"The only constant factor to be found in my thinking over the years has been opposition to accepted opinions."
- Pierre Trudeau
Bill James, who hasn't had much to say about the subject over the years, offered up some provocative thoughts about how the Steroid Era will look down the road.
To make a long story short, he thinks it's ultimately going to have no impact at all on things like the Hall of Fame, and he suspects that in 40 years or so people will certainly have a very different perspective on the matter. If they're not wondering what we were so excited about.
Good old Bill. He has four points to make:
1) Steroids, or their descendants, are the human future. Steroids, he observes, help athletes fight back against the inevitable process of aging. Then, in the purest Trudeau fashion, he innocently asks what's wrong with that. He proceeds to answer his own question. With a twist.
What’s wrong with that is that steroids may help keep players “young” at some risk to their health, and the use of steroids by athletes may lead non-athletes to risk their health as well. But the fact is that, with time, the use of drugs like steroids will not disappear from our culture. It will, in fact, grow, eventually becoming so common that it might almost be said to be ubiquitous. Everybody wants to stay young. As we move forward in time, more and more people are GOING to use more and more drugs in an effort to stay young. Many of these drugs are going to be steroids or the descendants of steroids.
Which means that come the brave new world, when the ice caps have melted and pestilence and famine are ravaging the planet - I'm going to miss out on all this, I fear - the baseball players of the last fifteen years can at least be comforted by knowing that they will no longer be regarded as semi-criminals. They're going to look more like pioneers. This is an extremely novel notion.
I personally have to believe that chemical enhancements did considerably more than keep players young - I look at the career paths of some of the late 90s sluggers and I can only say that something made these players better. They didn't maintain what they had when they were 27 - they attained, in their late 30s, a level they had never before achieved.
2) The slippery slope phenomena. "Once some players who have been associated with steroids are in the Hall of Fame, the argument against the others will become un-sustainable."
That's logical enough, I suppose. I do think there's a problem in assuming that logic is going to have a significant role in this type of discussion.
3) Time heals all wounds. "History is forgiving. Statistics endure."
True dat. There have been reports this very week that Bud Selig is reassessing baseball's position regarding Pete Rose, whose trangressions were against rules far more entrenched and far more explicit than anything Mark McGwire is alledged to have done. With enough time, anything can be forgiven. As long as I have been paying attention to baseball, there has been a significant part of the baseball community petitioning for Joe Jackson - Joe Jackson, for God's sake - to be forgiven and admitted to the Hall of Fame. Someday it may even happen. Well, obviously if you're going to give Pete Rose a pass in the fullness of time - never mind Shoeless Joe himself - it's not hard to extend the same courtesy to Bonds, McGwire, Clemens, Palmeiro and the rest.
4) The Buddy System, because "Old players play a key role in the Hall of Fame debate. It seems unlikely to me that aging ballplayers will divide their ex-teammates neatly into classes of “steroid users” and “non-steroid users.”
That's very true - I don't pay much attention myself to the views of old players, but they do appear to carry a fair bit of weight. I think it's the main reason that Jim Rice is finally in the Hall of Fame.
So to wrap up:
was there really a rule against the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs? At best, it is a debatable point. The Commissioner issued edicts banning the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.... But “rules”, in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate. They are included in the rule book. There is a process for enforcing them. Someone is assigned to enforce the rule, and that authority is given the powers necessary to enforce the rule. There are specified and reasonable punishments for violation of the rules.
The “rule” against Performance Enhancing Drugs, if there was such a rule before 2002, by-passed all of these gates. It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to participate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject. It was not included in any of the various rule books that define the conduct of the game from various perspectives. There was no process for enforcing such a rule. The punishments were draconian in theory and non-existent in fact.
In other words, it will prove impossible to describe as cheaters those who violated a rule to which they never consented, which was never included in the rule books, and for which there was no enforcement procedure. Logical - but again, I think there's a problem in assuming that logic is going to have a significant role in this type of discussion.
James, it seems to me, has always taken very much to heart Mark Twain's dictum that when one is on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. It's one of his most attractive qualities (to me anyway), even if it has on occasion led him down a blind alley - see, for example, his long and ultimately irrelevant crusade against the Dowd Report.
This time? Have at it.
- Pierre Trudeau
Bill James, who hasn't had much to say about the subject over the years, offered up some provocative thoughts about how the Steroid Era will look down the road.
To make a long story short, he thinks it's ultimately going to have no impact at all on things like the Hall of Fame, and he suspects that in 40 years or so people will certainly have a very different perspective on the matter. If they're not wondering what we were so excited about.
Good old Bill. He has four points to make:
1) Steroids, or their descendants, are the human future. Steroids, he observes, help athletes fight back against the inevitable process of aging. Then, in the purest Trudeau fashion, he innocently asks what's wrong with that. He proceeds to answer his own question. With a twist.
What’s wrong with that is that steroids may help keep players “young” at some risk to their health, and the use of steroids by athletes may lead non-athletes to risk their health as well. But the fact is that, with time, the use of drugs like steroids will not disappear from our culture. It will, in fact, grow, eventually becoming so common that it might almost be said to be ubiquitous. Everybody wants to stay young. As we move forward in time, more and more people are GOING to use more and more drugs in an effort to stay young. Many of these drugs are going to be steroids or the descendants of steroids.
Which means that come the brave new world, when the ice caps have melted and pestilence and famine are ravaging the planet - I'm going to miss out on all this, I fear - the baseball players of the last fifteen years can at least be comforted by knowing that they will no longer be regarded as semi-criminals. They're going to look more like pioneers. This is an extremely novel notion.
I personally have to believe that chemical enhancements did considerably more than keep players young - I look at the career paths of some of the late 90s sluggers and I can only say that something made these players better. They didn't maintain what they had when they were 27 - they attained, in their late 30s, a level they had never before achieved.
2) The slippery slope phenomena. "Once some players who have been associated with steroids are in the Hall of Fame, the argument against the others will become un-sustainable."
That's logical enough, I suppose. I do think there's a problem in assuming that logic is going to have a significant role in this type of discussion.
3) Time heals all wounds. "History is forgiving. Statistics endure."
True dat. There have been reports this very week that Bud Selig is reassessing baseball's position regarding Pete Rose, whose trangressions were against rules far more entrenched and far more explicit than anything Mark McGwire is alledged to have done. With enough time, anything can be forgiven. As long as I have been paying attention to baseball, there has been a significant part of the baseball community petitioning for Joe Jackson - Joe Jackson, for God's sake - to be forgiven and admitted to the Hall of Fame. Someday it may even happen. Well, obviously if you're going to give Pete Rose a pass in the fullness of time - never mind Shoeless Joe himself - it's not hard to extend the same courtesy to Bonds, McGwire, Clemens, Palmeiro and the rest.
4) The Buddy System, because "Old players play a key role in the Hall of Fame debate. It seems unlikely to me that aging ballplayers will divide their ex-teammates neatly into classes of “steroid users” and “non-steroid users.”
That's very true - I don't pay much attention myself to the views of old players, but they do appear to carry a fair bit of weight. I think it's the main reason that Jim Rice is finally in the Hall of Fame.
So to wrap up:
was there really a rule against the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs? At best, it is a debatable point. The Commissioner issued edicts banning the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.... But “rules”, in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate. They are included in the rule book. There is a process for enforcing them. Someone is assigned to enforce the rule, and that authority is given the powers necessary to enforce the rule. There are specified and reasonable punishments for violation of the rules.
The “rule” against Performance Enhancing Drugs, if there was such a rule before 2002, by-passed all of these gates. It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to participate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject. It was not included in any of the various rule books that define the conduct of the game from various perspectives. There was no process for enforcing such a rule. The punishments were draconian in theory and non-existent in fact.
In other words, it will prove impossible to describe as cheaters those who violated a rule to which they never consented, which was never included in the rule books, and for which there was no enforcement procedure. Logical - but again, I think there's a problem in assuming that logic is going to have a significant role in this type of discussion.
James, it seems to me, has always taken very much to heart Mark Twain's dictum that when one is on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. It's one of his most attractive qualities (to me anyway), even if it has on occasion led him down a blind alley - see, for example, his long and ultimately irrelevant crusade against the Dowd Report.
This time? Have at it.
