I'm guessing that if Senator Joe McCarthy were alive today, he'd have no problem with how Major League Baseball is handling this "investigation" into alleged steroid use.
You have to admit that there is an aspect of this process that reeks of McCarthyism. During the "Red scare" of the 1950s, the senator from Wisconsin had no compunction about dragging suspected communists in front of his Senate committee, destroying lives and reputations without a shred of evidence and with little or no regard for the rule of law.
So what's different today? After $20 million and months of investigation, another former Senator, George Mitchell, this past week trotted out a list of 85 names of players suspected of being involved in the purchase and use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Most of the people on the list refused to cooperate with the investigation, so they were "outed" by the Mitchell committee, a move that McCarthy made famous during his 1950s witch hunts. But unlike those hearings, there will be no blacklisting of these players. No one will lose their jobs or paychecks or go to jail, with the possible exception of Barry Bonds for lying to the grand jury. I'm betting that not a damn thing will happen, despite current baseball commissioner Bud Selig's promise to the contrary.
The reason we won't see any real action taken is that—and no one will ever admit this—steroid use has actually been good for baseball. Can anyone argue that the introduction of more tape-measure home runs hit by gargoyle-like monster athletes hasn't helped pique fan interest?
We all remember what happened during the Mark McGuire-Sammy Sosa home run chase a few years ago. Baseball was coming off yet another very public labor stoppage, and fan interest was starting to dwindle. Then along came these two behemoth sluggers who began pursuing one of the most hallowed records in the game, Roger Maris' single-season home run record, and fan interest skyrocketed.
Almost overnight, the Maris chase became international news. Even non-baseball fans were hanging on every at-bat. The fair-weathers started to come back to the game while hardcore fans lapped it up with a spoon. By the end of that summer, the baseball money train was back on the tracks with all pistons firing.
It wasn't until years later that we discovered that both of those guys were suspected of using steroids. And while some purists found that distasteful, no one moved to rip that record (which Bonds later went on to break), and absolutely no one in any front office in baseball was running to hand back the money they raked in thanks to the hype.
In the end, not a lot of people cared if those two were cheating, and that is the fundamental reason why baseball will never be truly serious about dealing with its steroid problem. Selig can hem and haw about meting out punishment after the fact, but people are still going to baseball games. Last season they went in record numbers, even as the stink of BALCO and the Mitchell inquiry began to permeate the sanctity of our national pastime.
Without any blowback from the fans and the accompanying revenue loss, where is the motivation to "clean up the game" going to come from? Medical experts can talk all day long about the physical dangers of steroids, parents can lament the possibility that more young people are using the "clear" and the "cream" to get a competitive edge, and child psychologists can preach about the impact the scandal is having on the psyche of today's youth as more and more of their heroes are found to be cheaters. None of it matters because, come springtime, major league ballparks across this nation will once again be packed with fans. And while some of the active players on that list may take some backlash and ribbing from those fans, when you are making $15 million a year, that's the cost of doing business.
If baseball is ever going to be fully free of steroids, it's going to have to start with the fans. If people stop going to games and the owners start losing money, this thing ends tomorrow. The sad fact is, Americans have the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso. The angst we may feel as we read the names on the cheater's list will be forgotten by next week with the latest Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton dustup.
The stain on the game remains. But like the proverbial tree falling in the forest when no one's around, if nobody cares, can we really call it a stain? Think about that the next time you walk through the turnstiles at Fenway—assuming you can get a ticket.
