Ruben Rounds Third

Well, dearest readers, it really has been too long. But blimey--a fellow gets a little busy for a week and the whole world collapses! In any case, a thousand apologies for my prolonged disappearance.

After giving up on my desire to recap Giants Idol (by the way, does anyone know who won?) and Barry Bonds' recent star-making turn as Paula Abdul, I began today determined to write a salty salute to Kirk Rueter. Alas, fate has intervened, and Woody's eulogy--deserved though it may be--will have to wait for another day..

No, today's topic is out of my hands. Like a genetic disorder, like a guilty verdict, it's been handed down, and I have little choice but to accept it. All I can do, as a lover of baseball and as a supporter of my dear San Francisco Giants, is try to cope with it and understand it for what it is.

I'm referring, of course, to today's Barry Bonds and Steroids maelstrom, touched off by the appearance of an excerpt from the forthcoming Bonds doping tell-all, Game of Shadows. What follows is Part One of a multi-part discussion of Bonds' legacy and the issue of steroids in baseball.

A brief aside before I plunge into this: someone ought to point out that there are at least a couple of reasons not to take all of the evidence discussed today at face-value, and since no one else is interrogating, I guess it falls to me. Please take heed that these questions are rhetorical, and that I pose them merely out of curiosity. The rest of this posting is written under the assumption that the evidence presented today is real--so feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. But for you Smoking Gun enthusiasts: 1) Are we really dealing with credible sources here? Is there any reason to believe convicted criminals like Victor Conte and Greg Anderson, or shady biochemists who are basically the sports world equivalent of psychologists to the stars (you know, the ones that prescribe morphine for overtiredness)? 2) Isn't there something a little odd about sealed grand jury testimonies getting leaked to the press here? And about mysterious wiretaps suddenly becoming public knowledge? Is J. Edgar Hoover strutting around in pumps and a corset, pulling the strings here? Did Deep Throat want one more chance to shun the limelight?

OK, enough. Let's get serious. For argument's sake, let's assume that at least most of the evidence linking Bonds to steroid usage is true. What does this mean for Bonds' legacy? What are the implications for baseball in general?

Contrary to what self-aggrandizing talking asses like Skip Bayless (who, I might note, falls just short of being the Anti-Christ thanks to a big goose-egg in the "brains" column) might have you think, not much. Not if you are objective enough to consider all the facts, and self-reliant enough not to have the media make your arguments for you.

How can I say such a thing, you ask?

Let me begin by recounting a treasured quote. I was in high school--probably a sophomore, maybe a junior--and Poet Laureate Derek Walcott was a guest speaker. After reading several poems and discussing his craft, Mr. Walcott opened the floor for questions. A brash and often argumentative student (though not an unlikable one--hope you're well, KC) raised his hand and asked what made the poems of Derek Walcott, Poet Laureate, better than his. And Walcott's immortal response? "Poetry is not a democracy: it's a hierarchy. Dante is better than me; and I am better than you."

I'm sure you appreciate the parallel. Though he doubtless meant for it to be applied to things far loftier and more significant than professional sports, Thomas Jefferson did supply a pretty good description of baseball when he coined the phrase "an aristocracy of talent." Just look at the salaries players make (but throw out young stars pre-arbitration, faded former stars, and Eric Milton). Baseball--and indeed all professional sports--has always been predicated on the existence of a meritocracy. The best young players make it through all sorts of elimination rounds (high school and collegiate basebal, minor leagues, etc.), find their way to the majors, and then separate themselves into any number of talent-based strata. Duh, right?

Here's the point: Every so often, a player comes along and dominates a sport to such a degree that his (or her--Annika, take a bow) performance lands completely off the charts of the usual meritocracy matrix. Over the swingset. When Babe Ruth hit more homers than any other team in the American League back in his historic 1927 season, there was simply no way to place his accomplishments in context. Ruth was in a class by himself--hell, he went to school alone.

We'll never see another Babe Ruth. His immense talent, introduced into a sport still in its infancy and capable of a complete overhaul (i.e. replacing speed and carefully-placed hitting with power), is a combination that simply cannot happen anymore: the pro sports have already refined themselves to a point where no new innovation can have such utterly revolutionary effects. Nevertheless, in the past 80 years or so we've seen a small handful of athletes who have approached Ruth's level of dominance over his peers. Wayne Gretzky became synonymous with hockey, and played at a level that must have seemed utterly impossible to his peers. Michael Jordan stood out from an extremely talented era as a man head and shoulders above the rest.

And Barry Bonds has made every single other player in baseball look human, while he himself has elevated his game to a place we haven't seen since The Babe. (Phew--many thanks if you're still with me!) I'm going to resist the urge to crunch numbers here, and just tell you to heed the advice of the Ol' Perfessor, Casey Stengel, and go look it up. Go have a look at Barry's on-base percentage totals or his slugging-percentage totals, and compare them to his competition. We're talking gaps big enough for David Wells to hide in here--gaps that haven't been seen since Ruth.

The point isn't that Barry Bonds is a great player. It isn't even that he's the best player in baseball. The issue at hand is that Barry Bonds is way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY better than his peers--better to the extent that you simply can't write him off as some pill-popping monstrousity who has cheated baseball and its fans. And here's where I have to ask you to use a little common sense.

In an insular community such as that of the professional athlete (paralelled in insularity only by the higher-paid members of the Screen Actor's Guild and members of NAMBLA), don't you think that one player's professional secrets will soon become everyone's? Did Olympic high-jumpers take long to flop along with Dick Fosbury? Did NBA (and ABA) players resist the allure of the Sky-Hook once Kareem dropped a few on them? Did miniature revolutions in strength training and conditioning take long to trickle down from one athlete to another in any sport? Can it be that other baseball players, witnessing Barry's ridiculous feats, have resisted the temptation to follow in his footsteps?

Of course not. We all know that other big-name players like Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and Rafael Palmeiro, as well as small fries like Ryan Franklin, Jorge Piedra, and Alex Sanchez, have been sampling the wares of Mother Nature's not-quite-right-in-the-head sister. But what's odd is that so many of us stop there. I guess I can understand that many people are probably unwilling to look too deeply into all of this, because it does seem to besmirch the game we all love so well. But since I plan on dispelling--or at any rate, lessening--any such besmirchment in the second half of this piece, let's all hold hands and ask together: "What about the Silent Majority?" (Yes, a Richard Nixon reference in a piece about tarnished legacies was too much to pass up.)

Come on, think about it. What are the chances that steroid use was confined to the "1%" tossed about like pixie dust by Emperor Bud? If you really think about it, it becomes clear that you have to dispense with the "Barry is on drugs and it gives him an unfair advantage over everybody else" model, and reorient yourself to a new "Barry is on drugs and so are a lot of other players--and he still makes them look like a bunch of Darwin Award winners" method of understanding. And even if the first model is accurate (and I think that's about as likely as O.J. Simpson making a comeback as a CutCo salesman--but this being America, I'll leave the door open in both cases), steroids alone are nowhere near enough of a crutch to account for how Barry has toyed with the game during his career. He's just too good to explain it all away with such a shortsighted explanation.

And with that, dearest readers, I must bid you good night for the evening. Hours have gone by and I've only begun to unfold my full argument--but you'll have to wait until I make my really compelling points until next time. In the meantime, Go Giants--I promise I'll get back to some on-the-field discussions one of these days. See you soon!