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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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May 17, 2007 A Matter of Ethics From Major League Baseball Players to Just You and Me -- the Same Principles of Honor Apply … or At Least They Should by Donald Croft Brickner
At this writing, prospective Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, defendably one of the top five best positions players to ever play baseball, is 10 home runs shy of tying Hank Aaron for the most home runs ever hit in a career. One more after that -- also likely to happen sometime during this summer, in the 2007 MLB regular season -- and Mister Bonds will claim the title of all-time Home Run King. Only his achievement is likely to have an asterisk applied to the accomplishment, intended to not only demean Bonds' new record, but to shame its record-holder: The accusations against him yet officially unproven, Bonds will still be the poster boy for cheap home runs hit during the "Steroids Era"* (note the asterisk). He's hardly the only player accused of cheating in this fashion over the last 15 years or so -- home run hitters make the most money in the game, by the way -- but his peers aren't on the threshold of claiming the all-time home run record, the most cherished and awe-drenched record in pro sports. Outside of central California, however, hardly anyone is cheering. In fact, as Bonds closes in on both tying and breaking the record, most people, fans and sportswriters (and MLB management) alike, are cringing. There are sure to be those who, with or without formal proof, will want to see Bonds banned from entry into the Hall of Fame after his career ends, in fact. Such naysayers' arguments may well successfully be taken very seriously, too. There is a lot of anecdotal and speculative evidence to suggest Bonds, along with many of the players at this stage of his career, may have artificially bulked up his aging body in order to turn fly ball outs to the warning tracks into home runs. Had he been cheating, how many of Bonds' homers might have just been outs without the purported power body enhancements, one can't help but wonder? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? Forget the blind spots and the hypocrisy: one of the top five best baseball players in history could get banned from his sport's Hall of Fame for cheating … not throughout his entire lengthy career, mind you, but just over the last third of it. Not to be lost in Bonds' situation: maybe he cheated -- or maybe, as he consistently insists, he didn't. Or, at least he didn't cheat "much." Hold that thought. One big question is: does the Bonds controversy reflect our culture's distaste for cheating -- or rather does it more accurately reflect a distaste for cheating badly, and flagrantly? To that end, are there degrees in cheating? Apparently there are. You'll not see players banned from the Hall of Fame for using corked bats, throwing (saliva-enhanced) spit balls, or popping a career's worth of "greenies" (one of a variety of "speeds") into their mouths before game time. Greenies are amphetamines -- which, by the way, are illegal, too, unless under a physician's prescription to treat the likes of narcolepsy, attention deficit disorder or appetite suppression … none of which historically have had a whole lot to do with annual-multi-million-dollared athletes who run, throw, (sometimes) catch, sweat and grunt on baseball diamonds. Many of you know greenies, or any other form of amphetamines, are banned this season, with penalties for testing positive: an initial violation requires mandatory random testing thereafter; a second violation, an automatic 25-game suspension; a third violation … well, it just keeps getting worse for the player. Ultimately, just two more violations will end his career. Amphetamines can also seriously debilitate athletes' bodies -- even arguably more severely than those of the vastly more sensationally-hyped steroids, several drug researchers have lately insisted. Thing is, a wide-eyed second baseman on speed tends to be a lot less troubling than a muscle-bound, sluggishly and ploddingly defensive outfielder on steroids. Why that's so isn't fully clear. A lot of major leaguers have said speed merely helps tired players to play up to their abilities, while steroids use helps hitters exceed them. It's not a good argument. Improving performance is at the core of both. Regardless, players adapt. They have always sought an "edge," and they very possibly always will -- at least as long as contemporary Western culture stands pat in its moral allowances. Regular coffee, along with a thick, sweet liquid called "Dominican coffee," is now commonly offered in clubhouses before games to help make up for the loss of greenies. But isn't "having an edge" and cheating very nearly exactly the same thing? Whoa. We heard some groans out there. Briefly, too, on this business of artificial enhancements: there have been admitted alcohol abusers throughout baseball history who admitted to playing the game drunk on occasions. Even when those players later "came out" and admitted their dependencies, it was perceived by them then a mostly personal matter, while we, the fans and sportswriters, continued to look the other way. Anyway, what the hell: aren't MLB baseball players, like rock stars, entertainers, first and foremost? They play what's just a game, after all, and we pay big bucks to watch them. That's entertainment. As an aside: similarly, chewing tobacco was commonplace in the majors back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, before its life-threatening and physically deforming effects became well-known. Were those chaws intended to make the player look cool? -- or was its chemical makeup intended (by players) to artificially, if unconsciously, upgrade the players' physical and emotional condition in an attempt to better perform? So it's clear where we're headed here: Steroids = drugs. Amphetamines = drugs. Alcohol = drug. Caffeine = drug. Nicotine = drug. All are mood-altering. All can be addictive. And all can have deeply serious, physically-debilitating consequences when abused over the long-haul. Yes, groaners -- they can. And all are used by ballplayers, for the most part, to chemically achieve an edge. Thus, when a baseball player achieves an edge through ingesting mood-altering chemicals, then, that ballplayer is cheating. This isn't about finger-pointing. It's a simple matter of applied logic. What do achieving a competitive edge through drugs and throwing spit balls/stepping to the plate with corked bats have in common, we might add? Forget degrees. In baseball terms, they all qualify as cheating. Cheating, cheating, cheating. One short diversion here, regarding the concept of achieving home run records: Hank Aaron, MLB's current all-time home run champion, played the brunt of his fabulous and highly-respected career playing for the rarely competitive Atlanta Braves in the 60s, 70s and 80s … in a tiny stadium that was, for a time, of an ilk referred to as a "bandbox:" Atlanta's fences were so short distance-wise (…how short were they?), the former Strat-O-Matic Baseball Game Company commonly allowed home runs, under stadium conditions, with rolls (of two dice) of 2 through 10 (or permutations-wise, 33 chances out of 36) to be considered home runs. Strat-O-Matic Baseball (no longer in business, sadly) considered fence depths a significant factor -- as might we all. Maybe, as should we all. How bad was that for the statistically-determined pitchers' player cards? The hitters' chances were identical to those for "rolling a home run" in Denver, back when pitching for the expansion Colorado Rockies was responsible for either maiming or ending the careers of countless talented starting pitchers who, no matter what they tried, couldn't manage to keep enough pitched balls inside Coors Field. Strat-O-Matic's statistically-substantial stadium (and its complex player) ratings notwithstanding, Hank Aaron himself was the best-known member of a trio of players who were the only three teammates in baseball history (!) to hit more than 40 home runs in one season for the same team: the 1973 Atlanta Braves, whose season-ending 76 wins failed to earn them even a .500 record. (Aaron hit 40, third baseman Darrell Evans hit 41, and second baseman Dave Johnson, who up to that time in his career was not even known for power numbers, hit 43.) By way of comparison, during (the then-younger) Barry Bonds' single season home run record of 73 home runs, Strat-O-Matic, in one of its last annual dice-rolling game production seasons, rated the Giants' home stadium (whatever its name was back then) as the most difficult major league ballpark in which to hit home runs: thus, for Bonds' player card to get a home run on a roll that brought his home park into play, one would have to roll a 2 alone -- i.e., only one chance in 36, dice permutations-wise -- for a home run to be called in right field …where, being a left-handed batter, Bonds had hit most of his San Francisco home runs. Put much, much more simply: Aaron spent most of his career batting in a small stadium, fences-wise, while much of Bonds' career (particularly in this final third) was spent playing half of his games -- the ones played at home -- in what would easily be labeled a "pitcher's park." Yes, yes -- both of the outfield fence dimensions in Atlanta and San Francisco have been changed over the years, but it has always been far easier to hit home runs in Atlanta than in San Francisco. Always. In any case -- to what extent are stadiums granted deference when it comes to influencing all-time home run records, as statistics, in baseball's Hall of Fame? (Or, say … hitting more lively tightly-wound baseballs today versus yesteryear?) Zero. Nada. Nunca. So why do we fans take these records so ridiculously seriously, in the first place? The stated comments here are not intended to defend Bonds as a prospective cheater (allowing it's proven that he ever really was to any meaningful extent -- check out the Yankees' Jason Giambi, one of Bonds' peers, for home runs-per-at-bats both before and after his admitted steroids usage, for instance, and you'll discover they're very similar; ergo, big rippled bodies don't necessarily translate into bomb-bastic statistics … even though sometimes they do). And, as far as that goes, neither is the intent here to favor cheating … although if some cheating is allowed (or more accurately, consciously ignored), and other cheating isn't, then what possible message is to be gleaned … other than this: Cheating is okay. Just don't get caught. You don't think our children haven't ingested this conclusion, and learned it well, in their formative years? They have. And we all know it. We all know it. To what extent does this kind of "denial" serve a healthy society? All that's been proven is that, through cheating (whatever a methodology, whatever the setting), is that the playing field has been leveled to allow the most ineffective, unqualified, irresponsible and even most despicable among us to rise up into positions of key influence(s) in a culture that's otherwise apparently strangling itself because of it. Look: cheating is cheating. If we actually lived in a random, uncaring universe, such behavior might actually be loosely defendable -- crimes of all sorts, truly. Ethics are a tough call in such a setting. If behavior has no point or purpose, why not behave badly? But we don't, and our consciousnesses haven't entered into this physical setting simply to flail, and rail. This argument has been pitched in these treatises many times. Baseball, which might be viewed as a microcosm of sorts for our society at large, cheats even when it doesn't realize it's doing it. Are certain pitchers, for instance, awarded bigger strike zones by umpires than others? Are catchers' signs being stolen by opposing baserunners at virtually every opportunity? It goes on and on. If one intends to dump the steroids and amphetamines (and in this instance, too, punish the baseball players using them), then dump the spit balls and the corked bats -- and punish those players seriously, as well. Cheating is cheating. Or, keep them all, and simply acknowledge what we already know: we are of a culture of determined, unabashed cheaters … and either we don't care about that, or we're so scared, cynical or angry most of the time we've simply lost our moral compasses. Probably both emotionally-rooted states are true. How bad does this blindness behind our hypocrisy get? Most baseball fans who read this would laugh at the relative non-severity of spitters and stolen catchers' signals as even an issue. That's how deeply ingrained cheating has become in our slippery slope culture. Like casually stating "white lies," we now also blithely practice "white cheating." Left unattended, both character defects always gravitate toward the black. They always do. We all know that, too. As it is in baseball, so it is in our society.
After his military tour, for which he received an honorable discharge, he pursued his lifelong interest in the study of metaphysics/ontology, and finally received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Maine-Orono in 1992. He later attended graduate studies at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana and in the M.F.A. creative writing program at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has written an unproduced 3-act play, "Revelations at Mount Rushmore," which remains on file at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, California. He is also more than halfway through completing his first novel. Visit his MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/donaldcroftbrickner
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Philosophy Resource Center Main Page |
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Donald
Croft Brickner has lived in roughly half of the
states in America, working countless jobs in a
variety of occupations. Prior to serving as an
enlisted journalist in the U.S. Navy during the
Vietnam era, he majored in music theory in college
and later received an associate's degree in music
education.
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