Friday, May 31, 2002
See no evil, hear no evil...
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
It was a typically cool late spring night two years ago and baseballs were flying out of stadiums at a frightening pace.
So many weird home-run records were falling out of the sky at once that old-timers were developing nervous tics. Earlier that month, a record 57 left the yard in a single day's worth of games. A seven-game homestand in Toronto produced 33. Just three days earlier, switch-hitting Yankees had each homered from both sides of the plate. Signs of the apocalypse were everywhere.
Commissioner Bud Selig picked up the phone at home and was asked whether there was any need for worry. He pleaded for calm.
“Of course, we have concerns,” Selig said. “But at this stage we're just sitting back and monitoring.”
Besides, the commissioner assured us, his men were already on it. Even as he spoke, Selig was awaiting a report from a team of scientists dispatched on a fact-finding mission (read:junket) to the Caribbean to rummage through the factories where baseballs are made.
Apparently, they were looking for some kind of magic potion.
Turns out they were looking in the wrong place.
And the rest of us were only too willing to look the other away, too.
Steroid use is rampant in baseball — whatever the exact number is — and anybody who pretends to be shocked had better be able to produce a doctor's note saying he's been in a coma for most of the last decade.
Braves pitcher Tom Glavine, who's been an MVP and his team's union rep for a dozen years, thinks the estimates that half the players are on some kind of juice is too high. He just doesn't know by how much.
“Fifty percent is a lot, and if I'm going to sit here and look at 25 guys on my ballclub and think 12 or 13 are on steroids, then no, I don't believe it,” he said Wednesday. “But if I look at 700 players overall, there might be some teams who have more than 13. I don't know.”
Whether Selig had — or has — better information than the rest of us on the correct percentage is a matter of conjecture.
Two years ago, he ended the conversation about too many home runs by pointing out that a handful of big-name pitchers were about to return from the disabled list. As if that was going to put the numbers back in line. It sounded suspiciously like a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak none.
“Let's just see how this plays out,” Selig said.
We have.
And it's not good.
Even worse if you believe in conspiracies.
Before the strike-shortened 1994 season, there was only one season in baseball history where the average number of home runs per game was 2 or higher. Every season since 1994 has averaged 2 or more.
If you think this is not a coincidence, you are not alone. More than a few people believe the suits running baseball figured that if one Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa duel sold tickets, then dozens of them will sell more.
And so most of the new ballparks have at least one very short home-run porch, as well as NASA-quality video machines, batting cages and weight rooms. Strike zones have shrunk and expansion has diluted the pitching. Bats are now made to a hardness that just a few years ago was unthinkable.
But all of those factors combined don't add up to the quantum leap in power. You have to look at the players to bridge that gap. They went along voluntarily, because their bank accounts swelled even faster than their biceps.
There was a brief fuss after Mark McGwire acknowledged using androstenedione in an Associated Press story during his record-breaking 1998 season.
The commissioner got around to commissioning a study of andro. Two years later, a team of Harvard scientists concluded it raised testosterone levels — probably translating into bigger muscles and more strength — and could be hazardous to a ballplayer's health.
Selig thanked the researchers for a “significant contribution to the science surrounding its use” and put the study in a drawer. He and union boss Donald Fehr — who can't agree on whether the sun is shining — both said more research is needed.
Not to worry. According to former ballplayers Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco, there is no shortage of willing guinea pigs. More, in fact, than all the sports combined could ever use.
What's frightening is how few people care. Fans are tired of baseball or unsympathetic to whatever Faustian bargain these athletes end up striking. Most view trading a few years at the end of life for a lucrative pro career, even a brief one, as an investment. A few ballplayers who insist they're clean are tired of watching lesser talents muscle past. They are the ones talking the loudest about testing.
The chance of that happening any time soon is slim. The owners and players still don't have a labor agreement, and both sides will probably use the steroid issue as a bargaining chip.
Just what baseball needed.
Something else to fight over.
———
Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
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