TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Friday, March 18, 2005

My Two Cents...
Seems like just about everybody in The Bullpen is chiming in, so let me make a pair of points...

The players who testified were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. If you were suspected of steroid use, there was nothing you could say that would clear you in the court of public opinion. McGwire for all intents took the fifth, and he's now being slayed in the press. Dick Pound, who is a major player in the anti-doping world, more or less claimed that McGwire has in effect admitted to steroid use. Meanwhile, Sosa denied using 'roids and the general reaction has been "can you believe the nerve of him - telling all of those lies under oath." We are about two steps away from trial by dunking.

I'll also note that after watching years of Bud Selig testifying about the economic state of baseball, you can perjure yourself in front of Congress with no penalty.

I'd like to see Congress have hearings on plastic surgery in Hollywood. Unlike baseball, where some small percentage is doing 'roids, just about every actor has had surgery. Nothing like mutilating your body and risking your long-term health for a better shot at a big-money contract in the entertainment industry. We talk about role models and such, but if we compare the number of teenagers on steroids to the number of teenagers with eating disorders, it isn't even close.

posted by David 4:25 PM

Yes, Virginia, It's a Witch Hunt

I find myself in the extremely unusual position of being largely in agreement with the baseball establishment over the most unlikely of issues -- steroid use in baseball.

There's no doubt that baseball is a dollar late and a dime short on self-regulation, and that external pressures brought about the strength of response it has formulated. It's also equally inarguable that none of that pressure came from the United States Congress, which seems to have discovered the steroids issue at a time when baseball has actually substantially cleaned up its own act. The pressure came from years of reporting by the press and the judicial process at work.

The whole circus act of bringing in prominent baseball players, and having them testify right after tearful parents who claim their children's suicides were the result of steroids use, is a cheap grandstand play. Yesterday's Congressional hearings were the lowest form of political exploitation of a minor issue for sensationalist publicity.

Steroids are a serious problem -- in high school and college, where their use and abuse may range from a mild problem to a rampant epidemic, depending on whom you ask. I don't believe there's been any cause and effect established between steroids use and teen suicide, but as one source put it, it seems like a really bad idea to throw those kind of substances into the unstable hormonal brew of adolescense.

Are kids being supplied steroids by major leaguers? Nope. They get them the way they normally get drugs, from suppliers who make a direct profit out of them. Do they get the idea to take steroids from major leaguers? I'm not as clear on that issue. The role that a "role model" takes in developing a young person's values and influencing their conduct is an open question. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that the role models that have the most influence aren't sports and entertainment stars, but parents, coaches, and peers, especially slightly older peers.

The real impetus to take steroids and other performance-enhancing substances comes from these sources. From parents and coaches who value winning above all else, from pressures to achieve to get scholarships, from the very idea that sports is, in and of itself, so intrinsically worthwhile that a teen's whole identity can get caught up in performance.

The idea that you can get performance in a pill is another disgusting and dangerous idea in our culture. As such, Rafael "Viagra" Palmeiro -- who endorses the product he says he doesn't use or need -- may have been the most guilty among the panelists yesterday of having fostered the continuing idea that you can become something you're not with a little pharmaceutical help.

I'm at a loss to explain how Major League Baseball and its players can be blamed for this societal problem, other than in a very indirect way. The issue first came up in my memory in 1988, when the first Canseco rumours surfaced. What was the fans' reaction at the time? At Fenway, at least, the fans showered Canseco with cries of 'cheater' during the playoffs. Jose might have "gotten away" with something, albeit something that was perfectly legal at the time, but it didn't get him any respect, and even his honesty now isn't getting him any more. Fans hate the sin and hate the sinner even more.

As such, I can't see that the alleged steroids users in baseball have gotten anything like positive publicity for taking the steroids, and there have been very, very few who've admitted taking them. That simply means the "role model" question is ludicrous. The Governor of California has admitted taking steroids,, their use is still rampant in his former sport (bodybuilding, not acting), and I didn't see him being called before the panel yesterday.

Baseball was slow to act on steroids, but if you listened carefully to what the baseball people -- Selig, Manfred, Alderson, not McGwire, Schilling, and Canseco -- said yesterday, you'd see a pretty careful anti-steroids policy that they're crafting and recrafting as they go. It calls for mandatory suspensions and treatment options -- just like most large corporations have similar policies when their employees have drug problems. It's not up to corporations to bust their employees and send them to jail, and we accept, in every other industry (including law enforcement!) the need to provide voluntary treatment programs to employees to get them off the illegal drugs they're on. If it's an all-or-nothing policy where positive tests and/or self-incrimination lead only to disgrace, then those who have been hooked will have no incentive to come clean.

A lot of the Congressional claims against baseball are just old hat. They're using independent labs and random testing. They implemented a two-phased program that saw positive tests drop to less than 2% last year among all players -- that's about 12-15 players among over 600 tested. The new penalties will be in effect this year. Labor and management are cooperating in an unprecedented way. Some of the Congressmen seem to have been saying that anybody who's clean should just come forward and swear an oath to that effect -- just like Senator McCarthy, in the 1950s, thought that anybody who was a patriotic American should just swear an oath of allegiance and then name the names of all known communists. That's a nation where hearsay and innuendo rule, not sensible legislation and employment practices.

As for the fake shock over the idea that the game itself might be permanently tainted, I found most of the mewling by Congressmen over this issue to be shallow. Some guys got an "unfair" advantage, but at least, in contrast to the gambling scandals of 85 years ago, the players are trying to get an advantage for themselves and their teams, not throwing the games. Sure there's a lot of tainted production -- but (among the accused) where did Mark McGwire's team finish in 1998? Not in first place. How many rings does Barry Bonds have? How many have the Yankees won since Jason Giambi joined the club? The 'roid poppers may have gotten some more performance, but their days are now over and it's not at all clear to what extent their little extras actually changed the course of events.

And let's assume the worst -- the baseball records are tainted. THIS is the big national "crisis" (exactly what multiple congressmen called it yesterday)? Not when half our National Track and Field team got thrown out at the Olympics? And this is the biggest health problem we have -- 12-15 baseball players popping pills? Gentlemen and gentleladies of Congress, IT'S ONLY A GAME. The problem is, in fact, elevating success in a game to some kind of mythic status. If there was a little bit of sense of proportion about the status of sports in our culture, maybe Congress would spend some time, say, finding the missing billions of dollars the Coalition Provisional Authority lost in Iraq or regulating mercury in pollution emissions.

Why is Congress investigating now? Pure political grandstanding. Being against steroids is like being against Hitler or infanticide. No one is going to disagree with you. If you can whip on some scapegoats who don't have entirely clean hands, then you'll end up looking better by comparison. You will distract people from real problems and convince them that something else is a serious problem so they don't pay attention to the real problems.

An even scarier problem might be the rampant use of steroids among police officers. I don't know about you, but the police in my community are much more important role models than some idiotic baseball players. And I personally would not want to be in the middle of a confrontation where a guy who is legally armed and authorized to use a fire arm has been hopped up on testosterone. But Congress isn't paying much attention to that issue, either.

As Bernie Sanders, the independent Congressman from Vermont on the Government Affairs Committee holding the hearings quipped, maybe they could bring ballplayers to the next hearing concerning the rising health care costs in this country and maybe they'd get some attention for a change.

For that matter, steroid use in high schools and colleges is a real problem. But it's not one that needs new laws -- just better enforcement. The things are already illegal! Let's say we took 1% of the cost of the war in Iraq and put it to the Drug Enforcement Agency with the mandate they bust up the distribution rings (you can buy them on-line, for god's sake), how many lives do you think might be saved? We'll never know, because Congress hasn't done jack about funding efforts better. Congress has been in the midst of continuing to cut federal funds for drug treatment programs of all sorts in this past week. The States continue to cut drug treatment programs (and enforcement) as they're faced with the fallout of reduced federal support -- just go to Google News and type in 'budget cuts drug treatment' if you want a sampler.

Isn't that a, shall we say, mixed message from the Congress?

If Congress really wants to address baseball's conduct, it has a simple remedy. Repeal the Anti-Trust exemption, for which there is utterly no logical reason. If they're serious about steroids enforcement, add a billion to the DEA budget for the purpose, or pass uniform legislation concerning testing and competitive athletics that applies equally to all sports.

Yesterday showed disgusting hypocrisy of the worst sort, and for once it's not coming from Major League Baseball.

posted by The Crank 12:42 PM

Baseball & Steroids - Must See TV

I found myself glued to my TV set this afternoon watching baseball players (both current and former) and MLB big-wigs like Commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr testify before a U.S. House panel investigating steroid use in baseball.

This was almost as good as watching a seventh game of the fall classic. Curt Schilling was there to pitch his views and once again proved that he has never met a microphone that he didn't like. Rafael Palmeiro was there to adamantly deny using any illegal substance. I wondered if before the hearings began, Palmeiro was handing out free samples of Viagra and telling committee members "This is all I need to perform at the top of my game." Mark McGwire was in attendance and did not want to talk about "the past", probably because he knows his legacy will be forever tarnished because of his acknowledged use of Andro which at the time of McGwire's record breaking 70 home run season (1998) was not a banned substance. Sammy Sosa was also there. Sosa also shattered the single season home run record of 61 long balls in 1998. Somewhere Roger Maris was rolling over in his grave wondering why he is the player with an asterisk permanently engraved on his tombstone. The steroid poster boy Jose Canseco was there. The only thing that would have been more entertaining than the hearings themselves would have been a cage match between Canseco and Schilling. Schilling ripped Canseco in his opening statements to the committee flat out calling him "a liar". The two were conveniently seated at opposite ends of the table. Sixty feet, six inches would have been a lot more dramatic.

One by one, committee members questioned the players about steroids and their knowledge of them and their speculation as to the percentage of usage at the major league level. Many seemed to ask a different version of a previous asked question and the players seemed to give different answers to each one. It was as erratic as a Bud Selig news conference but entertaining nonetheless.

Schilling testified that he believed there was a steroid issue in baseball but that the problem was miniscule compared to Canseco's assertion in the past that 80% of players have used performance enhancing drugs.

Palmeiro came off as an honest person. The only reason he was called to this hearing was because Canseco fingered him in his book. If I was to make a list of players I suspect might have used steroids Palmeiro wouldn't even be on that list. He has a natural looking physique and is a player who seems to have earned his place in the 500 home run club with a sweet swing and hard work and dedication to his sport.

Mark McGwrire was a huge disappointment. He refused to answer many questions and despite claiming that he wanted to do all he could to help in this matter, seemed to be no help at all. I wish a representative would have got a projector screen and compared a Mark McGwire rookie card to one from his final years in the majors. Even better would have been a simple question as to why a tall and skinny McGwire, who hit 49 home runs in his rookie season, felt the need to take anything legal or illegal to enhance his performance?

Sammy Sosa denied ever using steroids. If I was on the House committee I would have asked him just out of curiosity why his eyeballs seem to be a foot outside of his head? How credible can a guy whose bat exploded into a pile of cork be?

How is it that of all the players in attendance, Canseco seemed to be the most honest in his answers and opinions? Yes Canseco is slime amongst slime but even if half his allegations are true, baseball has a serious problem and has pretty much ignored it for several years. Every player except Canseco believed that baseball itself could clean this problem up with no help from lawmakers. After looking at what baseball has done (or hasn't done) in the past it was easy to side with Canseco. I was reminded of Steve Howe who received slap on the wrist after slap on the wrist for snorting cocaine like it was an everyday nasal mist. Are known steroid abusers going to receive the same kind of treatment? Baseball's new drug policy calls for a 10 day suspension for first time offenders and it takes four offenses to receive a one year ban. This is laughable and in no way does it send a strong message to athletes and the easily influenced youth of America that steroids are bad and should not be used.

Baseballs first commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis slapped a lifetime ban on eight members of the Chicago White Sox for consorting with gamblers and throwing the 1919 World Series. Bart Giamatti permanently banned Pete Rose from the game in 1989 for betting on baseball.

It's time that Bud Selig along with the players association get tough on the dopers in baseball before government has no choice but to step in to clean the sport up.

Judging by today's proceedings that is where it seems headed.

- Dean Swanton

posted by David 9:54 AM

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The afternoon hearings continue: the players were asked questions by the assembled representatives, often out of their ability to answer, and frequently with rather strange premises. One of the stupidest analogies came from one elected rube who asked if there was a "smart pill" whether people trying to win the nobel prize might be tempted to take that pill to get an edge on the competition. (Me, I'd not only take the pill, I'd give the Nobel to the person who invented it.) One congress critter, clearly unfamiliar with how McCarthyism works, kept saying that if everybody who tested clean would just swear an oath to that effect, why then everybody could figure out who is guilty. (Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible, rotated rapidly and audibly in his grave.) Another interesting question for philosophers, but one way out of the players' capacity to answer: is this as serious an issue as gambling, if they're both about cheating and the integrity of the game?

My favorite admission from a Congressman (the committee chair): "we don't do things well here."

Thet answered the same questions, usually in a line: Schilling, McGwire, Palmeiro, Sosa, Canseco (The Big Hurt, testifying at a distance due to an injury that allegedly prevents him from traveling by air, got a free pass on the questions.) Schilling came off as thoughtful, with no real surprises; his stance was consistently in favor of very strict standards, but enforced within baseball. Canseco, despite essentially taking the fifth in his opening statement, was relatively open and discursive about the need for external regulation. I almost hate to say it, but he was almost articulate. he and Schilling were basically in agreement over virtually everything, yet Schilling repeatedly called Canseco a liar. It was a strange contention to make: Curt, seeming like a straight shooter, said he's never once seen anybody take steroids, but estimated 10-15 of his teammates over the years had taken them. How? How does he know Canseco's a liar if he never saw anybody take steroids? The logic is in error someplace. Canseco is the only one of them who has admitted using steroids, but Schilling's theory was that he was naming other names just to make himself look "less worse" by contrast. An interesting theory, but about as fact-based as any other speculation over Canseco's motivations.

Canseco called it like it is, though: major league baseball simply can't be trusted to regulate itself, because the one thing owners and players agree on is it's all about the money.

McGwire, by contrast, did a lot of evasion and ducking, claiming variously he wanted to focus on the future, not the past, but that he couldn't comment on anything going on now because he's retired. It was a disingenuous and fairly craven stance. He sounded and acted guilty; he was the weepy Robert MacFarlaneto Canseco's Oliver North. He wouldn't even answer the question as to whether he thought using steroids was cheating, saying "that's not for me to say," when he was just asked his opinion of the matter.

Palmeiro genuinely looked and acted like he had no idea why he was there, and did a lot af agreeing with whatever question was asked based on what the two players ahead of him said. Sammy Sosa just looked scared and said as little as was humanly possible. One real low point was when Rep. Dennis Kucinich asked Sosa a question in halting Spanish, which Sammy answered in much better English.

---

posted by The Crank 1:58 PM

The Congressional Steroids in Baseball hearings are underway, and to spare you the grief of having to watch them, here's a summary of what the players said:

Jose Canseco: You guys will have to read my book, because unless you can guarantee me immunity from state prosecution, I can't tell you under oath what I've been telling every C-grade local TV news channel for weeks to pimp my book.

Sammy Sosa: I didn't do it.

Mark McGwire: I'm opposed to steroids, and I offer my services as a spokesman to major league baseball, and my foundation is going to dedicate itself to fight against youth steroid use. But I'm not going to snitch anybody out or admit anything, and I'm going to take the fifth amendment a lot without saying I'm taking the fifth. Jose Canseco is a big liar. Major League Baseball is doing a great job at getting rid of the problem already.

Rafael Palmeiro: I fled Cuban communism as a child. I don't do steroids. Jose Canseco is a big liar.

Curt Schilling: I'm really gung-ho for Bush and pro-military, so I will tell you about the wounded soldiers I visited at Walter Reed hospital, even though it has nothing to do with the issue at hand. I don't know why I'm here unless it's because I've spoken out against steroids before. Jose Canseco is a liar ("a so-called author"). Major League Baseball is doing a great job at getting rid of the problem already. This is a witch hunt even though Jim Bunning said it wasn't a witch hunt.

Frank Thomas (via remote video/audio): I hate steroids, and I'm willing to work with everybody, especially kids, to warn them off steroids. It's the parents' job, though. By the way, the union volunteered to change the collective bargaining agreement to test for steroids. I've never, ever, not once used steroids.

That's it so far, as of 3 PM ET.

No mention of baseball's anti-trust exemption by the congressmen, by the way.

posted by The Crank 11:47 AM

Monday, March 14, 2005

The First Hall of Fame Coach...?

There's been a little rattling of late to create a special wing of the Hall of Fame for scouts, to recognize both the outstanding talent-spotters, and in general to give some acknowledgement to the vast underpaid army that for 120 years populated the major leagues with players. While I can't say I'm opposed to the idea, it strikes me that the role of scouts can only continue to diminish in an age when t-ball games are videotaped and stats kept and reported on nearly every youth game any potential major leaguer plays -- at least in North America. In-person evaluation will always be a necessity, but the talent scout aspect of evaluation, and advance scouting, becomes a far narrower and more technical field as time goes on. One strongly suspects that in the past the cream of the scouts would rise to different organizational jobs -- Director of Minor League Operations, perhaps a GM job, where they could be recognized in turn for special achievement. That's not to say some scouts don't deserve recognition qua scouts -- it's just among the several Hall of Fame injustices, this is a relatively minor omission. Not so a few other deserving specialty areas (not the least of which is the complete lack of any women players, despite very good scholarship on the AAGPBL. Go to the Basketball Hall of Fame, you'll find plenty of women among the "regular" members.)

There are no Hall of Fame coaches. There are Hall of Fame Managers, and many coaches who made the Hall on other achievements, but nobody who entered solely for their contributions as a coach. The reason is, of course, if a coach was considered to be any good, he'd eventually get a managerial job, and then would be judged on the merits of his performance in that role. From Clark Griffith and Tommy LaSorda to Joe Kerrigan and Ray Miller, pitching coaches either cut it or were cut as managers. (It is worth noting that of the Hall of Fame Managers, only a handful were pitchers.) The pitching coaches who get fired as managers tend to go back to coaching and rarely resurface as managers.

But as we've entered a new era of specialization, there are some exceptions emerging: coaches, particularly pitching coaches, who have deliberately chosen to remain coaches despite the opportunity to move "up" to the manager's seat. As we enter the 2005 season, St. Louis Manager Tony LaRussa is sixth on the all-time wins list for managers with 2114. Another 80 wins -- probable this year with a defending NL-Champion Cardinal roster -- he'll move into third, behind the unpassable John McGraw and Connie Mack. With him as pitching coach for 1876 of those wins, since the 1983 Chicago White Sox and through ten years with the Oakland A's and ten more with the Cardinals, has been Dave Duncan.

Insofar as LaRussa's Hall of Fame credentials are nearly inpeccable (despite winning "only" one World's Championship), it's hard to distinguish much of that record from Duncan's role as the great innovator of pitching roles. The LaRussa-Duncan team perfected the modern approach of six or seven innings from a starter, followed by pre-defined set-up roles, capped off by the one-inning close. Fans may curse the extra half hour pitching changes have brought into the game, but the LaRussa-Duncan approach is now nearly universal, and an important part of the chess match of most close games. Dave Duncan made a Cy Young winner out of the likes of LaMarr Hoyt and Bob Welch, and made a Hall of Famer out of Dennis Eckersley, who was barely hanging on as a below-average starter when Duncan and LaRussa put him in the defined closer's role. Duncan and LaRussa were the first managers to openly use a "book" -- literally -- to get optimal match-ups between hitter and pitcher. LaRussa has won Manager of the Year four time with three different clubs; the pitching staffs fot those clubs were 4th, 3rd twice, and best in the league despite such immortal presences as Mike Moore, Rich Dotson, Bob Welch, and Storm Davis among his rotation stalwarts.

I sense an imminent decline in LaRussa's reputation because of the steroids controversy, so his Hall of Fame coattails may be very short, indeed (unlike Sparky Anderson, who has dragged in a member or two of the Big Red Machine along with him to Cooperstown.) More's the pity for Duncan, part of one of the greatest coaching-managerial combinations of all-time. Since there's no "coaches" wing of the Hall, and Duncan's gritty decade as a Major League catcher was not marked by much in the way of offensive accomplishment, the only path Duncan has to Cooperstown is in the "others" category, one voted on by the Veterans' committee. Since the Veterans' committee is now dominated by current members of the players' part of the Hall, and among those are precious few pitchers (although they include Duncan's former teammates Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers), I see little shot for Duncan.

But if I had to name one Hall of Fame coach, it's Duncan. He's been a big part of a lot of winning, and a big part of the biggest innovation in how the sport is played. There may be a few other innovators in the coaching ranks who at least deserve recognition -- maybe the "reputation" guys like Charlie Lau -- but I don't know enough to comment intelligently. But we should open the conversation about some of these other contributors to the game who have obviously achieved greatness and great things for baseball.

posted by The Crank 12:18 PM