"It's a bad time for the game."
-Derek Jeter, commenting on the steroid hearings
As Buddy the Elf said, "I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!" I finally know what those songs on the radio are talking about.
I finally get every Hugh Grant movie ever made. I finally understand why Kate Winslet doesn't get on that emergency boat in "Titanic." This is why they have Valentine's Day! This is why Van Gogh cut his ear off! I'm totally, head-over-heels, singing-in-the-rain, run-to-a-mountaintop-and-scream in love - with baseball.
True love is unconditional. True love can fight through bumps in the road and find a way. So while, yes, I'm sick of hearing about steroids, HGH, the Mitchell Report, José Canseco, Brian McNamee and BALCO, my love for the game has not wavered a bit. Nope, not even a little. This game is great. It's strong, beautiful, rich with tradition but most of all, full of bright spots. Derek Jeter, a man I once told my girlfriend I love more than her, is wrong this time. It's not "a bad time for the game."
It's not that I don't want the game cleaned up and the users punished. I do. But I don't care if Debbie Clemens decided to get HGH injections because she was jealous of Roger's back hair. I don't care how small Barry Bonds' testicles must be by now. I don't care that Canseco is so juiced that it looks like his nips are going to pop right off the page and poke me in the eyes. The game is bigger than the steroid era and too beautiful to be damaged by the black cloud of performance enhancers.
The 1994 strike year was "a bad time for the game." That was a period when baseball was truly lost. America's pastime, one of the few things that seemed to be able to maintain its purity (the Black Sox scandal long forgotten) in an ever increasingly commercialized world, had finally succumbed to greed.
Once play resumed in 1995, the game wasn't the same. On Opening Day at Shea Stadium, fans ran onto the field throwing one-dollar bills at players. In Cincinnati that same day, a plane flew over Riverfront Stadium pulling a sign that said "Players and owners: To Hell with you." All around baseball, small crowds booed because players seemed rusty and out of shape.
It took years for baseball to recover. But comparing the dark days of the mid-'90s to the steroid era is ludicrous. Today the game is thriving. Attendance is up, the level of play is through the roof and small-market teams are finding ways to compete. Former dumpster teams like the Rays and Reds have hope as spring training rolls around. The big bad empires, the Yankees and Red Sox, are beginning to use their heads, not just their checkbooks, in baseball operations. There is a new generation of general managers in the game that are young, smart, innovative and ballsy.
The game is getting better and will overcome the steroid era because of the pure, unprecedented, otherworldly athletic ability of Alex Rodriguez. It will overcome the steroid era because José Reyes' feet don't touch the ground when he legs out a triple. It will overcome the steroid era because of the incredible comeback stories of guys like Josh Hamilton and Jon Lester. It will overcome the steroid era because of the wealth of young talent on the way in Evan Longoria, Jay Bruce, Clay Buchholz, Cameron Maybin, Homer Bailey and others. It will overcome the steroid era because it's baseball - and no matter how much we complain, we love it unconditionally.
Gideon Jacobs is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Gideon.Jacobs@tufts.edu.
