Another baseball player idolized by millions of children throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s is now just another painful reminder that the past 20 years may have been as synthetic as that 7-11 hot dog you ate for lunch. Our National Pastime has been dealing with the steroid and performance-enhancing drug problem since 2003, although the recent Biogenesis scandal has turned the baseball world completely upside-down. Now that Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez (among 12 more, virtually unknown players) have joined the rankled ranks of Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, and hundreds more who were named in the 2007 Mitchell Report, fans in the 18-34 age range are beginning to wonder just what we saw during our childhoods.
We saw records fall and stars make tens of millions of dollars – all because of cheating. We cheered and watched with our jaws dropping as these players posted the type of statistical seasons that were never even considered prior to the Petri-dish era. In the meantime, we began to allow doubt to sink in about the all-time stars that were considered the heart and soul of baseball history. Were Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax as good as we thought they were? The current players were bigger, stronger and seemed to be just flat out better than the stars of yesteryear. We thought we were living in an era of baseball history that would be fantasized about for generations. So we collected baseball cards, autographs, figurines, collectors-edition plates, anything we could get our hands on to someday, to show our grandkids that we in fact were present for the time when the game of baseball changed forever.
The latter part came true. Baseball has changed forever, but in a way that may certify that our childhood heroes were part of one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on a population. The dominoes that theoretically could fall are endless. We could go back through the seasons from around 1995-2012 and try to figure out if certain teams would have won certain games without certain players. We could go back and pull the individual awards that the guilty won during that time period – dozens of MVP and Cy Young awards. We could research as deeply as looking into the teams that won championships and wonder if they could have done so without their physically-enhanced stars. None of this is going to happen, of course. Major League Baseball is very serious about cleaning up their game, but they will never simply erase history. The lack of a legitimate, legally decided start and end date to the cheating would be needed. They would need to personally vet each and every player that stepped between those white lines, and that in alone would take decades. So in turn, we as fans simply have to decide what we consider real and what we consider fake. This creates arguments and debates that – like those dominoes – could go on forever. Therefore, our only realistic alternative is to have faith in Major League Baseball to clean the game up for good, starting now.
That leaves us to wonder about the last generation of baseball and its players. While some were playing well into their late 30s and early 40s at a rate that dumbfounded even the least skeptical experts, others were having amazing careers that were cut short by the usual injuries and ailments that affect premier athletes once they reach those ages. These players have been put on the back-burner because they did not cheat; they were simply very, very good. Fans are now left to wonder just how good these players actually were – how great they must have been, if they were able to post the careers they did clean in an era of darkness. Some are future Hall of Famers, like Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson. All of these players had amazing careers before hitting the age wall and retiring. Others may have hit that wall earlier than they should have because the players around them were cheating; thereby skewing the baseline of what was “exceptional” or even passable to baseball front office men.
500 Homeruns, 300 wins, 3,000 hits – these numbers used to ultimately result in a day in the sun in Cooperstown, New York and a bronze statue. The list of players who had hit 500 home runs in their career stood at 14 prior to August 5, 1999. That was the date Mark McGwire hit his 500th homerun at old Busch Stadium in St. Louis in front of 45, 106 rabid fans. From that date forward, nine more players would reach that milestone. Let that sink in for a moment. From 1876 to 1999, only 14 players reached the 500 home run mark. From 1999-2009 – one decade, NINE more players reached the mark. That is one of the universally unbelievable souvenirs that fans will get to take from the steroid era. The 500 home run club, once considered the “gold standard” of power hitting, has been reduced to two groups. One group contains Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays. The other includes Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Rodriguez and Palmeiro. Defining what is real and what is fake is difficult when you see these numbers. Mr. Palmeiro even hung around long enough to get his name into the ultra-exclusive 3,000 hit club. If he had played and posted those career numbers prior to 1990, he would be considered one of the greatest players to ever play the game of baseball. Instead, his name is laughed at when it shows up on the Hall of Fame ballot. A disgrace to baseball, Palmeiro will forever have the distinction of being the only player on both of these lists who never reaches Cooperstown.
What about Griffey Jr., who if injuries did not slow him down at age 30 and essentially kill his career at age 40, may have ended up being the most prolific power hitter the game had ever seen. He retired with 630 home runs, but could not hang around long enough to finish off what he had started because he was unable to keep up with the needle men competing for roster space each spring. Griffey was injury-prone, and you can bet your next paycheck that he was approached by hundreds of doctors, fellow players, and agents telling him that by just partaking in a little self-preservation via pill or needle form, he could keep on being the Griffey Jr. that stole the hearts and minds of a generation of fans in the early 1990’s. Griffey just said no, he played until he was no longer able to do so, and then he retired. He finished his career with 2,781 hits (219 short of 3,000), 1,836 runs batted in (good enough for 15th all-time), and also had a career SLG percentage of .537, placing him 38th all-time. With a little “help,” Griffey could have ended his career as the top power hitter of all time. Now that we know what we know, the time has come to safely place Griffey in the annuals of time as one of the greatest to ever play the game.
While Griffey and fellow clean superstar Jim Thome carved out stellar careers while doing things the right way, both were able to hit certain milestones (as talked about above) that should secure their Hall of Fame positions. Meanwhile, another group of players fell short of these marks and – quite possibly because of being clean players in a dirty world – will end up on the outside looking in at Cooperstown. Fred McGriff was one of the most feared hitters in all of baseball from 1987-2002, when injuries and age caught up with him. He played a stellar first base and was a major part of several playoff –bound Atlanta Braves teams during his tenure there. In 2002, at age 38 he hit .273/30/103 in 595 plate appearances for the Chicago Cubs. This would be the final full season of “The Crime Dog”, as in 2003-04 he attempted to hang on with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays long enough to reach the 500 home run mark. Unfortunately, he would finish his career with 493 home runs – just seven short. He also added a lifetime .284 batting average, 1,550 runs batted in, and played in 2,360 games – good enough for 66th all time. By all indications, McGriff had one hell of a major league career. Had he done this in the 1970’s or 1980’s, he would be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. However, in the steroid era, McGriff gets looked past because he did all of this clean, and therefore did not reach the milestone numbers needed for first-ballot consideration. In retrospect, McGriff was probably one of the top five pure players of his generation, but he will forever be looked at as second-tier in the history books because the opposition he faced were, in fact cheating. Was Fred McGriff as good of a power hitter as Gary Sheffield, McGwire or Sosa? We can only assume that if those players had played the game clean, their numbers would be right in the same zip code as McGriff, instead of way above.
Paul Konerko is still playing for the Chicago White Sox, but in 2013, his age has truly caught up to him. After hitting .298/26/75 in 2012, he has hit the age wall at 37 years-old and is coming to the end of a remarkable run. From 1999-2012, few players put up the consistent power numbers of Konerko, who even got better with age (.312 BA in 2010, .300 in 2011). Placed in the context of the Rodriguez’s and Bonds of the world, Konerko would seem to be an above-average player, but certainly not a Hall of Fame level player. He will finish his career with over 430 home runs, over 2,200 hits, over 1,300 RBI – again numbers that equal such pre-steroid era hitters as Andre Dawson, Cal Ripken and Duke Snider (All in Cooperstown). If we look at Konerko from the perspective that he has done all of his mashing while clean, he instantly becomes one of the most prolific hitters of the time period. Thus, he should be treated as such.
There are many more players who either finished their careers in the steroid or are in the middle of a career that happened to clash with the era. The value of those players will forever be questioned by baseball experts and Hall of Fame voters. Hopefully, Major League Baseball gets to the bottom of this horrific period in their history with class and dignity enough to not punish those who were truly utilizing their God-given talent to play the game. It will be up to the fans to celebrate the careers of these players, and not allow the darkness of a few bad apples ruin the great game of baseball in America.
