I wasn't born yesterday, so the revelation that Bonds had testified before a grand jury last year that the had used preperations from BALCO didn't suprise me. Anyone who has watched Bonds career closely had to wonder about his bulking up the way he did. And after the revelations that his personal trainer had been indicted for peddling an "undetectable" steroid, pretty much anyone not completely blinded by fandom would have to have had something of a clue that Barry Bonds' performance was partly due to performance enhancing drugs.
No, I wasn't suprised, but the leaking of grand jury testimony did set of a discussion on ejacks that provoked me to write about my opinions of Barry Bonds.
The problem for me, as a baseball fan, is that I don't know how good Barry Bonds actually is. I have a picture I took at Pac Bell park in 2001 of Barry hitting number 73 over the right field fence on the last day of the season. It's not a very good picture, (my picture of his 69th is better) but that's not the point. The point is, what should I put on that picture's title? The choices are "world record" or "drug induced performance peak." The difference between those two is not what you might think.
To me, the fact that steroids enhance performance is not the issue. It's the fact that steroid use is an unacknowledged part of the game. It thus gets applied unevenly, if not unfairly. The athlete who stays "clean" out of pride, morals, fear for health, stupidity or ignorance is at a unspecified disadvantage with respect to those that lack those scruples. And as a fan, I can't tell the difference. I just see Bonds hitting his 73rd home run, and I'm left to wonder. And as a lifelong baseball fan, I find myself getting pissed off at Barry Bonds.
What can be said in his defense? The only case one can make on the issue of "did he, or didn't he?" is becoming untenable, if we are to believe this leaked grand jury testimony. The more general case that Barry Bonds would be an outstanding player with or without steroids is easier - he clearly is a generational stand out baseball player. The fact that major league pitching staffs keep handing him walks in a season in which steroid use is probably not an issue is a testament to that. And it's not because of a hangover of his earlier, possibly drug-tainted reputation. If they don't walk him, he hits the fucking ball out of the park, period.
But comparing him to greats of prior generations is more problematic than such comparisons usually are. Allowing for differences in season length, ball and bat construction, even general nutrition have been fodder for stat-mad baseball fans at least since I've been aware of the game. Questions of whether Henry Aaron's career home run record is comparable to Ruth's can never be truly settled, but they make for many an entertaining (or not according to taste) debate among baseball cognoscenti.
Adding steroids to the mix increases the complexity of the argument in at least two ways. First, there's the "did he, or didn't he" question. Although that may be settled to my satisfaction soon, it will always be grist for the mill when debating Bond's legacy. Secondly, if you grant that he did use steroids, exactly how much did they help? In terms of the single season HR record, how many round-trippers are attributable to steroids? Steroid effects are not cut and dried. They depend on the huge complexity of the individual user's system, purity and dose and training regime. This factor completely muddies Bond's achievement, in my view.
There are two ways out of this mess that I can see. Either Bonds comes back and knocks close to 73 home runs over the fence in a season in which there is no question that he is using steroids, or baseball legitimizes and allows the use of steroids by any player. Both scenarios are unlikely, but I'd prefer the former, which would not only be the most satisfying for a fan of Barry Bonds, but would be the quickest way to resolve the conundrum. In the latter case, we'd have to wait for many years to see what the overall effect steroids would have on the game before placing Barry Bond's accomplishments in a fair context.
But it's far more likely that we will not see either outcome. Baseball will put teeth into the ban on anabolic steroids and a testing requirement will make it past the player's union. Performance across baseball will taper off somewhat as people stop using the drug. If that goes on long enough, we may be able to say something about Bond's performance by measuring the rise and fall of certain player stats, and matching them to the onset and withdrawal of steroid use. But the detection arms race is likely to continue, as more and more exotic performance enhancing therapies, including those with a genetic basis, start making their appearance. So we are unlikely to see that helpful dip in performance before it is swamped out by some other innovation.
In the end, I guess my anger at Bonds is irrational. Fans demand performance. The system devised to deliver that performance puts pressure on athletes to take risks with steroids, HGH and insulin, among many other extraordinary and dangerous means. But I want my sport to be pure, because I want my enjoyment of it to be pure. But no purity is possible in the purely American sport, alas. Far better to put everyone on an equal footing by allowing performance enhancement with a requirement that such use be public knowledge. Even that is no guarantee that everyonne will compete on an equal footing, I realize, but at least it would be a start.
Posted by hbo at December 5, 2004 06:18 PM
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