Andrew Bauld | You Can't Steal First
April 3Barry Bonds should consider himself lucky. All he's chasing this season for the home run record is the mark of 755 set by Hank Aaron. He's lucky because he could be staring up a mountain compared to the hill he now has to climb to reach his place among baseball greats. He's lucky because he could be chasing Josh Gibson. He's lucky Gibson never played in the majors, or else he could be trailing after a record of over 800 home runs. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa should consider themselves lucky as well. Sixty-one is a nice benchmark compared to 80 or more, the record number of home runs Gibson might have set in a single season had he played in the Major Leagues. There are not enough steroids in the world for any player to get his hands on to match numbers like those. Baseball has bigger skeletons in its closet than this scandal of steroids. Cheating has been a fixture of baseball from its very beginnings. From corked bats to slicked down spit balls, from Shoeless Joe Jackson and the infamous "Black Sox" scandal of 1919 to Pete Rose, and now steroids. Even the history of baseball itself is built upon the myth of Abner Doubleday. Yet through it all, the game has endured, and out of scandal heroes have emerged, and for every evil that scuffs its image a new legend arises to make it shine again. Baseball is more than just America's pastime. Through wars and depression, the two have remained indelible symbols in history, baseball a microcosm of the development of America. Through it all, the two have shown their inherent and unbreakable ability to survive. Each carries the decorations of their triumphs and the scars of their failures, and no scar bears more prominently on both than America's original sin of slavery, and baseball's past of segregation. While never written in rule, African-Americans were barred from the major leagues from 1884 until Jackie Robinson's signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Until that point, African-American players were forced to play in The National Colored Base Ball League, which was created in 1887. We speak of baseball's heyday during the 1920's, its Golden Age. But how can we speak of the best of baseball when some of its greatest players were absent? Josh Gibson was considered the black Babe Ruth, but more so than that, he may have been the greatest player in the history of the game, black or white. His career numbers include a .354 average and over 950 home runs with single season highs of .517 and 84 home runs. Those numbers, however, are in no record book acknowledged by Major League Baseball. Gibson is just one in a long line of great black ball players who never got their shot at the big leagues. Buck O'Neil, Cool "Papa" Bell, Mule Suttles, Satchel Paige - these were the stars of the Negro Leagues, but they should have been the stars of baseball, period. Paige, who entered the majors at 42 following Robinson and integration, claimed he notched 2000 wins during his long career. Even if that number was slightly exaggerated, there is every reason to imagine he would have eclipsed Cy Young's record of 511 wins. But all we can do is imagine. If we want to start putting asterisks next to the records of question, for cheating, for steroids, we might as well place one next to every record baseball holds dear, because records mean nothing if they excluded the greatest players from breaking them. Obviously that solution is absurd. Segregation was part of baseball's history, and while it's difficult to accept the injustice, there is no reason to detract from the greats who set the records. Records, however, are simply numbers - they do not tell us the face of the men who set them, or the face of those who eventually will break them. Steroid use is now part of baseball's history as well, whether we want to include it or not. We may never know if Barry, Big Mac or Sammy were juicers, and honestly it does not matter. The stigma is now upon all of them and they can either stand and deny or admit the truth. This much is for sure, though. When we look at the records of baseball, no asterisk will be able to rectify their worth. Neither will Congressional intervention. If baseball enacts stricter penalties for steroid users, it'll be a step in the right direction. But at least one record still holds some merit to the game, a testament to the integrity of baseball and the men who have played it, and maybe we can learn a lesson from it. In 1941, Ted Williams became the last man to bat over .400 in a season. But with a doubleheader left against the Philadelphia Athletics, Williams was stuck at .399955. The record books would have rounded it up to .400, and Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered Williams the option to sit the final series. The Splendid Splinter responded that if he couldn't hit .400 all the way, that he didn't deserve it. In the next two games, The Kid went six for eight, including a handful of singles, a home run and a double, and he finished the season at .406. Every Red Sox fan grows up with this story, and most baseball fans have heard it at one point or another. I wonder if Bonds or McGwire know about it? I wonder what it would be like if we had players who accepted accountability and consequences? What if, instead of pleading the Fifth, or claiming to not wanting to talk about the past, or blaming the media, we had players who declared, "If I can't do it on my own, I don't deserve it"? What a record for baseball that would be.
