Armchair Beer Vendor

I’ve never been to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, but if it’s anything like the Chinese restaurant Wok of Fame in Burbank, CA, the Mu Shu pork is pretty decent. I imagine being inducted as a member of either one of these hallowed institutions is unbelievably gratifying. And I don’t think it’s a feeling Sammy Sosa will ever know.



As was announced repeatedly last week, with both horror and righteous indignation, former Chicago Cub slugger Sosa was one of the MLB players nailed in an “anonymous” 2003 screening for performance-enhancing drugs. He was joined in that ignominy by Alex Rodriguez and 102 players to be named later. And each reporting of the Sosa news finds me shaking my head, asking the same thing over and over:

“This is news?”

Didn’t we all know the former Chicago slugger had used steroids? Remember those congressional hearings in 2005? I thought the reason we all mocked his sudden “no comprende” act was for its comically transparent and self-implicating evasiveness. If that’s not why you chuckled, then you must be someone who finds the rapid decline of another’s intellectual acuity inherently hilarious. I suggest you sneak into a dementia ward and let the good times roll.

Getting all hot and bothered because of an incident of cheating by a known cheater just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Sure, his actions were reprehensible. But come on, you must have seen this coming. The ‘wrong bat’ incident of ’03 did raise eyebrows. His explanation that he accidently used the stick he reserves for batting practice (all for the fans, mind you) rang more hollow than the X-Bat itself when it snapped in two and scattered a tack board around the infield.



Really, by the late ‘90s, with home run records once thought unbreakable being smashed to bits, you must have at least found some players’ exploits suspicious. If not, Ken Caminiti’s mea culpa should have piqued curiosity. It did mine. By the time Jose Canseco’s book, “Juiced”, came out in 2005, I saw it for what it was: A shameless attempt by a washed-up slugger to make a quick buck; a sleazy, sociopathic smear-campaign, with only one man’s interests and the almighty dollar in mind, that was spot-on accurate.

But maybe you were unswayed even after that farce before Congress. Maybe you found Sammy credible. You could’ve chosen to believe that Rafael Palmeiro, having predicted his future need to testify under oath, waited until the day he could honestly declare he’d never taken steroids before allowing himself to finally shoot up. Perhaps you believed that Mark McGwire was there, as he claimed, not to talk about the past but to be positive about the future. Me? I thought he was there because he was subpoenaed.



Now, look. I’m not really writing this because I think you’re that naive. I’m actually writing this because I hadn’t contributed to this blog in quite some time, and I was beginning to feel the heat. So if this, the 3,253,071st opinion-piece about performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball will get even my harshest critic off my back, here it is. Now cut me some slack, Aunt Martha.

Obviously, steroid abuse is bad news. It causes violent mood swings, testicular-shrinkage and everything they list after testicular-shrinkage, but I’ll be honest, I’ve always stopped reading by then. And if I were in a Major League clubhouse and saw players getting juiced, I can tell you with certainty that I wouldn’t do the same. But then, in my capacity as towel-boy, I really wouldn’t need much bulk.

The blessing of underwhelming athletic ability is that certain temptations simply don’t tempt. So it’s easy for those of us who quit playing competitive sports once the dog chewed-up our last Nerf balls to point out all that’s wrong with using PEDs. We discuss it with our cronies while walking to class, or while pouring coffee in the office, or while waiting for Bobby to get us the hell out of Sam the Butcher's meat locker.

See, most of us don’t know what it’s like to have spent nearly all of our waking hours in pursuit of one dream. If not everybody reading this, at least the majority of us (Aunt Martha and me) never had the tools to justify any dream of playing sports professionally. We didn’t have entire families, entire neighborhoods or even entire cities completely invested in our athletic achievements. And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t grow up a shoeless kid in the Dominican Republic whose three-walled abode had neither a roof nor running water. And let's face it, I do know about you.

I’ve never learned the particulars of Sammy Sosa’s upbringing, nor do I know what’s ever made Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez tick. I don’t like what they’ve done behind locker room doors. It’s bad for the game and it’s bad for our kids. But let’s not pretend to have even the slightest grasp on what drives these players to do such things.

Should known PEDs users be allowed entry to the Hall Fame? Sure, provided they buy tickets. Their stats are meaningless. They’ve tarnished baseball’s image. Of course they shouldn’t be inducted. The problem is, I can’t help but think that’s a bigger issue for the media than it is for these guys. Don’t get me wrong: Sammy and the rest will no doubt be extremely disappointed for having screwed themselves out of such an honor. I just don’t think too many guys dedicate their lives to baseball because they dreamed of being museum exhibits.

The fact is, most players don’t make the Hall of Fame. They’re just trying to earn a paycheck playing the game they love. According to a 2007 study done by University of Colorado researchers, the average length of a Major League Baseball player’s career is only 5.6 seasons. And it’ll be half that as soon as Jamie Moyer and Tim Wakefield call it quits.

So when you get your crack at the big time, after having dedicated your life to baseball, and you know that guys -- opponents who want to make quick work of you and teammates who want your spot in the lineup -- are giving themselves an edge through the use of banned substances ... well, aren’t you at least tempted to level the playing field?

What’s my point? I’ve been wondering the same thing. I suppose it comes down to this: cheating is bad. Messing around with illicit drugs is bad. Setting a horrible example for kids is really, really bad. But it’s happened. I think it’s probably happened a lot more than we know yet. We don’t have to be cool with it and we don’t have to forgive these players for their misdeeds. We don’t have to watch baseball at all.

But if we do keep tuning in, let's resign ourselves to the fact that every so often we’ll learn some regrettable things about the game’s recent past. Let’s try to stop taking it so personally. I don’t believe Sammy Sosa sought illegitimate methods for increasing his power, as he once implied, to thrill all his fans. But I’m certain he didn’t do it to break their hearts, either.

¿Comprende?