Baseball 2005 Begins with Steroids and The Designated Hitter

The ability of baseball to survive the stupidity of Major League Baseball's owners is a testament to the underlying beauty of the game. In a world where grown men get paid millions of dollars a year to play a game that children play for free, it is difficult to imagine anyone upsetting the gravy train and having to get real jobs. Yet, every spring professional baseball returns under a unique cloud only to muddle through because there are millions of amateurs who love the game for itself.

The latest idiocy is the the role steroids may or may not have played in the physical development of certain players. The President of the United States took time out from vacationing in Texas to mention them in his State of the Union Address. And as a former baseball owner who may have looked the other way when it came to steroid use and abuse, he probably should have kept his mind focused winning the peace in Iraq. Not to be outdone, Congress warmed up for the Terri Schiavo circus by calling in some ball players to ask about steroids under oath -- have they no shame? What is troubling is the thought that steroids might enhance a player's performance, not just his raw strength. If the politicians in Washington and in Bud Selig's office are right about steroids making a player better, just how does one tell a kid that steroids are bad for him? Teens are pretty good at detecting BS even if they higher faculties are slowed by hormones. Punishing Barry Bonds would be significant, so baseball's first victim is Alex Sanchez, a player for Tampa Bay who has hit 4 homers in his career. If he wasn't on "the juice," maybe he should have been.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball has decided it isn't so much interested in tradition as it is in hype. Last year, opening day happened in Japan. Traditionally, the first game of the new season takes place in Cincinnati -- for reasons few understand, and fewer still care about (which is the very definition of tradition). Last year, the New York Yankees played the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at 4.30 am eastern time. New York has rather liberal laws about boozer closings, but even so, the sports-bars had to shut at 4 am, half an hour before the first pitch. This year, the first game was a Sunday night event between the Yankees and the Red Sox, about which no one cares unless they live East of the Hudson River. Even then, baseball purists can't stand the American League.

The reason for that distaste is simple; this season marks yet another played in the American League with the designated hitter rule. Introduced in 1972 (although the idea was being kicked around as long ago as 1906), this says that each team may have one player who plays only defense (almost without fail, the pitcher) while another plays only offense (the designated hitter). Charlie O. Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, pushed this heresy through, saying, "The average fan comes to the park to see action, home runs. He doesn't come to see a one-, two-, three- or four-hit game. I can't think of anything more boring than to see a pitcher come up, when the average pitcher can't hit my grandmother. Let's have a permanent pinch-hitter for the pitcher." A further refinement might be to get rid of defense all together and award the game to the single batter who hit the most home runs. This was tried once; the game is called "Home Run Derby," and it lasted one season on TV. Note to Bud Selig and the American League -- it isn't really baseball if the pitcher doesn't bat. Entire strategic situations involving the pitcher are lost thanks to the DH, and more batters get beaned because the offending pitcher doesn't have to step into the batter's box.

And yet, despite these and other reasons, an entire nation (hemisphere, even) got up this morning in a world where things were just a little better than yesterday. In every major league city, there's a kid who just knows this is it -- The Year They Win It All. Everything is possible, and over 162 games, the season's potential is huge. As the days and games go by, there will be disappointments and "learning experiences." Maybe the lesson is that the Cubs always choke. Or maybe it's that money doesn't by the Yankees a championship. Or maybe it's the yearly cry of the (Brooklyn) Dodgers -- "wait till next year." Or maybe, just maybe, it's that this game is bigger than the jackasses who sell beer and cars with it.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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