Rosie Ruiz. Danny Almonte. The East German Olympic team with its “vitamins.”
Manny Ramirez, welcome to this club of cheaters.
It’s a group, like the reputation of the Dos Equis man, that is expanding faster than the universe. Half the sport of cycling has been cast into the infamous shadow of cheating. Formula 1 racing can’t go a week without a formal protest of subterfuge. Football teams steal signals like they are intercepting Axis codes in World War II.
And then there are steroids. The ubiquitous performance enhancing drugs.
Ramirez was the latest high-profile star to join the League of Juicers after the former, future hall-of-famer reportedly tested positive for human chorionic gonadotropin, which is commonly taken by steroid users to restart testosterone production after a cycle.
Unlike so many in baseball’s drug-using fraternity, Ramirez not only tested positive, but he also did so after years of congressional hearings and ostensible efforts to clean up the sport; it’s fair to label him a cheater. It’s also crazy to assume he was natural, and we shouldn’t be surprised when other high-profile athletes are caught pushing the envelope.
(Although, “Manny Being Manny” might exempt Ramirez from any type of harsh judgment. After all, the man did live in a hotel for years in Boston and once wandered into the left field wall to relieve himself in the middle of an inning.)
As for the other infamous members of baseball’s PED club ““ Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and seemingly anyone else who set foot in the Bay Area; Arlington, Texas; or the Yankee’s clubhouse ““ those players all doped in a doped-up era.
Baseball didn’t even start testing for steroids until 2003. Steroids have technically beenon the banned policy list since 1991, but speed limits are technically still 55 MPH in most places. It doesn’t mean everyone in society is a criminal because we all violate the archaic rule.
Likewise, a huge percentage of baseball players used PEDs from 1991 to 2003, and it seems utterly absurd to call them cheaters.
First of all, there was little effort by the players to police themselves and institute testing because most of them were using.
The owners did nothing because they were benefiting from a lineup of super-human athletes that helped boost the sport’s revenues. It’s the same recipe that has pushed football ““ which not so coincidentally features freakishly, unnaturally large and fast athletes ““ to the pinnacle of popularity in the United States.
And the fans practiced extreme denial as home runs went higher and farther while the bats looked like toothpicks in the hands of the players.
Yet we call them cheaters? Just stop it.
The Home Run race in the summer of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa captivated the nation and resurrected baseball from a dark and gloomy period after the strike of 1994. Where would the sport be without that infusion of energy from the two sluggers, both of whom are widely accepted to be in the League of Juicers?
There may be a degree of shame in the aftermath of needles and syringes, but the individual players lived like heroes for years, and their bank accounts were juiced as well.
Apparently enough players were doing it, no one cared, the owners and fans were happy … and now they are retroactively labeled as cheaters? Will we demonize this era of prosperity in the NFL in years to come as well?
There are rule-breakers and then there are Cheaters. Let’s stop throwing around the C-word so much. It should be reserved for true chicanery, like using the subway to win a marathon.
If you think rule-breaking is cheating, let Taylor know at btaylor@media.ucla.edu.