Steroids: Baseball's Savior

Football, basketball, baseball, hockey.  These are the four largest major leagues in the United States.  Four sports, four stories, two directions.  Up until the 1990’s, each league was growing and enjoying insane profits.  

That is until the nineties when each of these sports met their own fork in the road.  Much like the cartoons we watched when we were kids, one road led to prosperity, the other to misery and misfortune.

The National Football League created a salary cap opening up new doors for the free agency period.  Parity is at an all-time high.  Teams like Atlanta can recover from a Michael Vick in the matter of a couple seasons.  Today, the NFL is a thriving model for success.  You can thank Paul Tagliabue for that.  The NFL had chosen wisely.

The National Basketball Association benefited by many of the stars being placed on the international stage.  With big names like Michael Jordan showing up in the olympics, the world received a taste of what star power can do on the basketball.  The sport immediately grew in popularity, and today, we get to enjoy many international stars play in our league.  Today, the NBA could be more accurately labeled as the International Basketball Association.  As much as I really dislike David Stern, I have to hand it to him for the actions he has taken to grow the sport.  Good road.

Then there is the National Hockey League, which has struggled against the other sports for revenue, but held its own because of stars like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Dominic Hasek.  With subsequent retirement and the strike several years ago, the NHL has struggled against to be as profitable as the other major leagues.  Today, the NHL is banking on Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin to bring the league back into prominence.  Until then, the NHL may have to take the backseat to soccer, whatever the name of the league is here in the USA.  Malfunctioning GPS.

Baseball is the most intriguing of the major sports, and this is where this blog really begins to take form.  Attendance in the Major Leagues were growing at a linear pace from the late 1800’s up until the early 1990’s.  (look at the graph)

The year 1994 was the year that the fork in the road showed up for the MLB.  The strike shortened season caused me to lose my interest in the game.  America’s pastime quickly became something of America’s past.  The season endured the lowest attendance in a decade.  The MLB was quickly on its way to extinction, that is until it injected itself with some performance enhancers.  I’ll be honest, I quit watching the games until the Mark McGuire vs. Sammy Sosa saga was at its hiatus.  I relished the opportunity when I could tell my kids that I saw these guys on a piece of ancient technology called “television”.  

A few years later, Barry Bonds knocked at the doors of the record books with the single season home run record.  I watched daily waiting for him to break the record.  Then I waited for him to break the career home run record.  I’m pretty sure I speak for most of the average baseball fans when I say this - the intrigue brought the sport out of the pitfalls of despair and back into relevance.  Baseball purists would disagree with me but STEROIDS SAVED THE MAJOR LEAGUES.

Referring back to the graph, you will notice that the red area represents attendance during the “steroid era”.  Seems to me that the injected steroids not only made Barry Bond’s biceps burst out of the seams, but owners bank accounts were receiving injections of its own via ticket sales.  

Bud Selig was once at the top of my list of people I really really don’t like, but after much contemplation, I think the guy was given a bunch of lemons and has made lemonade for about 80 million people this year.  Did he know about the juice that Jose Canseco was drinking?  Did he know about the “bole” that A-Rod has admitted to?  Did he know about  Roger Clemens “rocket” fuel?  I’m convinced that he did.  Did the owners know about it?  I’m sure they did.  

So if they knew about it, why wouldn’t they do anything about it?  They were saving their pastime, and making a lot of money in the process.  

So instead of thinking of steroids as the performance enhancers that are responsible for irritating baseball purists, just think of all the other enhancers that they are so willing to overlook.  When a player has reconstructive knee surgery and adds another five years to his career, isn’t that a performance enhancer?  Or what about all the ankle braces, knee braces, tape jobs, pine tar, and band aids designed to give them the competitive advantage?  The black smear on the cheeks.  

Or on that same note, music purists don’t complain about certain singers and bands performing high or drunk, or a combination of the two.  Can you imagine Jerry Lee Lewis performing sober?  I doubt he would be half the performer.  

Can you imagine Dan Patrick as a journalist without the use of a thesaurus?  

Instead of condoning those that have done their best to give themselves a competitive advantage, we should embrace their bold attempts to help 80 million fans live the American Dream, that is to sit at a ballpark with your friend Oscar Meyer.  

Disclaimer:  The only performance enhancers consumed during the composition of this blog was the thesaurus widget, a hot dog, a Mountain Dew, and great music by Adam Lambert.  Don’t judge me.

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