The doping sin that continues to taint the legends

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Last week was a mixed one for former athletes, with Texas coursing through their veins.

Lance Armstrong was born there and Roger Clemens grew up there. Both reached the top of their respective sports and subsequently stayed there longer than was reasonably expected.

Armstrong the cyclist was dragged back under the microscope of the US Anti-Doping Agency on Friday, just days after Clemens, the pitcher nicknamed The Rocket, wriggled out of the hands of the US government, found not guilty of perjury.

To cut a long, grimy story short, allegations made by a former player and admitted steroid user, Jose Conseco, as well as even more damning testimony from former New York Yankees trainer Brian McNamee in the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, forced Clemens to appear in front of a Congressional committee in 2008 and deny the accusations.

It was that impassioned defence of his career — which included two World Series while at the Yankees, as well as stints at Boston, Toronto and Houston over the course of 23 seasons — that subsequently led to the perjury charges and a potentially lengthy prison sentence as punishment.

Last Monday after a farcical mistrial followed by a second trial which was only marginally less absurd, Clemens was acquitted. The government was flummoxed by an inability to find a jury without some preconception of the big Ohio-born Major Leaguer.

Nor did it help their case that super lawyer Rusty Hardin was as lethal as his client was on the mound in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“It’s been a hard five years,” Clemens said on the courthouse steps last Monday. “I put a lot of hard work into that career.”

All the old debates about the steroids era and its implications on the Hall of Fame were wheeled out for a punchdrunk public who would rather their taxes be spent on fighting crime which has targeted more tangible victims.

Without extending his career illicitly, Clemens would have cruised into the Hall of Fame next year at the first time of asking (five years after retirement). But instead the voters have a dilemma.

Baseball writer Ken Rosenthal, one of the many journalists who decide annually which players are worthy having their careers honoured at the museum in Cooperstown, NY, has a novel and harsh approach to the tough decisions that lie ahead.

“I vote ‘no’ on virtually every player from the steroid era as a way of distinguishing them from the greats of the past. Is that an unfair penalty for candidates thought to be non-users? Yes, but all of the players were part of a union that had the power to implement change.”

Critics of Rosenthal have blasted his misplaced moralising about a system in which everyone was implicit, including a future US president.

At its peak in the 1990s, it went all the way from former Texas Rangers owner, George W Bush, across to his fellow ball club chiefs up to those running the league and on down to the dressing room staff who must have swept countless vials and syringes under the carpet.

And yes, of course, the players themselves, both the users and the clean alike.

Everyone wanted the big-hitting drama and the sold-out ballparks which those star sluggers inspired.

We’ve all said it at one stage or another: “let them at it”. It will be said again at the Grand Départ of the Tour de France in Liège on Saturday.

To which the counter argument is that no one should really wish for a battle between top chemists at some nondescript laboratories.

To maintain a flawless Baseball Hall of Fame, where a player’s character isn’t simply judged on whether they cheated or not but also on integrity and sportsmanship, would mean the retroactive demotion of the vile Detroit outfielder Ty Cobb, along with the legendary pitchers who admitted to ball tampering over the years: Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton and Whitey Ford.

Even the saintly centre fielder Willie Mays used amphetamines.

A fascinating piece about the real tragedy of all this appeared in Sports Illustrated last month. It followed the fortunes of four young pitchers and team-mates who tried to make it into the big leagues 20 years ago. Only one of them, Dan Naulty, made it. He was the one who ‘juiced’.

He was also the one who battled alcoholism and tried to commit suicide.

When the next Hall of Fame balloting begins, this polarising and fascinating debate will split baseball writers and fans once again. It’s an old point but one that has been reaffirmed by Roger Clemens’ trip through the courts.

Part of the reason we love sport is because wherever we find ourselves, we expect justice to manifest itself in skill and endurance.

We can almost rely on baseball again but unfortunately its history will always be tainted.

* john.w.riordan@gmail.com

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