and fans are doing nothing less than a dishonor to their sport: they are so desperate for entertainment - or a more romantic time period, or whatever - that they will let themselves believe that everything is okay. It cheapens the very game they claim to love.
Kudos, Mr. Pearlman, for telling them so.
--ArtieK
(To reply, click here.)
It's simply unfair to write an article which even suggests some baseball player might be on steroids, as an explanation of 40 or 50 games results, without at least some kind of evidence!
Giambi presents a best-case scenario for speculation, having apologized for we know not what, a year or so back.
But to speculate about Pujols, without clear evidence (does he look 3 times bigger suddenly? Have there been other telling symptoms?), seems wrong morally.
I'd also point out that just because some haven't gotten caught, doesn't make it a slam dunk that every record breaker must also be a cheater. If it were so easy to avoid detection, no one would be caught.
The point is, there is surely a risk here, of being outed, and the cheaters have decided to take that chance. But all will be accutely aware that not everyone gets away with it.
--GavaGuy
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