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Calling out the creatures: that's all, folks: hey, I'm talking like a cartoon character, but I can't hit like one

Sporting News, The, Dec 20, 2004 by Dave Kindred

For the fun of it, let's say Barry Bonds is as careful about what goes into his body as is that raging genius of nutritional science, Bill Romanowski. Let's say Barry didn't throw giant steroid pills into the air and catch 'em in his mouth, like popcorn. Flaxseed oil, a sip. Ointment, a dab. But steroids, never.

Still, that body. That's a steroid body. How'd that happen? Well. Let's say ... oh, let's say ... yeah, this is it ... let's say a gang of mad pharmacists broke into Barry's house one day in January 2000. They bound him hand and foot. One poured the clear down Barry's throat while the other rubbed the cream on his earlobes. Let's say they did it every day for five years, only Barry never knew what they were doing.

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Wait. No one would buy that.

Let's try this. It was the devilish work of Barry's personal trainer, Mephistopheles Anderson. The trainer came to him on one of those misty, foggy nights when demons are afoot. He hissed into Barry's ear, "Hey, big boy, want to make a deal?"

By now, of course, we all know Barry's real story. The trainer said take a sip of this, and he did. The trainer said rub this on, and he did. Only later, Barry said, did he learn the sips and rubs were steroids.

What, he thinks we all fell off the turnip truck yesterday?

Anyway, his body became a cartoon character's, no matter how it happened. His future and the game's future are mucked up. On steroids, he wins his seventh MVP. On steroids, he hits the 73 home runs. On steroids, he will pass Hank Aaron at a high rate of speed en route to Sadaharu Oh.

Now, what does Major League Baseball do about it?

If baseball were to follow the Olympic example, Barry Bonds would be vaporized, dematerialized and told to get lost. Those people are merciless. If you're found in violation of any of a zillion drug rules, they take back your medals, empty your bank account of ill-gotten gains and erase you from record books. You not only no longer exist, you never existed. Nice to have never met you, Marion Jones.

Imagine the 2025 SPORTING NEWS baseball record book: "Most home runs, career: He Who Cannot Be Named."

But baseball has to listen to its lawyers. It will do nothing with Bonds now, partly because only in the last two years have there been anti-steroid rules, mostly because a full and fair judgment can't be made until the BALCO case is adjudicated, whenever that blessed day arrives.

So nothing will be done. Exactly what baseball should do. Nothing. Not a thing. No breathless countdown to home run 715. No corporate sponsorship of 756. Nada.

Let him twist in the wind.

Disappear him.

There is a Hall of Fame ballot on my desk. If it listed Bonds as a candidate, I would not vote for him. He has been the beneficiary of drug use that is considered unethical in virtually all sports; I say that because he has not denied reports of grand jury testimony in which he admits use of steroids, albeit with the incredible caveat that he didn't know.

Such a man forfeits honor.

Sadly, we may say that about a generation of players, for Bonds is not the only man who came to work carrying a new body--and those creatures didn't appear only in the 21st century.

So I don't want asterisks applied to these creatures' records. There were no asterisks on Babe Ruth's 60 in 1927, although the baseballs in play then were different from the baseballs of a decade earlier. The intelligent fan understands that, just as the intelligent fan will know that in the late 20th century and early 21st there were thieves stealing honor from Musial, Mantle, Mays, and, especially, Roger Marls, who did his 61 with an athlete's body, not a chemist's.

Small wonder, then, that the MLB Players Association has bent to public opinion and agreed to negotiate a more stringent drug-testing program. When the game becomes a fraud, everyone loses. The game as played by human beings did well and will do well. The cartoon guys can go home now.

Oh, one thing more. There's a consistent refrain that the chemists can't help you hit a baseball thrown 95 mph.

Wrong. First, strength helps in any game. As for human growth hormone, which is as yet undetectable by test, the cartoon people can tell you an interesting thing about the drug that delivers most of the traditional benefits of steroids.

It also improves eyesight.

Calling out the creatures: that's all, folks: hey, I'm talking like a cartoon character, but I can't hit like one

Sporting News, The, Dec 20, 2004 by Dave Kindred

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