Baseball is perhaps the single greatest human invention ““
after duct tape and cheese.
There is certainly no other professional sport designed with
such perfection that there has been no major change in the rules of
the game since its advent (though those of you who are still
hopelessly put out by the designated hitter might not agree with
that statement).
It is in large part because of this perfection that many fans
and even more sports writers are horribly offended by the taint of
steroids on the honor of our virgin game.
Well, I’ll tell you two things. One, our game of baseball
is not the pure little pixie the righteous would have her be, but
actually more in line with a worldly vagabond (see spitballs,
scuffing, corked bats, Vaseline and pine tar more than 18 inches
from the tip of the handle of the bat).
And two, it doesn’t much matter anyway whether players
were using steroids, or ingesting nothing but clean air and
God’s wisdom, because the marginal effects of steroids on
offense are not even the equivalent of the clang of aluminum bats
on the college game because pitchers are right with the hitters in
ingesting as many suspicious chemicals as possible. And most
importantly, the records of the game are matters of lore more than
they are of fact.
Before fully explaining that statement, it becomes necessary to
discuss the nature of baseball itself. Professional baseball
players might not be the brightest in professional sports, but
their fans are some of the smartest. They have to be. The
statistics involved with paying attention to baseball are
convoluted and, at the same time, crucial to understanding the
nooks and crannies of the game.
Because of this reliance on statistics, baseball fans not only
sound like super-nerds, they are also fiercely protective of the
records of the game. And there is none more seemingly hallowed than
the single-season home run record.
Which is where steroids come in.
Barry Bonds holds the single-season home run record, and
that’s fine. Mark McGwire, also a former holder of the Pac-10
single-season home run record while attending USC, had it before
Bonds, and that’s great. Roger Maris held it before McGwire,
and that’s just super.
But if you ask anyone about home runs and baseball, even the
most ignorant, there’s one name you’ll hear the most:
Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth, face of baseball. Fat guy who hit a lot of home runs.
Who cares that he only hit 60 in a season, when Bonds hit 73? Bonds
could have hit 90, but that doesn’t change the fact that Babe
Ruth will forever be a legend because he did it a long time ago and
people love nostalgia.
That there was no chance he hit those home runs with chemical
help isn’t why people like him.
Does anyone really believe that Bonds will be looked at the same
way in 80 years? Of course not. Baseball fans will not allow it.
They’ll tell their kids about the big guy who wasn’t
naturally big and how he hit long home runs that should have fallen
a lot shorter.
Or they won’t say anything about him at all. Because fans
are the keepers of the game. They’re the ones who determine
which records are more important and which names are the ones to
remember.
If the innocence of baseball players is fought in the court of
public opinion, then it doesn’t matter who was on steroids
and who continues to deny it (see Raphael Palmeiro). Fans will
decide on their own, with little care for the facts or even the
drug test results.
For that reason, it won’t matter if Barry Bonds’
records stands. In another 80 years, he’ll still be reviled
and the record won’t be respected.
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu.