What is cheating? In the context of baseball and performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), where is the line drawn? Before, during or after the League banned PEDs?
Technically (and logically speaking), if a substance wasn't banned, then a baseball player wasn't cheating if he chose to use it. The Major League rules didn't say anything about steroids or other PEDs yet, so according to the rules players could juice up all they wanted. It's not a far stretch to say the MLB turned a blind eye to it all while watching on-field offense grow, and with it the popularity of professional baseball across North America. We'll talk a little more about the times and what it's possibly led to, after we've established some perspective on cheating.
As we looked at the different types of fan (gamer, teamer, leaguer) in the first part of this series, the teamer and leaguer in me completely agrees with the assessment of banned substances and cheating above. As members of the Major Leagues and following their rules, players who bulked up with a little help didn't do anything wrong. (I will qualify that by saying they probably did some damage to their personal health, but we're talking about them in the context as baseball players in the MLB for the moment.) Okay, that's cut and dry. Not surprisingly, I've written about some of this before, particularly when Barry Bonds was getting close to breaking the homerun record. Coming from the perspective of a leaguer, who wouldn't want to watch in awe and celebrate when an incredible feat like that happens? True, I'm glad the steroid stuff was out in the open before, but as long as it came out sometime. Looking back at some of the great stories and feats in baseball history, we really have no way of knowing what those guys might have been using to get ahead.
Let's break it down a little. There are at any given time 750 men playing at the major league level. That number can go as high as 1200 when September 1st rolls around and rosters expand. It's not hard to understand the competition inherent in trying to crack one of the 30 major league rosters (and staying there.) (Read The Bullpen Gospels if you want some more understanding.) It's also not hard to understand the determination of some players to get every single opportunity to succeed, even if it's not the wisest choice. Hindsight's 20/20, and there will always be people who try to skirt the rules (and not just in baseball).
The truth is taking any kind of PED can't make you a baseball player. They're performance enhancing by nature, not performance creating. They can't make you have consistent mechanics, a good batter's eye or proper fielding basics. What they can do, from my understanding, is produce more strength and help lessen time spent recovering from injury (among some other not so nice side-effects [i.e.: backnee and temper flares, etc.]). With more and more pressure put on players to produce big numbers in the last 20 years-ish and those numbers being rewarded with huge-sometimes-bordering-on-ridiculous-no-salary-cap contracts, why wouldn't a guy try to improve his numbers by juicing up? Or, why wouldn't he try to lessen the time it takes him to come back from injury, so some other player doesn't get a shot to take his place on the roster?
All in all, the connection between competition to crack into/succeed in the majors, pressure to produce great numbers, growing popularity, MLB's (ignorant or ignored) blind-spot of PEDs and the financial boom in baseball in the late '90s can be logically tracked.
But here's where it gets dicey. Baseball isn't just logic or reason. It's guts and emotion, too. More often than not, a fan's devotion to their team or given sport is quite illogical. And the gamer in me, well, she can't help but feel a little hurt and betrayed by PEDs in pro baseball and everything that has ensued because of them.
I'll be the first to admit that the gamer in me is a little…naïve, and idealistic. Truth be told, that part of me feels like a little girl balancing on her toes, raring to get to the baseball diamond (be it real, on TV or imaginary). This baseball-loving little girl me can never really understand how anyone who plays any kind of baseball could ever want to sully the game of baseball by using steroids or anything else. She's constantly in awe of having baseball in her life; being able to watch it, play it, learn about it; love it. It's hard to understand that anyone else could feel differently about it, especially if it's what they did for a living. Because in her mind (and mine), more than anything it matters that the game was played to the best of everyone's natural abilities. In the end, baseball doesn't care if you have the most homeruns or the fastest fastball. All that matters is that you picked up the ball and gave it your all. (Apologies for the rhyme.) You can say or think what you will about the gamer in me, but I think she can be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her outlook on baseball.
The adult in me understands that playing professional baseball is at its core a job, while still acknowledging that it's a lot more than that, too, to those whose profession it is. Not everyone who plays pro ball looks at it wide-eyed and bushy tailed. Not all players count their lucky stars because they get to play baseball for a living, with total disregard to the other benefits of the gig. Some players star count because of the by-products playing pro ball has brought them (i.e. ensured financial safety and stability for them and their families, etc.) Some wanted to be famous, others might've just gotten lucky. The point is, adult me accepts that not necessarily every pro baseball player (or baseball fan) feels the same way I do about baseball. Little girl me, a.k.a. gamer me, still hasn't quite grasped all that yet.
There's something else in all this that worries all three types of fan in me. It has more to do with the effect of the offensive boom and how it's affected the appreciation and expectation of other fans of my generation. I won't get into this too far, but I'm sometimes a little scared that fans over the last 20 years have been bred to expect high scoring routings and tickertape length homeruns all the time. This past season was amazing for pitcher accomplishments, but I worry that appreciation for small ball, pitcher duels and 1-nothing games is only currently a very small part of baseball appreciation as a whole. Who knows…maybe the time of the pitcher is coming once more and fans will be bred to appreciate that part of the game again, along with their offensive output love. I guess only time will tell.
JaysGirl5
