El Mundo Sports

There once was a time, in Major League Baseball, where a 20 home run year was worth noting and runners were stealing the next base at every opportunity.  Players would be satisfied with a sacrifice fly to the outfield if it meant a runner got to move to the next base or possibly cross home plate.  In the mid 1990’s, players started becoming noticeably more muscular and the ball starting flying out of the park at an astounding rate.  Once Mark McGuire broke the 37-year old, all-time home run record in 1998, and Barry Bonds shattered McGuire’s record in 2001, it was apparent the game had changed forever.  Or had it? 

In 2005, former major leaguer Jose Canseco, released his tell all book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, where he admitted to using steroids and implicated several other high profile major league players who supposedly did the same.  His book caused a feeding frenzy among writers, the media, fans and even former and current players.  It was obvious that there were issues with performance enhancing drugs in baseball that hadn’t been properly addressed to this point.  Canseco seemed to unlock a vault of secrets that could likely hurt the image of the game known as “America’s Pastime.”

In November of that same year, in the wake of the bomb Jose Canseco just dropped on the game, Major League Baseball, its players and owners agreed to a very strict performance enhancing drug policy.  This new agreement prohibits the use of certain drugs including steroids and human growth hormone.  According to ESPN, the policy states that for the first offense, a player receives a 50 game suspension.  After the second offense, the player receives a 100 game suspension, and when a player tests positive for a third time, he is banned from the game for life.  In addition to the new policy, former Senator George Mitchell released an investigative report on the players who have taken, or were thought to have taken, performance-enhancing drugs prohibited by Major League Baseball.  According to Sports Illistrated, this 20 month, 409-page investigative report implicated 88 Major League Baseball players including popular players such as Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte to have allegedly used steroids or HGH.  It was clear to all involved that baseball needed a make-over and it could come at the expense of some former and current players.   So, the question remains, has the game and its image been tainted beyond repair?

Major League Baseball’s more rigid drug policy, coupled with George Mitchell’s report, has and will continue to change the game significantly, and eventually will cause baseball to be played the way it used to be when players worked more on fundamentals like bunting, base-stealing and situational hitting.  The most glaring affect of the new drug policy is the decline of the home run in recent years.  Based on home run statistics from answerbag.com, home run totals increased 72% from 1994 to 2000, and stayed steady until the 2005 season when the steroid policy was introduced.  Since then, home run totals have dropped over 9%.  In up-coming seasons, fans can expect to see more situational hitting such as a squeeze bunt or a sacrifice to move a runner to the next base because players just simply won’t be able to hit the ball out of the park at the rate McGuire, Sosa and Bonds once did.

Although, none of these situations are considered as sexy as a towering, 450 ft blast over the Green Monster at Fenway or a splash in McCovey Cove in San Fransisco, baseball fans are still showing up at their favorite ballpark as attendance records continue to be broken every year.  Parents, kids, old-timers, the average spectator and season ticket holders arrive at major league ballparks by the thousands and have not given up hope that the face of their beloved game can be restored.

So, what does this say for the image of baseball in this country?  It’s still America’s game, and no “juiced” player or used syringe will change that.

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