“They all took them. Just like Lance and the cyclists,” Don said, regarding steroid use and baseball players.
We were watching another episode of the baseball documentary by Ken Burns and were up to the eighth inning, which covered baseball in the sixties. I was having none of it.
“You’re saying that because some were caught and admitted to drug use, every power hitter in the game is using without question?” I asked.
“Well...yeah. Look they had to and it wasn’t cheating and no one was checking. Other guys were doing it and they needed to if they were to get the multi-million dollar contracts. You can’t blame them...it just happened,” he said.
I’d heard this argument before regarding baseball...and cycling. It was the reason so many people were comfortable with condemning Lance Armstrong even if he had passed 500 drug tests and vehemently denied using performance-enhancing drugs. He must be lying...everyone was using, right?
“So even though we’ve seen 3-4 ballplayers hitting over 500 homers in their careers every generation since Babe Ruth without the use of steroids, you’re willing to say that NONE of the current players in the Majors are doing it without steroids today? That means you’re condemning Jim Thome, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Frank Thomas even though they’ve never been painted with that brush?” I asked.
“Well...look how big Thome is...he must be using them,” he said.
And that’s another horrible association. For the last 30 years, athletes in all sports have benefited from improved knowledge and techniques related to weight lifting and off-season training and conditioning that has left them stronger and playing longer...without steroids...and Don knows this. So do most people following sports, but the assumption that all athletes are using performance enhancing drugs continues. I suppose I’m old-fashioned and simple-minded in my approach to this issue. If an athlete...or anyone for that matter...says something, I tend to believe them until it is proven to be a lie. Another way of looking at it might be to operate on the principle that folks are innocent until proven guilty. It’s a crazy notion, I know, but I’ve heard somewhere that it’s a kind of important principle in, I think, the American judicial system.
My stomach had done flip-flops all day and I’d decided not to eat or do any exercise. Don and I had been planning to watch the Eighth Inning and that meant my now famous spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner, so I made it and ate some. During the show, my stomach felt fine but my elbow began to ache from the weight lifting I’d done as part of the cure. Between the patch and now the lifting, the cure was much worse than the problem.
The documentary was wonderful, as always. We learned and re-learned so much about the National Game and enjoyed every minute. It was still Yankee time in the early sixties, though they fired their long-time manager, Casey Stengel, after he made the mistake of losing in the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Watching the Indians, it’s hard to imagine firing a manager that had his team in ten of the previous twelve World Series, but the Yankee front office said it wanted to start a youth program. I suppose this was before age-discrimination legislation and when Casey was asked about the firing, he is quoted as saying, “they told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program as an advance way of keeping the club going. I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again.”
We picked up another wonderful quote from Casey Stengel when he signed on to manage the expansion ballclub, the New York Mets, in 1962. There was concern that a 72-year old, the oldest manager in the major leagues, would have the stamina to handle the load. When asked about this, Casey replied “most people my age are dead.” I love baseball.
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