The Race to Break Maris' Record

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There are two things I will always remember about the summer of 1998 — the worst heat wave in nearly 20 years that gripped most of the country and the duel between St. Louis' Mark McGwire and Chicago's Sammy Sosa to see who would break Roger Maris' 37–year–old single–season home run record.

(Maris, as baseball historians will tell you, broke Babe Ruth's single–season home run record in 1961, but he benefited from the fact that baseball seasons were 162 games by then, not 154 as they were in the Bambino's day. And for many, many years, Maris' record had an asterisk next to it in the record book because it was not achieved in 154 games.)

The home run chase made that summer of '98 memorable. Well, the heat wave did, too. It was the worst heat wave I've seen since 1980. But the McGwire–Sosa duel was truly riveting. If one had to stay inside because it was so miserably hot outside, watching SportsCenter for the latest update in the home run chase was worth one's time. And there was almost always a daily update.

In hindsight, one must wonder if the '98 home run chase would have happened at all if not for steroids.

In fact, McGwire did concede at the time that he used an over–the–counter substance that had been banned by, among others, the NFL — but not (at that time) major league baseball.

(McGwire was slipperier on his use of other substances.)

So my feeling is that the '98 season should have an asterisk next to it — or maybe it would be more appropriate to have a little syringe instead — in the record books.

But it doesn't, and it probably won't so 1998 will stand as the year that McGwire broke Maris' record. McGwire was eclipsed three years later by Barry Bonds, who has his own unanswered questions about steroid use, but 15 years ago today, McGwire was on his way to wrapping up the home run–hitting season of a lifetime.

("These long–ball extravaganzas were putting fans back in the seats," Greg Stejskal wrote recently in the New York Daily News, "but the cost was the integrity of the game.")

McGwire hit 70 home runs that year. No one before — and only one man since — hit that many home runs in a single season. (That year, in fact, Bonds hit slightly more than half as many home runs as McGwire.)

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That summer, I was working for a trade magazine that served the imprinted sportswear industry. Part of my job was attending trade shows in different parts of the country, and I recall attending a show in Chicago. Exhibitors at these shows were often regional representatives of licensed sports products, and major league baseball was a hot (pardon the expression) commodity in Chicago that summer.

At these shows, I would walk around the hall and sit down to interview exhibitors who caught my eye. As a former sports editor, I was particularly interested in these sports licenses. Major league baseball had a crippling strike a few years earlier, and there had been talk that baseball's popularity was on the decline.

The McGwire–Sosa home run derby was the first thing to breathe some life back into the sport. It was baseball's goose that laid the golden egg.

And the exhibitors were all too eager to talk about McGwire and Sosa — but none, that I can recall, had any interest in talking about steroids.

If they were concerned that I might quote them on the subject in one of my articles, they worried needlessly. I only asked because I'm a sports fan, and I like baseball (although not as much as I did when I was a boy).

Maris' record finally fell 15 years ago today, about three weeks before the scheduled end of the season. McGwire had broken the record in far fewer games than it took Maris — or Ruth, for that matter. That should have raised some red flags.

But, like the exhibitors I spoke to that summer, no one wanted to talk about steroids. Not the teams' management or coaches or players — or fans, for that matter. They wanted to talk about all the home runs, not the steroids that even a casual observer could conclude had made them possible.

The thought of steroids definitely crossed my mind in the summer of '98, but, as I say, I never found anyone who was interested in talking about that angle.

Perhaps now those people have learned that there is a frightful price to be paid for ignoring an approaching storm. It's like ignoring a persistent toothache, hoping it will go away. (In the words of writer Aldous Huxley, "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.")

But then I remember — that's the kind who never learn from the past.

Who IS That Masked Man?

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"It's insane to think that the fastest woman in the world has served time for lying about doping, or that the greatest home run hitter of all time will be sentenced on a similar charge in June and the most dominant pitcher of his era is about to go on trial for not telling Congress the truth. It's getting so hard to believe what we see is real anymore from our uber–humans."

Mike Wise
Washington Post
May 24, 2011

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Greg Couch of The Sporting News wrote a thought–provoking piece the other day.

He suggested that cyclist Lance Armstrong's fall from grace over the now apparently credible doping allegations that he has blithely dismissed in the past will be greater than Barry Bonds' — primarily because Bonds, who has never been a fan favorite, didn't have far to fall while Armstrong, adored by millions, did.

Couch wrote on the assumption that the allegations against Armstrong are true — and perhaps they are.

Personally, I have never been an advocate of assumption. Sure, we all do it — to a degree — from time to time. We can't help it. We're human, and we form opinions based on the information we have. That information may be nothing more than speculation, but it is what it is and we reach conclusions based on it.

But I am a journalist, and I have found that journalists tend to be particularly sensitive to how words in their articles may be perceived.

(They can be incredibly casual about the language they use in their daily lives — and astonishingly naive about its ramifications — but most of the journalists I have known would bend over backwards before allowing anything that smacked of opinion to invade their work — unless, of course, they were writing an opinion column.)

As a journalism student and then as a practicing journalist, I was constantly told, by my instructors and my editors, to be as neutral as possible in the language I used.

This was especially important, I was told, when dealing with legal proceedings.

If someone was on trial, I was told, nothing I wrote should suggest, in any way, that he/she already had been found guilty. Until a verdict was handed down, the defendant was accused or alleged.

And even if that person was convicted, future articles should only say that he/she was a convicted murderer or a convicted arsonist or whatever. To simply say he/she was a murderer or an arsonist implied, however slightly, that the author of the article believed the correct verdict had been reached.

And juries, as everyone knew, could be wrong.

"Convicted," as I understood it, placed the onus on someone else. I didn't have to label him or her a murderer or an arsonist. A jury had already done that.

Now, make no mistake. I like Armstrong better than Bonds. Much better. And most sports fans I know would agree with that.

(Well, perhaps not the ones I know who live in San Francisco or Pittsburgh. But that is a really small subgroup of my friends.)

I am not — and never have been — a fan of cycling. Neither am I a huge baseball fan. I used to follow it closely when I was a boy. My interest has waned as an adult, but I still follow it.

But my feelings about Armstrong and Bonds transcend their sports. I like or dislike each based on the kind of person I think he is.

And Couch's column simply emphasizes an important distinction — in my mind, at least.

Bonds' conviction merely confirmed the kind of person I always believed him to be.

The allegations against Armstrong — and the journalist in me insists on pointing out, once again, that these are simply allegations, nothing has been proven — are troubling because they are at odds with the kind of person I believed Armstrong to be.

And that has made me think about sports heroes.

Bonds and Armstrong kind of represent the bad cop, good cop of sports, and most sports heroes seem to line up behind one or the other.

The bad guys in sports — the ones whose transgressions came as no real surprise to me — were guys like Pete Rose, Mike Tyson, Jose Canseco.

I probably wouldn't have made the cut for the Bonds jury. I would have had to admit that I never liked him, and I was suspicious of how quickly he bulked up. It wasn't much of a leap for me to believe the worst about him.

Armstrong is at the other extreme — the good guy, the selfless one, the cancer survivor trying to give back. The ones who whispered about him were jealous, we were told, or they were about to publish some tell–all book and were looking for publicity.

That, too, was easy to believe because Armstrong seemed like a genuinely good guy. But so did Roger Clemens — and (to me, anyway) Mark McGwire.

And that makes me wonder about some of the other guys who have been heroic figures in sports in the last 10–15 years.

Lebron James has already (in my opinion) proven himself to be a narcissist. Likewise, Kobe Bryant.

The ones who have raised eyebrows were the ones who were thought to be the all–American types — guys like Tiger Woods, who apparently cheated on his wife (many times), and Brett Favre, who didn't do anything illegal, just wore everybody down until even he could no longer rationalize returning to football.

Sports fans have to wonder who they can believe anymore.

My Last Post (Hopefully) on Barry Bonds

Yesterday, I wrote about Barry Bonds' obstruction conviction (and the mistrial that was declared on the perjury charges).

In that post, I said Bonds should not be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but I conceded that he would remain eligible. Based on his performances on the field, I believe Bonds stopped talking steroids when baseball inaugurated its anti–steroid policy — and, consequently, was never in violation of the policy.

Even so, it still doesn't seem fair to me that Bonds' records — which were achieved through artificial assistance that is now expressly prohibited and upon which the case for his enshrinement in the Hall will rest — should be allowed to stand.

It seems (at the very least) inconsistent to me that the same sport that would not recognize Roger Maris' single–season home run record without an asterisk (to indicate that it was achieved in 162 games, not 154) will one day welcome Bonds into its Hall of Fame with open arms, well aware that he never would have done most of the things he did if not for steroids.

But that does not bother me as much as it once would have because, as I said, I am indifferent to Bonds now.

I also expressed my hope that I would not feel compelled to write about Barry Bonds again, but, nevertheless, today I read a column by Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman, who defended Bonds' eventual (and, I presume, inevitable) enshrinement in the Hall.

In general, I have a lot of respect for Sports Illustrated. I'm a football fan, and I enjoy reading Peter King's writings on the subject for SI. And I have enjoyed reading the other writers on the staff over the years as well.

Beyond the writing, I appreciate the quality of SI's photography (no, I'm not talking about the swimsuit issue, although it is hard to ignore the quality of those photographs). It often captures the emotions that SI's writers — as gifted as they are — are unable to express adequately.

And Heyman is no wet–behind–the–ears sports writer, either. He covered the Yankees for Newsday. He was a baseball columnist for The Sporting News. He's been with Sports Illustrated since 2006.

I would not question Heyman's credentials or his knowledge. Thus, when he writes that he believes Bonds compiled enough Hall–worthy numbers before he began taking steroids (Heyman thinks Bonds started taking steroids in 2000; I think it was long before that) to make moot the point that "not all his numbers are legit," I accept that his conclusion is based on facts — and what Heyman believes to be facts.

"Unless a voter makes a moral judgment," Heyman writes, "the question voters need to ask ... is whether those drugs helped transform the player into a Hall of Famer."

In Bonds' case, Heyman doesn't think the drugs transformed him. He believes Bonds was already there. I disagree.

We disagree on some other points, too. For example, Heyman writes that Bonds is "one of the three greatest players I ever saw in his prime, along with Alex Rodriguez and Rickey Henderson."

I guess that surprised me more than anything else because Heyman is close to my age, and I can remember several ball players who I thought were better than any of those three.

Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were both far better home run hitters than Bonds or Rodriguez, and they had to bat against far better pitchers. So, too, did Mickey Mantle.

Lou Brock was a better base stealer than Rickey Henderson — who didn't have to steal against the cannon–armed catchers Brock did.

And I know Heyman is old enough to remember guys like Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Reggie Jackson, even Pete Rose (who is deservedly banned from baseball but also deserves to be mentioned in this conversation).

I could keep going, but I think the point is made.

As I said yesterday, though — and as I repeated today — I'm indifferent to Bonds now. I don't feel a need to quibble over when he started using steroids. I have my own opinion about that, and it is enough for me. I don't need to persuade others.

I agree when Heyman observes that the standards for enshrinement in the Hall are much lower than they are in a court of law, and that is as it should be. "Scoundrels and cheats are already in," he writes. "So are foul–tempered jerks. Bonds may be all three."

Granted. When the Hall of Fame balloting takes place, it is hardly the College of Cardinals choosing the next pope.

I would like to think, though, that when someone is chosen for a sports hall of fame, he is being chosen in part because he is the kind of person parents would like their children to emulate. He should be honored for his achievements, but it would be nice if he was not a scoundrel, a cheat, a foul–tempered jerk.

Unfortunately, though, if you make that a requirement, you'll have to eject some Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, who weren't great people but they were great ball players.

So the Hall of Fame isn't ideal. Neither, for that matter, is the criminal justice system.

The difference is that the criminal justice system does keep trying to improve.

Barry Bonds

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"Doctors ought to quit worrying about what ballplayers are taking. What players take doesn't matter. It's nobody else's business. The doctors should spend their time looking for cures for cancer. It takes more than muscles to hit homers. If all those guys were using stuff, how come they're not all hitting homers?"

Barry Bonds
2002

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I feel kind of indifferent to Barry Bonds.

There was a time, not too long ago, when Bonds was still playing — and being referred to, at every at–bat and often when he was in the field, as the home run king — and I wished the worst things I could for him.

No, I did not wish that he would die. I don't judge people for deciding to take their own lives, but if a person is alive (and, presumably, wishes to remain that way), I do not wish for his/her life to end.

But I did wish that his career would end, which it did.

And I did wish that he would be exposed for what he is — and he has.

Well, kinda sorta.

Bonds has been convicted of obstructing justice, but mistrials were declared on the perjury charges — all stemming, of course, from his use of steroids in his pursuit of the all–time home run record.

I never thought for a second that Bonds didn't take steroids.

OK, I admit I never liked him personally — but that is only because he is not likable. I have rarely, if ever, seen a professional athlete who was as universally disliked as Bonds. The only people who ever seemed to like him were the people in the cities where he played — and they always stopped liking him when he stopped wearing their team's uniform.

He started his major league career in Pittsburgh, kind of a scrawny fellow, but he was still something of a power hitter. His numbers weren't eye–popping — average for a power hitter, I'd say.

But he never had a season like the one he had in 2000. He was in his mid–30s at the time, and he became only the second man to hit 70 home runs in a season. Actually, he smashed that record.

In seven seasons in Pittsburgh, Bonds' best home run output in a season was 34. But in the next seven years in San Francisco, that was just about his low point. In fact, in every season from 1993 to 2005 (including the strike–shortened 1994 season), Bonds hit at least 33 home runs — and in eight of those seasons, he hit at least 40 home runs.

He followed the 2000 season with three consecutive seasons of 40–plus homers — at the point in a baseball career when just about any other power hitter you'd care to name experiences a sharp decline in production. The guys he passed on the way to the all–time home run crown — Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays — saw their numbers tumble in their 30s — although, to be fair, Aaron did have some great seasons in his late 30s.

But Aaron was consistent. He never had a pro season in which he hit 50 or more home runs — and rarely had a 40–homer season. He passed Babe Ruth primarily through sheer endurance.

Bonds, on the other hand, only experienced a dropoff in productivity starting in the 2005 season — the same season in which baseball put its current anti–steroid policy in place.

I never saw how anyone could believe that Bonds hadn't taken steroids — or hadn't been aware that he had.

I was glad when his career was over, and I wish major league baseball would put an asterisk (or a little hypodermic needle) next to his name in the record books because I believe his single–season and career home run records were obtained fraudulently.

What's more, I think Bonds should be banned from baseball and kept out of the Hall of Fame because his use of performance–enhancing drugs is a more blatant form of cheating than gambling.

But none of that will happen — because steroid use didn't even lead to brief suspensions before 2005. It wouldn't be fair to penalize him for violating a policy that didn't exist.

Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson will remain barred from Cooperstown because gambling was and is explicitly against baseball rules.

But Bonds will continue to be eligible for the Hall, even if baseball adopts an even tougher policy.

And his records will stand indefinitely.

But, as I say, I'm pretty much indifferent to Barry Bonds these days. He's yesterday's news.

And, for Bonds, that may be the worst punishment possible.

Locked Out

NFL fans, don't kid yourselves.

This breakdown in labor talks was an inevitable moment.

It was bound to happen. It was like that week before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, when people stood transfixed for days, watching as it meandered across the vast Gulf of Mexico and only began taking steps to protect themselves — or get the hell out of there — when the storm was practically on top of them.

The NFL and the players bought themselves a few days to dream about a miracle. When one did not happen, they were forced to do what they should have done earlier.

I feel somewhat vindicated by Don Banks of Sports Illustrated, who writes, "Here's wishing they would have saved us all some time and skipped the explanations of what went wrong, or why things broke down once again."

It's all public posturing.

And, really, who can blame either side? They're only mimicking what they have seen their national leaders doing, and they've all been guilty of it. No one is blameless.

Everyone points fingers and assigns blame — and nothing gets accomplished.

Well, they went through their week of pretending that they were making progress, but they really weren't. Now, they have to get down to the hard work, and the pressure will just increase as the days go by. The NFL draft is supposed to be held next month. Players should be going through offseason conditioning programs and drills. In a few months, training camps will be scheduled to open.

Fans will be increasingly impatient — until an agreement is reached or the NFL does what major league baseball had to do 17 years ago and cancel the season.

That didn't really work out too well for baseball. The 1994 World Series was canceled and the start of the 1995 season was delayed, leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth that lingered for a few years and didn't go away until the home run duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1997.

That gave baseball a shot in the arm — until it was revealed that McGwire, probably Barry Bonds and possibly Sosa hit hundreds of home runs in their careers (especially the late 1980s, the 1990s and the early 2000s) with the artificial assistance of steroids.

Since those revelations, America's pastime has been steadily losing fans.

The same fate awaits NFL owners and players if they don't get over their greed and resolve their differences.

It might be worse. The economy wasn't great in 1994 — but it was a lot better than it is today. Unemployed fans may not be as sympathetic as they were then.

For that matter, fans were a lot more sympathetic four decades ago, when athletes were virtual slaves to their teams and had no control over their professional lives.

But today many fans see all professional athletes as overpaid prima donnas and all team owners as greedy.

The NFL's most recent experience with a work stoppage as nearly a quarter of a century ago. Much has changed in that time. Tom Landry was still coaching the Dallas Cowboys. Joe Montana was still playing for the San Francisco 49ers.

That lockout was modest compared to what may be in store for the NFL in 2011. The players' strike lasted less than four weeks. Three games were played with "replacement players," and one game was canceled.

It was often treated as a gag. The replacement teams were given funny nicknames, like the Chicago Spare Bears, and fans seemed to embrace legitimate pro football when it returned.

But there doesn't seem to be much that is funny about this situation.