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 got to thinking… If any of us If we Were we to find ourselves in the position that Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez found themselves in, would we succumb to the temptations of performance-enhancing drugs (PED’s, i.e. steroids)? They were all at a crossroads in their respective careers when they reportedly started using PEDs.

Shortly thereafter I began to think about the temptations of baseball players on a completely different level than the guys I mentioned earlier. 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, trying to work their way up the food chain within their organizations. What is the thought process of a kid faced with these temptations as he rides bus after bus in the minor leagues and wonders when and if he’ll ever make it to the Show? Especially in those days when abuse was rampant in the major leagues.

“Clemens, Bonds, A-Rod: Why?”

Three superstars. Three members of the Hall of Fame of the first automatic vote. 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 reported steroid use 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 rope and hand gestures (well, the best any 12-year-old could do!) when he was pitching in Little League in Boston at the time. The Rocket was the man. Why would a future Hall of Famer like him suddenly decide to go so deep in his career? To prove his former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette wrong, that’s why. When Duquette decided not to re-sign Clemens and signed with Toronto, Duquette told the media that the Rocket was over the hill and on the decline at this point in his career. Clemens was furious inside with 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 edge. He needed to prove that Duquette was an idiot for the comments he had 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 came back to dominate, 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 him and any other skeptics 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 checked. What was McGwire’s line in his cameo on the TV show Friends after his record breaking season? “Girls love longball!”… Well, Bonds couldn’t bear to be pushed off the front page while McGwire and Sosa were out 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 all-time record of the great Hank Aaron. You are now the King of Homerun. The girls really like him, don’t they, Barry?

Alex Rodriguez is, without a doubt, 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 Bigs. 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 by the fear of not living up to the money he was now being paid. Most people will say that they cannot 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 turn to steroids. The fear of not living up to the expectations of this mega-contract took hold of him.
(since he admitted 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 time 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?

“The wheels of the truck 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’s all worth it 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 into a Major League organization, and yet most of them will never see a Major League uniform. That’s how hard it is to do it. 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 you really are in the sport of baseball. The worst guys you see in the majors were so much better than everyone else on their high school or college teams growing up. The competition is so intense and the skill sets of these guys can be so close that sometimes it 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 level ball, the starting point of most careers after being drafted. That night at the restaurant, McCarthy and a few teammates were just talking girls and talking about how the season was going. Then the topic of “gaining an advantage” came up. Keep in mind that these kids are just out of high school or college. They are just beginning their journey in professional baseball. The topic of “standing out” came up. Break away from the herd. I think you get to where I want to go with this: Steroids came out. Think about it, so many kids with similar talents thinking, “how can I break free from the group 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 that he was actually squeezing. McCarthy “disappeared” after a year in the minors. He was cut off. 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 graduate with something to fall back on if baseball didn’t work out. He played fair, but what about the 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 do you do for a living? 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 who, if they weren’t in the game, 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 topic of steroids. I am against them. 100% against them. But I understand the predicaments 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 as advanced as ever… but don’t be so naive as to think that in the “good old days” all they did was eat hotdogs and Drink beer. There was something back then that gave you an edge if you wanted it. Not as advanced or as refined as today, but everything is relative. Trust me, there was something.