How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Needle

By Andrew Lipsett
I know I promised a Lester scouting report today, but I?ve decided there?s something much more important going on in baseball right now, and I?d be remiss if I didn?t talk about it a little.
I’ve had a bit of time now to digest the entire Jason Grimsley saga, which may – given the way its going – turn out to be the single biggest moment in the steroid/PED debate’s history (fellow all-baseball blog Double Play Depth has been doing an excellent job of covering this story, in case you haven?t checked it out). This story could wind up being bigger than Canseco’s book, bigger than the congressional hearings, bigger than Bonds… and here’s why: Grimsley, in cooperation with law enforcement, is naming real names, and he isn’t doing it in an effort to get publicity.
When this is done, we’re going to realize several things. First, we’re going to realize that the number of players who are untouched by this debate – be it roids, HGH, or amphetamines – is preposterously small. Second, we’re going to realize that the “steroid era” never really began, and never really ended; it’s just the latest in a long series of chemical enhancements, one which now may be supplanted by HGH and hormonal treatments. Third, we’re going to have to realize – once again – that the only way to appreciate this game is as a game. Heroes, villains, good guys, bad guys, morality in general can’t be a part of this, because on some level there are no good guys.
We strip away our morals in baseball. What’s the definition of a good guy in this sport? Plays hard, loves his wife, gives a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars he earns to a charity that provides baseball gloves to inner city kids, and names the foundation after himself. Maybe he believes in God a whole bunch. Players like that are what we call ‘heroes’ in baseball. People like that are what I call ‘people’ in real life.
Players with problems that come to public light – players who cheat on their wives (and are found out), players who take drugs (either for business or pleasure), players with a chip on their shoulder – these are the bad guys in baseball. These are the guys that get booed and ridiculed. In real life? They’re your friends and neighbors. They?re your co-workers. They?re people.
What’s my point? We elevate ballplayers too much. We lionize them for the smallest graces, and damn them for everyday infractions. If society worked the way baseball works, every one of us would get booed when we walked into work. It’s in the nature of sport, obviously; it’s our own updated version of the war hero, for a country that doesn’t have war heroes anymore. Baseball, like all the major sports, is gladiatorial. There’s drama and sacrifice and glory to it, and that elevates players. But who is a baseball player, really?
I was reading an article in the NY Times new ‘Play’ magazine the other day, and saw this article, about 12 year old Jarrod Petree. Remember his name, because in 6 years, maybe it will be called in a draft. When it is, he’ll say all the right things: he’ll be a bright-eyed 18 year old kid who’s just thrilled to be selected and can’t wait to learn and hopefully he can help the big club someday and garsh darn, and oh yeah he just signed a 6.5 million dollar bonus. But you read into it a bit and here’s what you find: a kid who has been literally bred for baseball. Groomed for it. His life is devoted to it, at age 12 – and not the way yours or mine was, where we pretended to be standing in Fenway in the 9th inning and the bases loaded when in reality we were in our backyards with wiffle ball bats two hours before dinner. Jarrod Petree’s life is about one thing: playing professional baseball. And if puberty and girls and parental rebellion and drugs and cars and high school physics and whatever else don’t get in the way, he’ll do it. But when he gets there, and he becomes a superstar, and people marvel at what a great kid he is, we should all remember that he was engineered, like most players.
Even the ones from the Dominican and Venezuela, who we think of – due to regional bias more than anything else – as natural talents discovered in the rough are planned and practiced. Baseball is big business in these countries; baseball players should be listed as the biggest export. Do you have any idea how much money Dominican players pump back into their country? Pedro Martinez built churches and houses and schools. They are an economy there, and baseball is pressure. Same from the other direction; big league clubs have training academies in these countries, where they mold players starting at age 16. There is no natural talent anymore.
So, hyperbolically, I come back to my main point. We mythologize, because our subject is inherently dramatic. We still have these visions, of the corn-fed kid who can hit the ball a country mile, or the whiz-bang defensive SS on the dirt roads of Caracas, or the inner-city kid who leads a rough life when he’s not throwing a ball 99 mph against a brick wall. They don’t exist. The pressure on these kids, from an early age, is what creates our game, and the drug problems in it. It has done so from the moment it stopped being a game and started being an honest to god business; from the moment baseball wasn’t just a way for some guys to get paid during the summer and instead became a way to put your great-grandkids through college (or a suitable training academy). Yet, we talk about steroids and HGH as though they’re the problem, as though if we can just root out the bad seeds our game will be pure again.
Our game hasn?t been pure in a century, and if we root out all the players using greenies and steroids and HGH, Jarrod Petree will be playing major league baseball tomorrow. Let?s call this transformation ?How I learned to stop worrying and love the needle?, because it ain?t going away, folks. It can?t. It can?t because of us, in a lot of ways; we love the game too much, and are willing to pay too much, so that we can still indulge ourselves in the illusion of play. But the game is a business, and the players are ruthless. If there?s an edge, they?ll find it, and they?ll make a ton more money than you or I, and we would too. Jason Grimsley is going to show us that, and we should probably listen.