Yes, steroids are a problem in sports. Yes, steroids are a problem in baseball. No, they are not, as Jonah Deutsch writes in Tuesday’s Argus, “ruining baseball.” Steroids are a huge problem, and something that the league needs to take far more responsibility for than it is right now. But they are not a problem for the reasons that Jonah cites in his article. Steroids are a problem because of the message that they send to young, aspiring baseball players. Kids who want to make it to the majors may see that they need an extra competitive edge and start taking steroids. That’s why I started taking them. Actually, no I didn’t, and I don’t and I would never take steroids, but then again I never had a legitimate shot at making it to the big time, so it never crossed my mind. But seriously, steroids need to be gotten rid of completely, and it needs to happen now in order to restore the faith that so many have in the game of baseball.
With that said, I want to voice my frustration about the unfortunate affect on fans’ perceptions of player’s accomplishments. I won’t even start on Barry Bonds, because back here on the East Coast I have talked to too many people who tell me that Don Mattingly and Cal Ripken Jr. are, or have been in the past, better players than Bonds. I refuse to even bother arguing that point, so let’s skip it.
Let’s talk about Javy Lopez, as Jonah did on Tuesday. He is, according to Jonah, “the most laughably obvious example” of a player taking steroids; or at least we assume he is, because he had one big home run year. It is this “one big home run year” that condemns so many players to the annals of assumed steroid use. This is, simply put, an AWFUL argument. You can’t discount what a player has done simply because one year he had was “too good to be true.” Yes, Lopez hit 42 home runs in 2003, in between two mediocre years, but he hit 34 a few years before that, and more than 20 in multiple other seasons.
By this logic, guess who else must have been on steroids? Roger Maris never hit more than 39 homers in his career, except the 61 that he hit to break Babe Ruth’s record. Carlton Fisk hit 37 homers one year, when the rest of his career he topped out at 26. Frank Robinson hit 49 in a season, and never even reached 40 again. On the flip side, Hank Aaron had one full season in the middle of his career in which he only hit 24 homers, when before and after that year, he was consistently around 40. Baseball players, even the best of them, have good years, great years, mediocre years, awful years, and everything in between. Pointing to season totals means absolutely nothing.
I agree. Steroids need to go away. But don’t automatically consider players like Mark Prior guilty (if anyone in baseball is not on steroids it’s that skinny piece of s—), let’s see how it plays out first. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a couple injections of human growth hormone and get ready for Hamilton this weekend. Maybe I’ll get drafted.
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