The recent controversy regarding steroid use in Major League Baseball has prompted league administrators to draft policies to prohibit its use amongst current players. This comes amidst a media backlash against Barry Bonds, who is currently chasing the all-time home run title, for his alleged past use of performance enhancers. This week the Daily talks to Sol Gittleman, the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor of German (and Tufts' resident expert on baseball).
Paul Lemaistre: Major League Baseball [MLB] is catching up really late in the game in regards to drug-testing policies, compared to other professional sports leagues. Why is it so late?
Sol Gittleman: One of the problems - I don't know if it's a problem really - is that they have the most powerful players' union in the country, if not in the world. You have [Executive Director of MLB Players Association] Donald Fehr, and you always have the ghost of Marvin Miller ... Miller is the guy who is the genius behind all of the creation of the Baseball Players Association. Baseball owners have been singularly stupid in their dealings with Miller and Fehr. They never gave him any respect or treated him right, and they never got what baseball needed ... The fact that we don't have an intelligent policy on this is because of a lack of cooperation between the management and the players' union.
PL: MLB has indicated that if it finds that former players used steroids, they can face consequences as to their standing with the league.
SG: They better get to the science first, because they are going to end up with a lot of lawsuits. I have yet to see any scientific evidence that shows you that steroids will help you bring the round bat to the round ball. I saw for the first time a reference about hand-to-eye coordination and how steroids improve it. Besides that I want to see the evidence.
PL: What kinds of consequences are realistic?
SG: Only since 2002, I believe, steroids were [made] illegal. So no matter what they want to do with Bonds, they have absolutely no legal basis to do anything. Because baseball had no policy, period. And even McGwire ... kept that stuff in his locker, because it was legal. So they can't do anything to anybody [who used steroids] before they had an official policy. Now they have a policy, and if they catch people and have scientific evidence, it's different. But it's important that they have the scientific evidence, because now all we know is that it can kill you. One thing that we have to understand is that it makes you heal. These guys play a 162-game schedule - it's brutal, absolutely brutal.
PL: Baseball took a blow from the 1994 strike, but was helped by Ripken's playing streak and the 1998 home run race between Sosa and McGwire. It makes sense for the MLB to want to ignore the problem and not uncover the dirt that could hurt the game irreparably.
SG: I don't think it will stop people from going. Games are sold out already. You can barely get a ticket to Fenway Park. The fans want to see home runs and Barry Bonds and other great players. Still, it'll be called the Steroid Era, and it will last from 1992 or 1995 until 2004 or 2005. It will be horrible for baseball, but it won't stop people. It's just the journalists applying these labels.
PL: Bonds goes into the 2006 season seven home runs shy of Babe Ruth and 48 from Hank Aaron. Could steroid use make him as infamous as Pete Rose?
SG: I hope not. Pete Rose should not be allowed back in baseball; he gambled when he was a manager. That's terrible ... I've [heard about] people throwing syringes at Barry Bonds. Fans can be hysterical, booing at Bonds in San Diego from the stands. The man might be a swine - he might be an abusive, wife-beating egomaniac, but he was a hell of a ballplayer. How good? He's up there, and those numbers get him into the Hall of Fame.
PL: What's your take on the book about Barry Bonds ("Game of Shadows," by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle) that was excerpted in last month's Sports Illustrated?
SG: I read the book already. It was two good investigative journalists who never gave any scientific evidence that the stuff was helping. It was just, he's doing it, look at his numbers, you make the extrapolation. But no evidence at all from science that it helps your hand-eye coordination or gives you anything other than bulk. I'm waiting for the science.
PL: Who do you like for this season?
SG: No guessing. Two underachieving teams were champions over the past two years. Neither the Red Sox or the White Sox were the best team in the world, but they had chemistry and I'm a deep believer in chemistry. Find the team that will get great seasons out of ordinary ballplayers.
