My Big Sigh of Relief

The Mitchell Report, which came out this week and named some players who took steroids, is being heralded as a big deal. I’m not quite sure why…is it because a former US Senator wrote it? It seems to indicate steroid use in Major League Baseball was rampant in the last couple decades. But haven’t we already known that for years? It also says names future Hall of Famers Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens as steroid users. But hasn’t that been obvious to the the vast majority of sports fans for a long time?

So thanks, former Senator Mitchell, for figuring out what almost everyone already knew.

To me, it’s the more important issue is who wasn’t on the report. Let’s do a quick rundown:

1. Greg Maddux

Any viewer of Ken Burns’ epic documentary on America’s Pastime can tell you cheating has always been a big part of baseball. In fact, I think most Americans appreciate cheating to some extent. As hitters got stronger, pitchers had to become more wily, and subtle smears of vasoline on the cap brims are the hidden hallmark of many a legendary hurler. A few sportswriters may get red-faced at the thought, but don’t you have to respect the guys who’ve gotten away with the tricks of the trade for entire careers?

With Roger Clemens stammering out his ‘denial’, Greg Maddux steps into place as the best pitcher of the last 20 years. Maddux, with a slight build and a fastball short of 90 miles per hour, relied on precise control and dizzying movement. That control may be real, but few ballplayers believe his movement is natural. It doesn’t matter, because no umpire has ever caught Greg Maddux in the act. After years toiling in Roger Clemens’ flame-throwing arrogance, Maddux will be remembered as this era’s great thrower, even if his asterisk is craftily hidden where no one can see.

2. NFL players

This has been said repeatedly, but if Bud Selig was caught mugging the American people’s emotions in the McGwire-Sosa home run race, Paul Tagliabue and Roger Goodell are getting away with murder. The NFL is rife with steroid users. San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman was suspended in 2006 for four games after testing positive for steroids. Chuck Klosterman, in an article for ESPN, explained the kind of specimen Merriman had become:

Shawne Merriman weighs 272 pounds.

This is six pounds less than Anthony Munoz, probably the most dominating left tackle of all time. Shawne Merriman also runs the 40-yard dash in 4.61 seconds. When Jerry Rice attended the NFL draft combine in 1985, he reportedly ran a 4.60; Rice would go on to gain more than 23,000 all-purpose yards while scoring 207 career touchdowns.

And it’s not like Rice and Munoz played in the 60’s. Munoz was drafted in 1980, and Rice was a first-rounder in 1985.

Merriman was one of the best players in the NFL, but professional football is loaded with extremely large men who are extremely strong. To believe steroids are more of a problem in Major League Baseball than they are in the NFL is like believing Santa Claus, the Frankenberry Monster and James Frey’s alter ego are having a tea party on the moon.

The double standard here is absurd, especially considering retired NFL players suffer debilitating diseases. Football has already passed baseball as America’s favorite sport, so when will it be held to the same standards?

3. NBA Players

Basketball doesn’t seem like a steroid sport, primarily because it requires so much finesse. Thinking back, I can only recall one players who might have been using: Anthony Mason. That guy was huge.

Basketball is filled with physical freaks, players who broke the mold. Will there ever be a 6’6” (and a questionable 6’6” at that) power forward who dominated the paint like Charles Barkley? Or a small, blindingly fast shooting guard who endured the physical punishment of Allen Iverson? Or a fat, 7’0” center who with footwork like Shaquille O’Neal? Every year, some white guy gets pegged the next Larry Bird, but no one’s ever come through.

Ultimately, steroids aren’t going to turn Luke Ridnour into Pete Maravich or Vince Carter into Michael Jordan.

4. The Majority of Professional Baseball Players

I may be naive, but I don’t think steroid use was as widespread as most believe.

There are approximately 6,600 professional baseball players in the United States today, the majority of who are in favor of drug testing. It’s one thing to use Human Growth Hormone to treat injury, but quite another to use it for athletic gain. For the thousands of journeyman ballplayers toiling in towns like Sioux Falls and Keiser, Oregon, I want to hope they didn’t have the means or desire to cheat in order to get to the top. I have to believe it’s a major temptation, but many were raised on images of Ben Johnson and the East German Olympic teams. I remember thinking cheating through steroids was something those dirty communists did, but not our American heroes.

Maybe the evidence doesn’t stand up, but I want to believe most of that 6,600 are better than that.

5. John Kruk

Krukky got strong the old-fashioned way: becoming fat.

Here’s a gem from his Wikipedia entry:

In 1993, John Kruk was weighed in at 313 lbs., making him by far the heaviest player ever to play in a Phillies uniform. He is infamously known for benching himself due to the ‘flu’ during a 1993 game at Veterans Stadium, then being found purchasing hot dogs from vendors.

5. Shawon Dunston

You can have your Babe Ruths and your Alex Rodriguez’s’s. I’ve got Shawon Dunston, and I steadfastly believe he is the greatest baseball player of all time. With a .269 lifetime average and 150 homeruns over 17 years, the most Shawon ever could’ve taken is a very, very small dose. Dunston’s cannon arm may give him away…the shortstop was known to throw to first base at over 100 miles per hour with questionable accuracy…but most analysts would’ve expected something beyond that.

5. Jordan Green

It’s time to come clean. Back in ‘01, I was forced to conduct an inordinate amount of pushups due to being a lousy soldier. I left my equipment everywhere. Fortunately, I was only a recruit in basic training and AIT, and was never given a standard-issue rifle. If, say, my basic training had been in Iraq, my weapon would’ve no doubt been in the hand of Iraqi insurgents by now.

Those pushups, in league with typing reports and Playstation and various other activities, foisted on me a nasty case of tendinitis in my right wrist. Army doctors tried a brace and an inept series of what could loosely be defined as chiropractics, but the problem persisted.

Back home in Portland, I visited Dr. Bruce Douglas, our family doctor. After understanding how long the problem had gone on, a steroid treatment was advised.

“But Doctor Douglas, won’t this affect my legacy?”

“What?”

“Children look up to me, Doctor. I can’t let them down. Is there a way to carry on the fight without performance-enhancing drugs?”

“What the…What children? It says here on your records that you work as a delivery driver for some doomed internet startup. Look, this will fix the problem. Just sign the consent already.”

With a heavy heart, I conceded.

And while my wrist has never hurt since, part of me wonders what I would’ve been capable of without the enhancement. Part of me feels like a brutally-precise machine, capable of such wondrous feats on the futsal/ultimate frisbee field, but hollow inside. Could I have accomplished what I’ve accomplished without that steroid injection? Could I have been a great painter or poet?

Guys like me, and Barry Bonds and Rogers Clemens, will never know.

And isn’t that punishment enough?