Mark Naison: Barry Bonds, The Mitchell Report and the Spectre of Big Brother
[Dr. Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression, White Boy: A Memoir, co-editor of The Tenant Movement in New York City, and over 100 articles on African American politics, social movements and American culture and sports. Dr. Naison is the Principal Investigator of the Bronx African American History Project.]
Several years ago, when Barry Bonds was made a public symbol of steroid abuse in baseball, I took strong exception to those columnists and fans who mocked his accomplishments and insisted that his records were tainted
I defended Bonds as the most talented of a whole generation of ball players who were using performance enhancing substances and argued that you could not throw out his records without throwing out the records of virtually all of his contemporaries.
Now, the release of the Mitchell report confirms what I and many other commentators were saying. If that report is to be believed, it wasn't just hitters who were "juiced:- the greatest pitcher of his generation, Roger Clemens, was also shooting himself up with steroids as was Andy Pettite and many other star hurlers..
Now that we have been told that pitchers as well as hitters were using performance enhancing drugs, how do we evaluate any record in the steroid era? Are the records of Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds really that tainted if they were facing pitchers on steroids? This is not an idle question. How would Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Roger Maris have done against the "souped up" pitchers of the 80's and 90's? Would they have been able to set the records they set without resorting to illegal substances?
Given how widespread drug use has been in all levels of baseball during the last twenty five years, do we really want to waste our time prosecuting and publicly humiliating athletes whose performance was the benchmark of excellence in baseball's drug era. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and yes, even Mark McGuire were only doing what tens of thousands of professional, college and high school baseball players were doing during the 80's and 90's to get an edge They only differed from those around them in talent, skill, discipline, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.
In addition to making individual athletes scapegoats, baseball's steroid witchunt threatens to move us further down the road to a "Big Brother Society" Frankly, I question whether the compulsion to rid baseball of drugs is worth the violations of personal privacy and civil liberties such an effort would involve. Random drug testing could soon easily spill over into tapping phones, monitoring emails, and hiring of private investiagators,to make sure players aren't circumventing these. All too many employers are already engaging in such activities to spy on their employees and we don't need major league baseball to provide another high profile precedent.
For better or worse, the use of performance enhancing drugs is deeply embedded in the American social fabric, from the adoral and ritalin taken by college students to help them write papers, to the amphetamines taken by long distance truckers to stay awake on their runs, to the ED medication taken by middle aged American men to enhance sexual performance.
Manufacturing a national scandal because professional baseball players do the same thing as millions of their fellow citizens- including most of the people investigating them- is a waste of time and energy.
Several years ago, when Barry Bonds was made a public symbol of steroid abuse in baseball, I took strong exception to those columnists and fans who mocked his accomplishments and insisted that his records were tainted
I defended Bonds as the most talented of a whole generation of ball players who were using performance enhancing substances and argued that you could not throw out his records without throwing out the records of virtually all of his contemporaries.
Now, the release of the Mitchell report confirms what I and many other commentators were saying. If that report is to be believed, it wasn't just hitters who were "juiced:- the greatest pitcher of his generation, Roger Clemens, was also shooting himself up with steroids as was Andy Pettite and many other star hurlers..
Now that we have been told that pitchers as well as hitters were using performance enhancing drugs, how do we evaluate any record in the steroid era? Are the records of Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds really that tainted if they were facing pitchers on steroids? This is not an idle question. How would Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Roger Maris have done against the "souped up" pitchers of the 80's and 90's? Would they have been able to set the records they set without resorting to illegal substances?
Given how widespread drug use has been in all levels of baseball during the last twenty five years, do we really want to waste our time prosecuting and publicly humiliating athletes whose performance was the benchmark of excellence in baseball's drug era. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and yes, even Mark McGuire were only doing what tens of thousands of professional, college and high school baseball players were doing during the 80's and 90's to get an edge They only differed from those around them in talent, skill, discipline, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.
In addition to making individual athletes scapegoats, baseball's steroid witchunt threatens to move us further down the road to a "Big Brother Society" Frankly, I question whether the compulsion to rid baseball of drugs is worth the violations of personal privacy and civil liberties such an effort would involve. Random drug testing could soon easily spill over into tapping phones, monitoring emails, and hiring of private investiagators,to make sure players aren't circumventing these. All too many employers are already engaging in such activities to spy on their employees and we don't need major league baseball to provide another high profile precedent.
For better or worse, the use of performance enhancing drugs is deeply embedded in the American social fabric, from the adoral and ritalin taken by college students to help them write papers, to the amphetamines taken by long distance truckers to stay awake on their runs, to the ED medication taken by middle aged American men to enhance sexual performance.
Manufacturing a national scandal because professional baseball players do the same thing as millions of their fellow citizens- including most of the people investigating them- is a waste of time and energy.
Related Links
Ron Briley: It Ain’t No Social Crisis: Barry Bonds in Historical Perspective