Ron Cook: Care For the Game? Not These Guys

Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

You have to wonder if they even care.

Barry Bonds, the best ballplayer of our lifetime, who will forever be linked to the cream and the clear as much as to Ruth and Aaron.

Jason Giambi, who has admitted to using steroids.

Sammy Sosa, who has used a corked bat for sure and, if the whispers are true, steroids.

Gary Sheffield, whose name came up in the BALCO scandal.

And Jose Canseco, whose tell-all book doesn't just acclaim the wonders of steroids but outs just about everyone from his time in the game, from Mark McGwire to George W. Bush.

No, the president didn't use steroids.

But he tacitly condoned their use during the time he ran the Texas Rangers, Canseco writes.

Do you think any of them give a damn that they have stained the sport that was so good to all of them?

I don't, either.

Steroids in baseball are very much in the news again because of Canseco's book, which is due out this month. This is the saddest part of his little snitch:

He is a loser and a low-life with virtually no credibility, yet the rat's story he tells is thoroughly believable.

How sad is that?

How sad has baseball become?

We know too much now to dismiss Canseco's tale merely because he has been in one legal scrape after another, has done jail time and is so desperate for money and attention that he has been selling himself -- literally -- for years with his vain spend-the-day-with-Jose events ...

What?

You thought Bonds and Alex Rodriguez invented the $7,500 handshake-and-10-minute-chat?
According to the New York Daily News, Canseco writes in his book that he injected McGwire in the backside with steroids in a clubhouse bathroom stall and watched McGwire and Giambi inject each other when they all played for the Oakland Athletics. What is so hard to believe about that? After Giambi has admitted to steroid use later in his career? Especially after the BALCO scandal, which has disgraced Bonds and will leave a figurative asterisk next to his records for eternity?

McGwire, of course, denies using steroids. His character witnesses already are lining up to say how reprehensible they think it is that Canseco is trying to bring him down for a monetary gain. Tony La Russa, their former manager with the Athletics, is among them, telling the New York Times, "I am absolutely certain that Mark earned his size and strength from hard work and a disciplined lifestyle."

Is it just me or do you believe that about as much as you did Bonds when he said he didn't know the cream and clear substances he used were steroids?

Canseco also writes he introduced teammates Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez to the miracle of steroids after he was traded to the Rangers in 1992 and that Bush had to have known about it. Bush began to condemn steroid use a few years ago, about the time doing so became politically expedient. He went so far as to pick the preposterous time of his 2004 State of the Union address to rail against it. But is it really so hard to believe that he looked the other way when his players were using? Is it so hard to believe that all of the owners looked the other way when they saw how home runs were selling? Did it really matter to them what McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and the others were doing, as long as they kept hitting those long flies and the fans kept coming to the parks?

But back to the original question:

Do you think this generation of players and owners regrets smearing the game almost beyond recognition and leaving us in a very bad place, trying to guess what is real and what is the result of modern chemistry?

That really is a stupid question.

Canseco writes as much. He says he never would have hit 462 home runs or been the 1988 American League MVP without the help of steroids. He leaves little doubt that he would do it all again.

Life was good for Canseco and McGwire when they were known as the "Bash Brothers" on the Athletics. They were young, strong, wealthy and famous. (For those with prurient interests, Canseco writes about how easy it was to satisfy his sexual hunger in those days, although you might be surprised and disappointed to learn that he says he never slept with Madonna). It's no wonder Canseco would laugh when warned about the potential long-term health risks of steroids.

"He'd say, 'Come on, man, what are you talking about? I got the world by the tail,' " La Russa told the Times.

Maybe that's the real problem here.

Too many people in baseball have the world by the tail. The money is outrageous. The fame. The adulation ...

The players and owners got theirs.

They wouldn't re-write history even if they had the chance.

The hell with the game.

(Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1525.)