Season preview: Part III | Part II | Part I
Barry Bonds begins the season just three home runs from passing Willie Mays and moving into third place on baseball's all-time home-run list.
Many folks this spring think they should plant an asterisk for him.
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Myriad reports have said Jason Giambi is much more lean. (AP) |
Many folks are wondering where they can find a diet like that.
Gary Sheffield begins the season in the unique position of owning the only name that has been leaked out of the sealed testimony in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal, with a source this spring naming Sheffield as having received a package of unidentified contents from BALCO.
Most folks are thinking there's a pretty good chance that package contained more than just a few innocent PowerBars.
Perhaps never before has baseball prepared to raise the curtain on a season shrouded in so much innuendo and suspicion.
But what's also important to remember -- while listening to the pack of barking dogs on cheesy television and radio talk shows predicting irreparable damage to baseball's reputation -- is this: The game has been run through the wash cycle after many scandals before ... and usually comes out of the dryer looking as fresh and new as ever.
Steroids and the BALCO scandal undoubtedly will remain as storm clouds just over the horizon this summer.
But short of a highly dramatic and stunning development, it is difficult to envision the subject overshadowing the season.
"I think it will have an effect on the season," said Seattle hitting coach Paul Molitor, who will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame in July. "I hope it's minimal. I like that Don Fehr (executive director of the players' union) is open to making some adjustments to some things that are in place.
"I think the players are socially conscious as far as that topic is concerned. People don't like to be considered guilty until they're proven innocent. I think they would like a clean solution."
Right now, with the season under way, a clean solution is difficult to envision -- even if you spot baseball several cases of Tide and some stain remover. The BALCO scandal broke last fall, gained momentum this winter and, this spring, Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was among those who were indicted.
Yet, look around.
- The Cincinnati Reds sold out opening day in a stunning 16 minutes.
- The Chicago Cubs sold more than 600,000 single-game tickets on the day they went on sale, more than doubling their previous record.
- The New York Yankees, even with two of the players who testified in the BALCO hearings -- Sheffield and Giambi -- remain wildly popular in the aftermath of the Alex Rodriguez acquisition.
- The Boston Red Sox are on pace to set a single-season attendance record for a fifth consecutive year. They're basically on the verge of selling out every game for the entire season at Fenway Park.
- The Anaheim Angels, for the first time in their history last season, are expecting to set another attendance record in 2004.
- New ballparks are set to open in Philadelphia and San Diego to tremendous interest. The Padres sold out their home opener in less than 20 minutes, and the Phillies anticipate one of their best attendance seasons ever.
- For the first time ever, through its various team websites and MLB.com, baseball has sold more than three million tickets before opening day.
Doesn't seem as if people are leaving the game in droves.
This isn't meant to be an apology for baseball. Officials willingly kept their heads in the sand on the subject of anabolic steroids for far too long, and now, indefensibly, there is a big mess.
Bonds already is the single-season record-holder with 73 home runs, and within two or three years, he might be challenging Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755 career homers.
But as he nears one of the game's most hallowed records, instead of celebration, there deservedly is suspicion. Bonds has become a Traveling Freak Show and, as such, wherever he goes, there usually is more discussion of how he has gotten so big, than there is discussion regarding his place among the game's all-time greats.
"Henry Aaron never hit 50 in a season, so you're going to tell me that you're a greater hitter than Henry Aaron?" Reggie Jackson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this spring. "Bonds hit 73 (in 2001), and he would have hit 100 if they would have pitched to him. I mean, come on, now. There is no way you can outperform Aaron and Ruth and Mays at that level."
People want to know, should there be an asterisk next to Bonds' name in the record books? Should Bonds' name be tossed out of the record books because of his ties with BALCO?
The answers, so far, are no and no. Bonds denies ever having used anabolic steroids. Maybe he's telling the truth; maybe he's not. But the larger issue here is, unforgivably, until last season, baseball has had no rules forbidding steroids.
So, what we have here is, on one hand, the game's statistics are one of its most sacred touchstones. Yet, on the other, even if Bonds admits tomorrow he has been gulping steroids -- or, Human Growth Hormone -- like teenagers slurp Mountain Dew, there can be no basis for taking away his records, because he did not break baseball's rules.
Maybe that doesn't seem right, but that's the way it is.
What is more complicated, for now, is finding a way out of the muck. Things are ugly, and this spring was like a shooting gallery at the county fair. As Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker said in Arizona, it has been like a witch hunt.
Players reporting to camp were eyeballed like 18-wheelers lined up at a freeway weigh station. What's the weight? Hmmm, that dude looks so much smaller, he must be off the juice.
"It's like McCarthyism or something," Baker said this spring. "They're looking to see who looks like a communist."
Or like Paul Bunyan.
Players are pointing fingers at other players: Colorado reliever Turk Wendell and Houston infielder Jeff Kent questioned Bonds' muscles this spring.
Players are pointing the finger at their union: Atlanta reliever John Smoltz was among those criticizing the players' union for its failure to lead on the issue.
Hall of Famers are calling out the latest generation: Besides Jackson, Jim Palmer spoke out, with Palmer wondering openly about Brady Anderson's 50-homer season for Baltimore.
Commissioner Bud Selig, pushing hard to re-open the steroid-testing portion of the Basic Agreement to toughen it up, finally instituted a gag order to prevent the spring from devolving into further mudslinging.
But what was said was said, and nobody has taken anything back.
Not even close. Wendell even bristled when we asked him about the prospect of facing Bonds up to 19 times during the Rockies-Giants intradivisional schedule this season after his inflammatory comments.
"What's he going to do, hit a home run off of me?" Wendell said. "I think he's the only one who didn't like what I said."
Strange as it might sound, that people remain passionate about this subject, both inside and outside of the game, remains one of baseball's strengths. It's trendy to knock baseball, but people still care.
The sport's critics maintain baseball just doesn't get it.
Yet, when an NFL player steps onto the field Sunday just a wee bit smaller than a rhinoceros, people simply shrug and order another plate of Buffalo wings.
When a baseball player climbs out of the dugout with legs so large the chafing nearly lands him on the disabled list, the Steroid Police are screaming before he reaches the batter's box.
And, yet, the NFL supposedly has a solid steroids program in place.
Baseball doesn't.
You hear all about the fact baseball players Bonds, Jason and Jeremy Giambi, Benito Santiago, Armando Rios and Bobby Estalella testified before a grand jury regarding BALCO. That NFL player Bill Romanowski did, too, is usually an afterthought.
For the better part of the past two decades, it has been increasingly fashionable to trash baseball. And through ineffective leadership, a strong players' union, work stoppages, exorbitant salaries and, at times, illegal substance abuse, baseball increasingly appears to have gone out of its way to bend over and say, Kevin Bacon-like, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"
The game has become the family dog of modern professional sports. Fed up? Take it out on baseball. Rough day at work? Sneer at Selig. Bills got you angry? Take a swipe at Bonds or Kevin Brown.
This criticism of baseball is fair. But a lot of it isn't.
There were those who predicted baseball would never recover from the 1919 Black Sox World Series scandal.
There were those who were sure the cocaine binge in the 1980s would help snuff out the game.
Now, steroids.
"It will linger," Molitor said. "There are a lot of people who would like to break down professional sports for whatever reason -- salaries, attitude -- and when they see something that can pertain to their side of the story, they're going to run with it until it's over, and you have to be able to take some of the darts."
By the way, San Diego pitcher David Wells says he lost 30 pounds over the winter, too. But we didn't think of steroids even for an instant.
We think it simply was eliminating Jack in the Box from his diet.
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