America’s Pastime?

Ever since Jose Conseco opened this horrible smelling can of worms admitting to steroid use and the list of players he “ratted” out, MLB fans were desperately looking for the saving grace. Alex Rodriguez was thought by many to be the guy that will save baseball when he chases after the *Barry Bonds* home run record. He was thought to be the guy to continue to put up impressive numbers year after year with no help from performance enhancing drugs. In fact, America was set at ease when A-Rod told 60 Minutes in 2007 that he never used performance enhancing drugs. A-Rod was quoted as saying “I’ve never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I’ve always been a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I’ve done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn’t have a problem competing at any level.”

Well for every reason we felt confident our game would be saved by legitimate players there was always an uncomfortable doubt that surrounded MLB. Our savior Alex Rodriguez tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003. A test that was issued in 2003 is just now being released to the public in 2009!? I’m not sure MLB could have done a worse job cleaning up this mess. A problem that MLB knew about way before the Mitchell Report. Hall of Fame caliber players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Palmeiro, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez are all players kids admired growing up. These are players that were idolized all over the world and now their name has been rubbed through dirt because of the use of performance enhancing drugs.

As a true fan of “America’s Pastime” I don’t think I stand alone when I say that the worse is yet to come. We were recently informed there was a list of 103 more players that all tested positive. We expect to hear others listed sometime this week which the public and MLB fans deserve to hear. I don’t expect any of these players to be punished considering there were no laws in place when the testing was issued. I do expect all players to own up and confess to their use and admit they were wrong. I can understand their desire to take their body and their game to the next level. Athletes are competitive and when your competition is using performance enhancing supplements, with very limited consequences at the time, why wouldn’t you want to “level the playing field”?

MLB Baseball has suffered a massive hit once again and I blame no one other than the greedy executives who turned their back on the problem long ago because of the affects it had on their wallets. There is no possible way executive or coaches didn’t know about the use of steroids. When players like McGwire and Sosa battled for the home run title in ‘98 or when Bonds was chasing 755. MLB was revived by these god like numbers put up by god like humans. We all know MLB will never take enough responsibility and we sure know certain players won’t take responsibility.

The fact is MLB as we know it is one big asterisk. Years down the road when the steroid era comes to an end, this generation of baseball will always be revisited when players such as Alex Rodriguez come up for Hall of Fame balloting. This makes you really appreciate players like Ted Williams, Willy Mays, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio to name a select few. Players that were incredible baseball players and athletes that never used any steroids or even supplements for that fact. Players like Ted Williams who lost five years of his career to the military and still hit 521 HR, 1,839 RBI, .344 AVG in 19 years. This is what MLB use to be in my father’s generation of baseball and there is no way to get a grasp on what is real and what is fake in this generation of baseball. Is Major League Baseball really “America’s Pastime”?

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Tags: Alex Rodriguez, America's Pastime, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, MLB, Steroids

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under MLB Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “America’s Pastime?”

Bernie Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 11:57 am
America’s Pastime no more. It is becoming evident that more Americans prefer football over baseball with all of these steroid allegations. It may take some time but eventually football will be our #1 sport and you’ll see more and more foreign players coming to the majors and will rival soccer in other countries.

America’s Pastime?

One Response to “America’s Pastime?”

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