complicity

This is a bit after the fact, but I was watching a SportsCenter broadcast about Barry Bonds inability to be signed with a new team and how he may very well be done in baseball. Then the pundits went on to pontificate as to how Bonds had brought this on himself, blah, blah, blah.

Now, before going any further, let me be clear; I am not a fan of Barry Bonds. I never really was. Always respected his ability on the field, always thought he was kind of a jerk off the field. I am not defending any criminal action on his part or the part of others in baseball.

That being said, there's this little word that keeps creeping into my mind...complicity, the act of participating in some kind of offense or crime, assisting in some way with a criminal activity. I've been thinking since all of this steroids stuff broke a couple of years ago how complicit I and most of us baseball fans probably are in all of this mess. Let's step back a bit.

It's 1998 and suddenly Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are in a heated battle for the National League (and Major League) lead for home runs. It seems by the All Star Break that one or both might very well have a shot at breaking Roger Maris' long time standing record of 61 home runs in a season. We've been waiting for this for sometime. Guys like Cecil Fielder flirted with the 50 homerun barrier and even that guy named Matt Williams might have made a run at that record had the 1994 season not been shortened by a strike. And then Sammy and Mark c0me along and we all sit and look at the papers day after day, looking at their side by side comparisons with Maris, the pace, the projections. We love it.

I remember where I was when McGwire broke Maris' record in 1998; sitting in the living room of my apartment in Ohio. I remember what I did immediately after he hit it, I called my dad. We celebrated, talked about all kinds of dumb stuff, we loved the moment and a good chunk of America did the same. Mark and Sammy had a good repoire and soon Sammy passed the barrier as well. In fact Mark ended the season with 70 home runs. Sammy with 66. Never mind that until that point Mark had not hit more than 52. Sammy, never more than 40. We just bought into it, because let's face it, homeruns are fun and offense is too and MLB had a heck of a time digging itself out of the 1994 strike hole. 1998 returned MLB to its previous glory, bringing families together around the TV to watch one of the most significant records fall. Was anyone rooting against these guys? Was anyone talking about steroids then?

Then in 2001, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs. That's right 73. This guy hadn't hit more than 49 in a season previously but we didn't care. He kept parking them in McCovey Cove and we loved it. We ate it up. He was as dominant a player as there was in the 90's but evidently he still had something left for us, 73 home runs.

And then, lo and behold, Barry may have used steroids. Mark and Sammy too. Oh yeah, and those 40+ homerun years of Rafael Palmeiro 1998-2001, possibly steroids too. Wow. Really? Odd how all of these guys had these surges in power right around the same time. Even stranger still how Major League Baseball basically had no effective steroid policy during this time period, even though other major sports were already testing for it (and the Olympics for that matter). Amazing how it seems that so many turned a blind eye to these things as we were caught up in the fervor of broken records, big offense, and forearms the size of tree trunks.

Now, you and I, MLB for that matter, are not directly responsible for these and other idiots taking steroids, HGH, or any other drug. But let's face facts. MLB didn't have a policy on these things because to do so would have harmed ratings and income. They needed this surge of excitement and looked the other way when it became very apparent that some of these men might actually explode from the sheer amount of muscle contained in their skin. And we fans weren't much better. We got swept up in the momentum, in the press, in the excitement. And that's not necessarily totally wrong but it frustrates me now to see all of us turning our nose up at these same players, looking down in judgment upon them.

I did not make Barry Bonds do what he did. I did not cause him to commit a crime. I did not cause him to use steroids (and by the way he has yet to be convicted of using them, though it seems obvious that he did). But if I get carried away in the hubbub surrounding his situation. If I buy tickets, tune into his games, listen to SportsCenter tout his accomplishments (which is all they did until a few seasons ago), then I am somewhat complicit in all of this. We should be careful before we judge to harshly these guys who gave us what most of us wanted.