Baseball Takes the (A) Rod

At the instant of the crack he would glide along the deep green carpet looking up in the high blue sky picking out the orb that at its apex must have looked like a dancing white pea in the chill swirling winds above San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.  He moved surely as if guided by some mystic inner sense directing him right to the spot where the little orb would land.  And then he would position the glove just right, oftentimes just in front of his belt, opened and waiting like a leather basket. Plop the orb would drop into the glove and he’d step forward and throw a seed back to the infield.  I had the pleasure and yes, the honor of seeing Willie Mays, arguably baseball’s greatest player do that in person in many a game at the frigid and usually unfriendly confines of Candlestick Park.  I also watched Mays belt a fair amount of his 660 career home runs.  I didn't see the 660^th, which he hit in the uniform of the New York Mets in the twilight of his career.  It was 1973, the Vietnam War was still raging, Nixon was living his Watergate nightmare and I was just about to turn 20. 

And now some 40 years later Alex Rodriguez known affectionately as A-Rod by what can only be friends, family and the most diehard fans and derisively as A-Roid opened a scab from baseball’s steroid era and surpassed Mays’ home run mark.  It was for most of us who remember seeing some of the greats of the fifties and sixties another of the many dark days given to us courtesy of a former bass player turned drug dealer named Victor Conte and his clientele of ball players and other assorted cheats from a variety of sports. 

When Rodriguez broke into the majors at the age of 18 he possessed all the tools that made Mays one of baseball’s all-time greats.  He had power, speed and the skills that many of his major league peers could only drool over.  But there is where the comparison stops. 

Look at any image of Mays and you’ll see the smile that became his trademark.  You could see the joy that he had for the game, at a time when black players had little to smile about off the field and often on the field.  It was a time before the Civil Rights Act when people of color were subject to institutionalized discrimination.  It was also a time when ball players didn’t garner the huge contracts that they get today.  So hell, they had to love the game because during the off-season they had to go out and get a real job. And Mays, like his fellows of the fifties and sixties and prior played cleanly without the aid of PEDs. 

Looking at Rodriguez, you don’t get that sense of joy.  Often you see a glower and you feel an aura of cynicism.  And why shouldn't he have that dark visage?  He’s been despised by his own team’s fans and his relationship with the Yankees has been charitably described as “strained.”  (Former Yankee manager Joe Torre wrote in his book The Yankee Years that Rodriguez was known in the clubhouse as A-fraud). Contractually the team owes him a bonus for surpassing Mays but the team is declining to pay contending that many of his home runs are the product of his use of PEDs.  In fact the Yankees would simply like him to go away.  After his most recent PED bust the team tried unsuccessfully to void his contract.

Rodriguez’s cynicism is the same one that pervaded the game during the steroid era when players, in their own minds and egos, thought themselves bigger than the game itself.  The steroid era was a “me first” time when players thought nothing of popping a pill or jamming a needle in their ass in order to get a “competitive edge.”  It was a time when some of baseball’s most hallowed records were toppled like so many ten pins and with a relative ease that we fans should have recognized as the frauds they were. 

When Rodriguez tied Mays’ mark the Boston Red Sox crowd booed lustily.  The public address announcer went mum, never mentioning the milestone.  It was the in all respects, the anti-event.  Afterwards Rodriguez did what he has always done best; he worked on PR with all the savoir faire of a used car huckster. 

                "Willie Mays has always been a hero to me,” said Rodriguez after the game. "A year ago today, I never would've imagined even playing baseball. But a day like today, I think of my mother, my daughters, the people at the Boys and Girls Club where I learned to play baseball."

We might actually buy that if he hadn’t been figuratively caught on two occasions with needle in hand. 

But the statement that so overflows with unmitigated gall was the one about his alleged love of baseball history.  "I love to study baseball and our history,'' Rodriguez said, "and he was my father's favorite player. In the time that he did it, there's absolutely no comparison of me or anyone else to Willie Mays. All of us who love baseball, we love Willie.”

It’s enough to make a baseball lover want to vomit his peanuts and Cracker Jack.  If Rodriguez actually reveres Mays and the rich history of America’s pastime he’ll voluntarily vacate the home runs that he hit during the tainted years.  Of course that will happen about the time that Barry Bonds owns up to his own chicanery, which will be about the twelfth of never. 

As Mays’ mark fell the debate over the drug cheats has apparently cooled.  Folks are wanting to forgive and forget.  A local sports talk host announced that he’s tired of it.  He’s “okay with it.” No harm, no foul (What me worry?) Really? How?  Why?  The records that were broken were, for those who love baseball hallowed, only to be broken honestly and with the reverence that a drug cheat could never possess. 

But not only did the users cheat the game, they cheated their fellow players; those who declined to go the PED route.  How many excellent players who could have been considered great during their time were cheated of the honor because they were eclipsed so dramatically by the drug cheats?  It brings to mind a drug cheat from another sport; Regina Jacobs.  As she was turning 40, Jacobs was at the top of her game as a middle distance runner.  Middle distance runners, and most any other athletes, don’t achieve their pinnacle at age 40; they retire.  On June 21, 2003, she beat Suzy Favor Hamilton in the 1500 for about the umpteenth time.  On that same day she tested positive for PEDs and Jacobs’ win was later vacated making Hamilton the winner.  The only problem with that is that Hamilton didn't get the honor of crossing the line first to the cheers of the crowd.  It’s like the also rans to Marion Jones who didn't get to stand at the top podium at the Olympics to hear their own national anthems.  Isn’t that a lot of what winning is all about?  You know those post-competition accolades; the ones that mean something right after it’s over. Getting your medal couriered to you after the fraud was unmasked a couple years later, with hardly anybody noticing is not what you went into it for; it’s the proverbial kiss from your sister. I was at that race on June 21, 2003 and I’m pissed that what I saw was a fraud.  Of course I’m also pissed, largely at myself, that for years I drank copious amounts of Lance Armstrong’s snake oil. 

But perhaps more breathtaking is the fact that there are a legion of people who hold that there’s no proof that PEDs provide any advantage whatsoever.  This morning I heard national sports host Mel Kiper deny any evidence that PEDs have provided any advantage.  Well there we are.  Mel said it and so it must be right despite some compelling, albeit circumstantial evidence to the contrary.  In 1927 Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs.  Roger Maris just squeaked by that record 34 years later with 61.  In the intervening years such renowned sluggers as Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Duke Snider, Ted Williams and Harmon Killebrew, to name a few, all fell short of 60.  Some almost tasted it, getting tantalizingly close while in other years nobody even got a whiff of it. Then the steroid era hit and Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds made short work of 61 as if that number were a cipher and the sluggers who came before mere pretenders. Circumstantial evidence has sent people to prison for life so I don’t know why it can’t vacate some dubious home runs. 

Folks like Kiper prefer a simple brand of baseball. A no nuance, hit you in the face game.  He said as much during his show.  Likes to see bombs hit over the fence and he apparently isn’t particular about how they’re launched; whether from hours in the batting cage, or fueled by PEDs, or hell why not just shoot the things out of a fucking cannon.  Me; I’m partial to the ball that looks like it’s going to leave the yard and then bangs off the wall and then the hitter trying to stretch a sure double into an iffy triple with a right fielder with a cannon arm firing the ball back in.  It’s a hell of a lot more compelling to watch that, than to see some guy cadillac around the bases after hitting it out.   

Alex Rodriguez is one of the last men standing from that steroid era; certainly the most notorious at this point.  Mark McGwire is now a hitting coach for the Dodgers (there’s a fucking load of irony for you).  Sammy Sosa is retired and has stated that he’s waiting for his induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame.  In the 2015 balloting for the HOF Sosa received 6.6% of vote to put him in (the requirement is 75%) and so things aren't looking promising for Sosa.  He might want to spend some of his retirement years looking for the fountain of youth because (and thankfully) that induction might be down the road a piece.  Barry Bonds has been a gadfly around the Giants’ organization, helping coach during spring training or polluting the stands with his presence at Giants’ games, hobnobbing with the team brass. 

The sad reality is that these guys are probably all going to get their accolades.  That local sports talk host is probably like many who are done with the steroid controversy are ready to move on and are “okay” with these guys.  The records are in the books; 70 for McGwire in 1998 and 73 for Bonds 3 years later.  Those numbers will never, EVER, be broken, especially when pitchers are leashed to pitch counts and are taken out of the game before a weary arm hangs a breaking ball that gets a ride into the bleachers.  Alex Rodriguez’s numbers will go into the record books and decades from now nobody will remember that he was a pariah in his own team’s clubhouse and his 661^st home run was met with a yawn.