View From Lodi, CA: Baseball On Steroids


I am always reluctant to write
columns that conclude that things were better back in
1970…or 1960…or 1950.

For one thing, going back three or
more decades takes a significant percentage of readers
outside of their personal frame of reference.

And many readers comment that the
time has come to move on by replacing old favorites like

Humphrey Bogart
,

Ingrid Bergman
and

Willie Nelson
with new stars like

Leonard DiCaprio
, Nicole Kidman and Tim McGraw.

But when the

subject rolls around to baseball,
I`m sorry. The
only kind of column I can write is the one that
concludes, “Things were better back then…”

What brings baseball to mind in the
middle of December is, of course, the sad sagas of Jason
Giambi, Barry Bonds and assorted others like Mark
McGuire and Sammy Sosa who have taken
performance-enhancing steroids.

Those players have introduced a new
and ugly period in baseball. Now we can add to the

Deadball Era and the Liveball Era
is the

Pharmaceutical Era
.

My lifelong fascination with
baseball

ended
ten years ago with the second Major League
Baseball strike.

And prior to my official
disengagement with baseball, I had not been to a game
for another five years.

Disgusted with the astronomical
salaries paid to position players who cannot lay down a
bunt and starting pitchers who can`t finish six innings,
I simply stopped paying attention to baseball.

For a kid who grew up reading the
Sporting News—when it proudly advertised that it
covered only baseball all 52 weeks of the year—and who
followed the collective fates of his

hometown Hollywood Stars
, their parent club, the
Pittsburgh Pirates and his Dad`s hometown New York
Yankees, giving up baseball was tough—at first.

After a while, though, I stopped
noticing. And when I tuned in—more out of curiosity than
anything else— to this year`s Boston Red Sox-St. Louis
Cardinals World Series, I could not believe how boring
it was.

Whatever the record for most ground
balls hit to the shortstop in a single series had been,
it now belongs to the St. Louis Cardinals.

But while I would describe myself
as indifferent to baseball, I most definitely do not
want to see pumped up players go down in the record
books for achievements reached while taking steroids.

The specific record I refer to is
Hammering Henry Aaron`s 755 career home runs. Aaron, 6`,
180 pounds, should not lose his standing as baseball`s
most prolific homerun hitter to Bonds who admitted—in
couched terms—that he took steroids.

A few evenings ago ESPN conducted a
fan survey about Bonds and his alleged steroid use. The
results: 85% didn`t believe Bonds` claim that he thought
he was taking flaxseed oil and not steroids.

How can an athlete like Bonds,
surrounded by San Francisco Giant and personal trainers
not know?

If I were Major League Baseball`s
Commissioner. I would:

  • Strip Jose Canceso, Ken Caminiti
    and Jason Giambi of their Most Valuable Player awards.
    Canceso used pills and needle injections during his
    baseball career that included a 1988 MVP crown.
    Caminiti, whose use of steroids shortened his life,
    and Giambi won their MVPs by cheating. Immediately
    name runners up Mike Greenwell (1988), Mike Piazza
    (1996) and Frank Thomas (2000)  

  • Delete the 1998 home run totals,
    70 and 66 respectively, of

    Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa.
    McGuire`s hit his
    homers after taking anabolic steroids. Sosa, who used
    a

    corked bat
    for much of the year, refused to deny
    that he took steroids.

To demonstrate the difference
between baseball when I was young and baseball today,
let me give you an example from the 1950s New York
Yankees.

Manager Casey Stengel platooned his
two exceptional left fielders, Gene Woodling and

Hank Bauer.

Stengel considered the left-hand
hitting Woodling the best defensive outfielder in the
American League. And he admired the right-handed Bauer
for his foot speed, bat control and tenacity.

In 1957, the Yankees trailed 3
games to 2 against the Milwaukee Braves. In the seventh
inning of game six, Bauer homered to put the Yankees up
one run, 3-2.

As Bauer rounded the bases, he
didn`t pump his fists or point his fingers into the air.
Bauer kept his head down as he ran briskly toward home
plate. And when he reached the dugout, his teammates
paid no attention to him.

There were no high fives and no
chest banging. Bauer simply sat down at the end of the
bench.

The reason that Bauer and his
fellow Yankees showed no emotion is because the game was
far from over. Two innings remained in a one-run
game….plenty of time for the Braves to pull it out.

And even though the Yankees won
that game, the seventh game still loomed.

In short, Bauer knew that baseball
is a team sport. And the time to celebrate was when the
World Series ended and the Yankees won.

Bauer played baseball the way it
should be played—hard and clean.

That`s the way I chose to remember
baseball.

Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the


Lodi News-Sentinel
.