To no one's great surprise, Mark McGwire admitted today to taking steroids through large parts of his baseball career. Also, to no one's great surprise there's been the back n' forth of people deriding and defending his actions.
Dolberry falls on the side of ... these were illegal substances that were clearly (IMO) giving their users an advantage over those who were unwilling to inject the drugs.
Rob Neyer, a real good baseball writer on ESPN.com, makes a case in defense of McGwire that revolves around two main tenets: 1) if your livelihood was in jeopardy and there was a substance that would help you prolong it ... you would consider taking it was well (aka, don't be a hypocrite), and 2) it was part of the culture, standard operating practice for MLB in the 90's (aka, everyone was doing it).
Of the last 10 players to hit 500 HRs, seven have been implicated (or proven) steroid users: Bonds, ManRam, Palmeiro, Sosa, McGwire, A-Rod, and Sheffield. It's the three players that haven't been implicated that point out the flaw in Neyer's and many others line of thinking: Jim Thome, the Big Hurt, and Junior. All three of those guys experienced injuries as they aged ... especially Griffey. According to this line of thinking, it would seem that we are actually require to think less of these three guys. They simply did not do all they could do to make their teams better.
I think everyone can acknowledge that that simply isn't inherently fair. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how one can be logically consistent and believe Big Mac et al were simply doing what they needed to do ... while not condemning Junior/Thome/Thomas for putting themselves ahead of their team. Of course, no one's written that article because it would be laughed off.
Anyway, Dolberry is glad McGwire made his admission now, as opposed to actual baseball season, when it will be quickly drowned out by the NFL playoffs. And when March rolls around, maybe we can have a Spring devoted to the games on the field. And how this guy is going to lead the Reds to the promised land ... we hope.
2 comments:
Do you think we will have to apologize some day for going to baseball games during "the Philly Cheesesteak era"? It wasn't our fault! Everyone was eating them! (Although not everyone chose their seats to be close to the cheesesteak stand). It didn't make us better fans (just happier ones.) M
Excellent post. Look for the article condemning Thomas\Griffey\Thome to appear in The Onion.
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