I am about to lose my last safe refuge in this burned out, tear-everyone-down culture that we live in. Long ago I lost interest in what is commonly called the news in our day. The problem is that it is usually not the news at all -- it is merely the latest tabloid-hyped rumors and innuendo available, or it is the well-shaped web of political spin and carefully slanted talking points.
Such manipulated gruel is passed off as fact and truth, but is mostly well-dressed lies, only half-truths at best. Character assissination has become spectator sport, and watching it only leads to one's own character being damaged and abused by the words and images that we allow to invade us.
For me, sports has been the last bastion of respite from the personal destruction wars that decimate our cultural landscape in politics and government and even seemingly private matters. But now sports is being reported by young men and women who wish to climb their career mountains on the bodies of those they have destroyed. Sports reporting has increasingly become tabloid journalism in the worst way. So just turn on the television or read the paper to see who is being torn down today. It is all so sad.
What is remarkable is that these so called pursuers of the "truth", will blur everything in the name of ratings. They blatantly muckrake for ratings, and yet on the same show that they pontificate about possible use of performance enhancing drugs, they present a professional wrestler, the so-called WWF champion, as an "athlete." Note to ESPN: professional wrestlers are entertainers, not athletes! And, by the way, a professional hot dog eater is not an athlete either! Give me a break!
Day after day we hear of the steroid investigations in baseball and the alleged doping scandals in track and field and in cycling. No sooner do we celebrate a fabled win in the Tour de France by American Floyd Landis, than we hear that he is under suspicion for high testerone levels. And seven time champion Lance Armstrong continues to be haunted by allegations of drug use, though he never ever tested positive.
Such is also true one of my heroes, legendary slugger Mark McGwire, who hit 583 home runs, and set the single season record of 70 in 1998, which is still the record for a right handed hitter. McGwire never tested positive, because there was no test, yet writers, so sanctimonius on this issue, seem to wish to punish him without hard evidence for a crime that was not even on the baseball books. But since McGwire comes onto the Hall of Fame ballot next year, we are sure to hear about it each week until the vote, and for the next 15 years until his eligibility is over. The same will be true of Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmiero and Barry Bonds, all great players and worthy of election to the Hall of Fame.
Now I am not defending taking substances that destroy one's body or are against the law or against the rules of a sport. But we are on an ever changing landscape when it comes to performance enhancers in sport, and what I am against is a rush to judgment and the subsequent judging of people from the past by the standards of today. The self-appointed pundits of our culture have been doing too much of that instantaneous judge and jury stuff in recent years, making accusations seem like unfettered truth, even though much of the allegations are largley undocumented and colored in the most murky shades of gray. And the judgments being rushed to in professional baseball are on particularly shaky ground.
Even if the allegations are true about these legendary baseball players (Palmeiro is the only one who tested positive and it was at the very end of his amazing career), who is to say that these fellows were the only ones who took steroids or some other drug during the time of their careers? (McGwire admitted taking the over the over the counter GNC-sold drug called androstenedione, which was legal at the time). Yes, the drug we know he used was LEGAL!
Some criticize McGwire for not being more forthcoming before the congressional committee investigating steroids. I think he was the only one who was not grandstanding on that day. He was perhaps the most honest person recorded on videotape. Everyone else had an agenda, especially the pontificating congressmen. The fact that the very private McGwire would be nervous at such a circus should be no surprise. The fact that he is an honorable team mate who did not wish to throw other players under the scandal train was actually admirable. He knew they had families and real lives and that digging up the past was pointless. We now know steroids are bad. Test for and eliminate them! Case closed. Stop the vultures from picking living men's bones.
But since only SIX players were called, isn't judging him by his performance on capitol hill a bit unfair. How would the hundreds of other players that McGwire played with (and against) have answered the same queries? If Jose Canseco, who is the main accuser of McGwire, is such a beacon of truth, then how do you handle his assertion, under oath, that steroids were "as acceptable in the '80s and mid-to-late '90s as a cup of coffee." Aren't there others who should be asked questions by congress? Or should baseball be treated like football and just say that a testing policy is now in place and that the past is the past. The NFL approach seems far more sane to me.
Think about it. Could there not have been others who took them? And what is the measure -- is a single use enough to disqualify a great career? What is the measure, O great baseball writers, who seemingly never make mistakes? You seem to know so much about every little thing in life? But you seem blind to compassion and forgiveness and giving someone the benefit of the doubt, and about taking a look at the good in a person's life, along with the percieved bad things.
Perhaps someone who was coming back from injury or who wanted to keep playing everyday took them. (Which is the main thing steroids do, they help you recover -- they do not help you hit a baseball!) What if even the great Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken or Roger Clemons had some steroid treatment early in thier careers? Do you throw them under the bus, too? How far do you go? How deep are you going to investigate every player of the last 30 years? What is your measure of truth in testimony? Do you take the word of celebrity seekers and known criminals as gospel?
In a game that has known its fair share of cheaters, from spitballers to ball scuffers (some in the Hall of Fame), from bat corkers to spike sharpeners (some in the Hall of Fame), the current sanctimoniousness of writers and some ill-informed fans is disheartening. Think of the simple change in diet and vitamins (which has produced much larger players over the last 60 years), and the changes in ball parks and their sizes, and the rules changes like raising and lowering the pitcher's mound, and possible tightening of ball seams (the so-called rabbit ball), and you can see how records have been manipulated.
No one can say that the short right field in Yankee stadium did not help Ruth and Maris. No one can say that the Atlanta launching pad that Hank Aaron played in did not give him an advantage. Yet no one questions those records. If you throw out the records of McGwire and Sosa and Bonds, how about all the records their play affected. Do you erase their at bats and runs scored, too? How far do you go in a team game where the games have been over and done for years?
I had a friend who took steroids in the seventies to play football -- he gained 60 pounds of muscle. But he was not a very good football player. Steroids made him bigger, but not a better athlete.
I feel sorry for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. They saved baseball in 1998, with their mythic pursuit of the home run record. What a remarkable summer that was. But now they have been cast on the garbage heap of time by a consumer culture that has lost its own heart and compassion. I pray they can stand up to the incessant pressure of the media lynch mob. I pray they know Jesus Christ and that they seek His help and strength from the Scriptures. It seems as if not one of the mob bent on destroying them has ever read John chapter eight.
It is no longer innocent until proven guilty. If the press decides you are guilty, that is all that is needed. Childhood memories of recent children are being crushed and discarded, and no one seems to care. The same could have been done to those who idolized Cobb and Ruth, who had multiple skeletons in thier closets, but that injustice was not done to those children, and I am glad.
So I no longer have sports as a cultural refuge. I guess I will just have to read the Bible more often. Of course, the self-appointed truth police may want to drug test the relics of the saints. Such is the way things seem to be going.
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