Baseball season is rapidly approaching, with major league teams preparing down south at spring training and local teams invading indoor practice facilities.
While players are just now lacing their cleats, the game has remained in the media spotlight throughout the off-season. Unfortunately, for those who love baseball, however, interest in Boston’s historic World Series win has waned as the steroid-abuse scandal has intensified.
Retired slugger and self-professed steroid pioneer Jose Canseco has tossed kindling on baseball’s eternal flame of drug-use speculation with the recent release of his controversial book.
Despite denials from Major League Baseball insiders, it’s generally agreed that performance-enhancing drugs have become a routine part of the major league scene.
In addition to Canseco’s admission, it’s been revealed that New York Yankees powerhouse Jason Giambi told a grand jury in 2003 that he used steroids for at least three seasons.
Mark McGwire has admitted to using androstenedione, a steroid precursor used in the body to make testosterone. The drug helped vault him past Roger Maris’s coveted single-season home run record in 1998. It was banned at the time by other professional leagues, but not MLB.
While it’s convenient to blame the steroid problem on the greed of individual players looking for a quick advantage, baseball’s drug problem cuts deeper. It’s really a result of the unrealistic ideals that now reverberate throughout society.
The first thing the steroid scandal indicates is the tired mantra that, “if you’re not improving, you’re losing.” This idea has led to many of the recent accounting scandals plaguing the business world, with some executives fudging the books to make it look like profits are up.
It’s this same need for continual improvement that drives players to use steroids. In order to make more money by hitting more home runs, or win more games than last year, players try to overcome the natural physical restraints that rule the game. Players who use steroids feel they’ve realized their body’s maximum potential, and in order to improve they must introduce substances that, in the long run, cheapen the game.
Isn’t the rarity of the home run a big part of what makes it so exciting? When it occurs more frequently, it depreciates in value, just as an overproduced painting might.
McGwire’s chemically enhanced record-setting season, for example, should have an asterisk beside it in the record books.
Canseco, who played against the Ottawa Lynx in the 2002 season, has justified his use of steroids, arguing they make the game more exciting. Chemically enhanced players, he says, can hit more home runs, and so the fans are more entertained.
This falls in line with the general belief in society today that “more is better.” After having realized the pleasure of something, we want more of it. From the extra-large serving of french fries to the thousand-channel television service to the increasingly frequent home run, we all want more.
So before we criticize players like Canseco, McGwire, and Giambi, we must first realize what it is that motivates their actions. It’s not a desire to cheat the system, but a longing to meet the unrealistic standards that have been set by all of us.