Steroids – Would you?

I had just finished reading an excerpt from American Icon by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O’Keeffe and Christian Red, based on the rise and fall of Roger Clemens, and I got to thinking… If any of us If we Were we in the position that Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez were in, would we succumb to the temptations of performance-enhancing drugs (PED’s, ie steroids)? They were all at a crossroads within their respective careers when they reportedly started using PEDs.

Shortly thereafter I began to think about the temptations of baseball players on a whole different level than the guys I mentioned above. Kids who face many challenges that are different from the already established superstars in Major League Baseball. Kids fighting to be the next big thing and make it to the big leagues. I’m talking about Single A level baseball players, fresh out of high school or college and trying to work their way up the food chain within their organizations. What is the thought process of a kid facing these temptations as he rides one bus after another in the minor leagues and wonders when and if he will ever make it to the Show? Especially in those days when bullying was rampant in the major leagues.

“Clemens, Bonds, A-Rod: Why?”

Three superstars. Three Hall of Famers from the first automatic ballot. Three guys who just couldn’t accept those facts about themselves and needed more. Three guys who thought they were bulletproof and could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, with no repercussions. Were they the only three guys who were drinking juice? Of course not, but these three guys were the headliners. They were already the best at what they did for a living long before the reported use of steroids began. Why did they do it? Let’s review…..

Growing up in Boston at the time like me, Roger Clemens “couldn’t miss the TV” every time he took the mound. I remember trying to copy his winding and mannerisms (well, the best any 12-year-old could do!) when he was pitching in Little League Boston at the time. The Rocket was the man. Why would a future Hall of Famer like him suddenly decide to go so deep into his career? To prove his former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette wrong, that’s why. When Duquette decided against re-signing Clemens and signed with Toronto, Duquette told the media that the Rocket was down the hill and in decline at this point in his career. Clemens was furious on the inside at these comments and went out and dominated the league in his first year in Toronto. Then things started to fall apart. He started his next season very slowly and the team was losing. I needed an advantage. He needed to prove that Duquette was an idiot for the comments he’d made. This was the season that Brian McNamee first injected Clemens with a needle into his “butt,” as Rocket called it. He didn’t realize it then, but this was the beginning of the end. In the short term, he dominated again, but it became a pretty sad story in terms of what happened to his life and his legacy in the game. He could never get Duquette’s comments out of his head. He eats it. Especially when he began to realize after that good year that Duquette might have been right. He had to find a way to prove himself and every other skeptic wrong.

Barry Bonds had it all. The ultimate combination of power, speed and the ability to hit for average. The Hall of Fame was waiting. Why did he feel the need to resort to juice? Jealousy. It’s that easy. Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. were considered the best players in the game at the time. And then what happened? Well, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa passed. What was McGwire’s line in his cameo appearance on the TV show Friends after his record-breaking season? “Girls love the longball!”… Well, Bonds couldn’t bear to be thrown off the front page while McGwire and Sosa were playing and dominating baseball with their tremendous display of power that summer. Don’t worry Barry, you fixed all that. You went out and broke McGwire’s single-season home run record and you broke the great Hank Aaron’s all-time record. You are now the Homerun King. The girls like him a lot, don’t they, Barry?

Alex Rodriguez is hands down the best and most talented baseball player I have ever seen play. You just knew this kid was destined for the Hall of Fame after his first few years in the Majors. So what made A-Rod become A-Roid after being in the league for seven years and dominating? Fear to fail. A-Rod signed the largest free agent contract in professional sports history at the time, with the Texas Rangers. He was overwhelmed with fear that he would not live up to the money he was now being paid. Most people will say they can’t understand how someone as gifted and established as he was at the time, could be so insecure in his ability and so afraid of failure that he would resort to steroids. The fear of not living up to the expectations of that mega-contract took hold of him.
(since admitting to using from 2001 to 2003, there have been reports that he first tried steroids in high school)

So let’s recap… Desire to prove someone wrong, jealousy, fear and insecurity… all the human emotions we all feel at one point or another in the course of our lives. For a minute, put yourself in the positions of the three men. What would you do? Would you have considered using?

“Truck Wheels Go Round and Round”

Life in minor league baseball can get mentally tough. You keep thinking big, you keep telling yourself that every bus ride you take is for a reason. Another destination, another place to showcase your talent and hopefully one day it all pays off and you’ll get your chance. Most don’t get their chance, and when you think about it, these kids on these bus rides were the best players in their towns and cities growing up, bar none. Neighborhood baseball legends. These are the lucky ones who have been drafted by a Major League Baseball organization, and yet most of them will never see a Major League uniform. That’s how hard it is to do. Take a look at who you consider to be a “bum” or weak link on your favorite MLB team, and take a minute to realize just how talented they really are in the sport of baseball. The worst guys you see in the majors were way better than everyone else on their high school or college teams as they grew up. The competition is so intense and these guys’ skill sets can be so close that sometimes it all comes down to the slightest advantage you can get over your peers.

Reading Odd Man Out, written by Matt McCarthy, there were a lot of funny stories about the life of a low-level minor league baseball player trying to fit in and make it. McCarthy then explained a situation that arose during a night at a local chain restaurant while the team was on tour. McCarthy was in the Anaheim Angels organization. He was on a level ball, the starting point of most runs after he was drafted. That night at the restaurant, McCarthy and some teammates were just talking about girls and talking about how the season was going. Then the topic of “getting an advantage” came up. Keep in mind that these children have just finished high school or college. They are just beginning the journey in professional baseball. The topic of “standing out” came up. Separate from the pack. I think you get where I want to go with this: steroids came up. Think about it, so many kids with similar talents thinking, “how can I break free from the pack and make a name for myself?” How? McCarthy was strongly against the use of steroids. He wouldn’t taste them. McCarthy was outperforming one of his fellow pitchers on the team he was actually squeezing. McCarthy “disappeared” after a year in the minors. He was cut. He had a bright future since he graduated from Yale. He enrolled at Harvard Medical School and is now an intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He did it his way. He gave it his all, and in the end that wasn’t good enough. McCarthy was a rarity in terms of being an Ivy League grad with something to fall back on if baseball didn’t pan out. He played fair, but what about kids who don’t have their education to fall back on? The kids who only have baseball. Baseball is their Yale and they HAVE to do it. What is your job? Will it be enough to work hard? Especially when you see teammates and opponents at the same level of competition taking steroids. Teammates and opponents that if they weren’t in the game, they weren’t as good as you. Would you play it fair or would you want the advantage?

Let me clearly state my position on this whole steroid issue. I am against them. 100% against them. But I understand the predicaments that these kids and these professional athletes find themselves in and I understand the temptations and why they do it. Do I wish sports, particularly the game I love the most (baseball), were clean? Yes. Is it realistic to believe that they will ever be clean or ever were? No. Chemicals, supplements, and illegal substances have come as far and advanced as ever… but don’t be so naive as to think that in the “good old days” all they did was eat hot dogs and Drink beer. There was something back then that gave you an advantage if you wanted it. Not as advanced or as refined as today, but it’s all relative. Trust me, there was something.