One Big Ugly Stinking American Mess

First appeared on February 11th, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

As citizens of Earth’s greatest nation we enjoy invaluable freedoms. Included amongst these are a series of inalienable rights we should feel fortunate to have such as life, liberty and the right to bicker endlessly as to the shortest way out of a very deep hole; a hole that was mostly the product of the aforementioned bickering to begin with.
After more names surfaced from the so called “anonymous list of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003” apparently the Founding Fathers also saw fit the need to guarantee professional athletes the right to inject themselves with performance enhancing drugs. Was it not Jefferson after all who fought so hard for those rights not specifically reserved for the federal government to fall into the hands of Major League Baseball?
Two questions leap to mind. How could baseball NOT have seen this coming and had a system of penalties in place before 2003? And how many times are we supposed to pretend we’re shocked when another player who hit over 50 dingers has tested positive for steroids?
There was a time in the not so distant past known as our youth that the magic number for round trippers was 30. If a guy hit more than 30 home runs we saw them as the reincarnation of Babe Ruth rounding the bases; minus the cigar and glass of brandy. Now if a slugger doesn’t have 30 long-balls by the All Star Break ownership is waiting at home plate with a wheelchair and his social security paperwork.
While Hollywood couldn’t have scripted the summer of 1998 better, at the time something told us it was too good to be true. A sport that had been brought to its knees by its own self-made kryptonite (labor disputes) only to be given a hand up by two men chasing each other into baseball infamy. Of course just exactly which one of infamy’s numerous junior high dance halls they will be forever standing in a corner tapping their feet and sipping cream soda in remains to be seen, but during the summer of 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa gave baseball its own shot of HGH just when it needed it most.
Of course at the time we knew better than to believe these two were slugging one homer in less than every 10 plate appearances legally, yet we were fascinated nonetheless. Fast forward and those shocked by the Mitchell Report should beware salesman touting tickets for a return flight on the Hindenburg.
With the summer of ’98 in mind, maybe the easiest solution is none at all. Don’t ban anything. Let them take whatever, whenever, however. One can imagine the big hits on Sundays resulting not simply with somebody lying on the turf being attended to by NFL doctors, but rather simply disintegrating like a piñata. NBA players would be able to literally rip the rim off the backboard and fling it into the crowd collaring some hard working fan in a manner more reminiscent of a carnival ring toss. The kicker being instead of a goldfish in a Dixie cup, we give them 20 million dollars for doing it.
Today America’s youth are fueled by role models. With so many staples of popular culture waking to the UPS man delivering a package of bad press, perhaps the black eye of steroids is simply sport imitating life. Unfortunately finding role models for our youth today amidst a jungle of bong hits and hypodermic needles may prove a fruitless search comparable to photographing or plaster-casting the Yeti or, his equally-as-hairy English speaking cousin, Bigfoot.