An interesting question:
Using steroids is cheating according to baseball purists and that means Barry Bonds should be anathema to all right thinking fans.
OK. Then why is notorious spitballer Gaylord Perry in the Hall of Fame?
If, in the five years after his retirement, Barry Bonds can sit down and tell tales of his cheating — how it happened, what he was doing, how it helped, why he was doing it — then I might be able to find it in my heart to forgive him and MLB. NB: I still haven’t found it in my heart to forgive Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and MLB for transgressions in that glorious year when we thought it was a clean race.
Here’s the difference, to my mind…Gaylord Perry doctored the ball, not himself. There was a very clear & distinct rule against it, and Perry always exposed himself to being caught out and expelled from any game wherein he did, in fact, break the rule. It was very easy to determine if Gaylord was cheating, as well — here’s a big wad of Vaseline on the brim of his hat, so hit the showers, bud. Perry could always choose not to cheat, too. Yet, his opponents couldn’t stop thinking that he was cheating anyway, thus getting into their kitchens and distracting them from their primary mission of hitting the ball. Perry even went so far as to create an entirely new pitch, the puffball, using the rosin bag, and that pitch was immediately banned.
With steroids, though, once you stick a needle in yourself and persist in the regimen, you can’t stop from day to day, like Gaylord Perry could. Since there is no way to catch a steroid cheat between the lines on game day, there’s no way to penalize the guy stacking the deck.
Let’s also acknowledge that the greaseball (and the corked bat, the traditional hitters’ cheat) has practically zero external social cost, and exists wholly within the game itself. Steroids are a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
Ultimately, though, I could live the ‘roided up stats, if there were clearly delineated rules either a) against it or b) for it, and there was a way for a) the umps to stop it, or b) me to know it. Science is science, and so we get cooler uniforms, air-conditioned dugouts (or entire ballparks), energy drinks, LASIK eyeballs, specialized weight training, on and on and on. We can’t stop it, and it would be wrong to. But MLB under Beelzebud has put the blinders on and refuses to acknowledge, much less a) forbid or b) endorse steroids. That’s where the anathema comes from. It doesn’t help that Barry Bonds is a top-drawer, USDA-Prime jackass who can’t take the heat and expects adoration and hosannas from me and millions more for his mastery of the needle. I’ll pass, thanks.
