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As may be noted by those following the Sports Pages, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds has recently broken Major League Baseball's career record for Home Runs. This is accompanied with a great deal of consternation as Mr. Bonds in all likelihood accomplished this feat due to rather heavy usage of performance enhancing drugs.
Namely, steroids and some variation of Human Growth Hormone. Coupled with the rampant doping scandals in the Tour De France, it lays bare something we don't always like to think about when following sports:
It is not always purity and light, and uplifting stories. Ridiculously competetive people - and the people most likely to excel at the highest level are generally going to be such - will often engage in morally dubious behavior to pursue victory and accolades. Sometimes, villains win.
Barry Bonds is a cheater. He is also a Giant Douche. He is a remarkably disagreeable person, quite possibly a narcissist with a huge chip on his shoulder, a lousy husband, and not a nice teammate.
He is also among the greatest baseball players who ever lived. During his athletic prime, Bonds was clearly the best all around baseball player of his generation. Judged on the drug free portion of his career alone (1986-1998) Bonds was rated as the 16th greatest player in History. On the drugs... by most measures, between 2000-2004, Barry Lamarr Bonds was the most dominant player ever to play the game. More dominant relative to his league than even Babe Ruth's greatest seasons. (1920-1)
Bonds is not the first or only player to cheat. I'll bet at least 50 of his homeruns came off of pitchers who juiced. (Like #755, Clay Hensely)
Caught up in all of the rush to discuss how tainted Bonds' record is (and it is tainted) we tend to neglect that the game has not been pure for a long time. Babe Ruth spent the prime of his career in a segregated leage. His drug of choice, booze, was illegal during his era though one would be hard pressed to see how that might have enhanced his performance.
Almost every single star player of the 1950s - 1970s played with amphetamines, which certainly helped players out on day games following night games. Mickey Mantle regularly used amphetamines to play through his hangovers. In 1970, all-star pitcher Dock Ellis took the mound high on LSD and amphetamines and threw an ho-hitter. Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie Stargell were documented not only using amphetamines but distributing them to teammates. And they took the amphetamines because they believed they would enhance performance.
Steroids weren't common in baseball until the late 1980s - but not because morality suddenly broke down. It used to be, players were not encouraged to lift weights, as bulk was deemed counterproductive relative to lean, fast twitch physiques. As that perception changed, the drug use picked up.
And somewhere along the line, baseball's greatest player, granted a sullen, ornery dick of a man, made a faustian bargain and leapt for immortality. Such is the nature of the beast.
I don't know that I like it. I certainly don't like the idea of players with perfectly fine vision getting laser surgery to get better than great eyesight. But it happens. Am I saying we should just give up - considering there will always be cheaters and the best drug producers will always be ahead of the testers.
I really don't know. But, to me, Barry Bonds isn't what's wrong with Sports Today or Society Today. He's just the most famous symptom.
Namely, steroids and some variation of Human Growth Hormone. Coupled with the rampant doping scandals in the Tour De France, it lays bare something we don't always like to think about when following sports:
It is not always purity and light, and uplifting stories. Ridiculously competetive people - and the people most likely to excel at the highest level are generally going to be such - will often engage in morally dubious behavior to pursue victory and accolades. Sometimes, villains win.
Barry Bonds is a cheater. He is also a Giant Douche. He is a remarkably disagreeable person, quite possibly a narcissist with a huge chip on his shoulder, a lousy husband, and not a nice teammate.
He is also among the greatest baseball players who ever lived. During his athletic prime, Bonds was clearly the best all around baseball player of his generation. Judged on the drug free portion of his career alone (1986-1998) Bonds was rated as the 16th greatest player in History. On the drugs... by most measures, between 2000-2004, Barry Lamarr Bonds was the most dominant player ever to play the game. More dominant relative to his league than even Babe Ruth's greatest seasons. (1920-1)
Bonds is not the first or only player to cheat. I'll bet at least 50 of his homeruns came off of pitchers who juiced. (Like #755, Clay Hensely)
Caught up in all of the rush to discuss how tainted Bonds' record is (and it is tainted) we tend to neglect that the game has not been pure for a long time. Babe Ruth spent the prime of his career in a segregated leage. His drug of choice, booze, was illegal during his era though one would be hard pressed to see how that might have enhanced his performance.
Almost every single star player of the 1950s - 1970s played with amphetamines, which certainly helped players out on day games following night games. Mickey Mantle regularly used amphetamines to play through his hangovers. In 1970, all-star pitcher Dock Ellis took the mound high on LSD and amphetamines and threw an ho-hitter. Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie Stargell were documented not only using amphetamines but distributing them to teammates. And they took the amphetamines because they believed they would enhance performance.
Steroids weren't common in baseball until the late 1980s - but not because morality suddenly broke down. It used to be, players were not encouraged to lift weights, as bulk was deemed counterproductive relative to lean, fast twitch physiques. As that perception changed, the drug use picked up.
And somewhere along the line, baseball's greatest player, granted a sullen, ornery dick of a man, made a faustian bargain and leapt for immortality. Such is the nature of the beast.
I don't know that I like it. I certainly don't like the idea of players with perfectly fine vision getting laser surgery to get better than great eyesight. But it happens. Am I saying we should just give up - considering there will always be cheaters and the best drug producers will always be ahead of the testers.
I really don't know. But, to me, Barry Bonds isn't what's wrong with Sports Today or Society Today. He's just the most famous symptom.
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Honestly I'd be fine with an Achilles' Choice style sports world. :)
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In the 19th century professional cyclists used cocaine and ether-coated sugar cubes to improve performance, reduce pain and delay fatigue. In the 1904 Olympics, the gold medal marathoner took brandy mixed with strychnine to help him win.
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When I see pictures of Roger Maris the year he hit 61 homers and pictures of him other years he played, and knowing the manner in which his health deteriorated, I really suspect, that he too took steroids for few years. Perhaps Mantle as well, although the results were less dramatic. Maris was certainly off them by the time he was helping the Cardinals win pennants as a wiry mostly defense outfielder.
I have to wonder if Babe Ruth's massive body wasn't over-producing steroids naturally. If he hadn't eaten like a hog all the time, he'd have been quite a physical specimen. I don't think Babe cheated, and he wasted a lot of the natural advantage he had over the rest of the players, just like Mantle would decades later.
Sports isn't about being fair. If it was they'd have to handicap the better natural athletes. But at least for the rest of us, they need to maintain the illusion that it was good fortune and hard work that got the athletes where they are, not a mix of chemicals that could have turned Shakira into a star linebacker.
The best thing about Bonds breaking the record is that I don't care about the silly record anymore. Bonds is a jerk. Pete Rose is jerk. Ted Williams was a jerk. Ty Cobb was a jerk. Not all athletes have to be jerks; Stan Musial, Ernie Banks and Willy Mays for instance. The jerks I named, all could have been fine ball players without being jerks, but I doubt any of them would have been as good as they turned out.
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And he was. Most of our movies of the Babe show him late in his career. In his prime, Ruth was a remarkably superior athlete. He was big strong and fast. The fat, plodding images we see are of the Babe in his 30s.
Not all athletes have to be jerks
Certainly not. And my generation of fan grew up with Ripken and Gwynn, in addition to guys like Sheffield and Bonds. it's nice mythmaking to have professional success dovetail with character, but not a prerequisite.
But hey, at least I'm not fed a line. I'll never be disillusioned by Barry. Unlike, say, anyone who grew up with the Media Myth surrounding Joe DiMaggio and then actually met the man.
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Babe Ruth, for example, could actually dictate where the outfield wall was built
Players have historically had some influence in decisions about where the outfield fences are set, but then you have to keep them in the same place for every batter for the entire season. And most analysis indicates that the outfield configuration of Yankee Stadium during his career took away far more homeruns than he got back from the short rightfield porch.