PROBING THE JUICERS

So, at long last, Major League Baseball is going to conduct an investigation into illegal steroid use by players such as Barry Bonds. If the book Game of Shadows had not been published it is unlikely MLB would have taken this step.

Game of Shadows details with some precision steroid use by numerous professional athletes, among them Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and the biggest fish of all, Barry Bonds.

It certainly doesn’t take a chemist or a positive drug test to realize that something was up with Barry Bonds. If you look at photographs of the young Bonds next to the Bonds that emerged in 1998, you almost wonder if you are looking at the same man. Bonds transformed himself from lean, even scrawny, to mammoth – at an age when men typically lose muscle mass. Bonds claimed he never “knowingly” touched illegal substances and earned his fabulous physique through hard work in the gym.

Game of Shadows makes Bonds’s claim look ridiculous. In the book Bonds comes across as surly, arrogant, egotistical, petty, jealous, tyrannical, in short, a real asshole, coddled and tolerated his entire life because of his immense talent. His on-field achievements the last several seasons are other-worldly enough to warrant a full-scale probe. How does a player who never hit more than 49 homers in a season suddenly smack 73? How does a player reach a peak of excellence never seen before at a time in his career when most players the same age are slowing down or in outright decline?

Henry Aaron never hit more than 50 homers in a season. Aaron’s remarkable offensive numbers accumulated over the years of his career, never spiking way up or trending way down. With Bonds it’s the opposite. From 1998 on, the year it is suspected he began using steroids, Bonds’s statistics went through the roof, past above average, past great, all the way to immortal.

I love the game of baseball and I want to know if the numbers put up since 1998 – the year Sosa and McGwire dueled for the single season homer record – are the result of talent or talent plus performance enhancing drugs. No single player, no matter how great or how surly, should stand above the rules of the game. Major League Baseball’s steroid testing policy to this point has been laughable, a sham, and Bud Selig and Donald Fehr have acted like wimps. If players are dirty, they should be fined, suspended or banned from the game.

It’s past time for Major League Baseball to step up on the steroid issue.