Several days ago I read
this article on ESPN.com by TJ Quinn. Basically Quinn calls out managers like Torre and LaRussa for going along with the 'Code of Silence' in baseball while not doing anything to stop the steroid issues from continuing to grow. He even declares with certainty that while loyalty played a serious part, it was winning that motivated these men to do what they did.
I'll never cease to be amazed by the human tendency to look for a scapegoat, all the while ignoring any responsibility we hold ourselves. We look for others we can blame and criticize, while never looking at what role we might have played, where we might be complicit. The silence of managers who certainly knew what was going on cannot be ignored, yet how can a member of the media call anyone out for silence regarding this issue? Are we really to believe that it was possible that there were those who thought in 1998 that Sosa and McGwire were are large as they were naturally? Yet where was the voice of sportswriters that year? Yet somehow Quinn and his peers are not responsible, they can simply sit back and snipe at all those involved in baseball who held their tongue during what will forever be known in sports as the 'Steriods Era.'
How can anyone say the managers are more responsible for keeping silent than anyone else? In reality, anyone who was even associated with baseball during that era holds some responsibility, including the masses of fans who bought tickets to watch giants like McGwire, and after that year Bonds, swing bats that looked like toothpicks in relation to their massive arms.
Yet, it is sexy to take shots at men who are respected, men like Torre and LaRussa. Thus, they are now the evil culprits who made the whole steroids era possible, certainly not the writers and reporters who covered the sport throughout this era, many who never typed a single word about the odd explosion in size of men during years that jumps like that simply don't happen naturally. Personally, I just have trouble finding additional fault in the managers for being loyal to men who they saw as friends and peers, and for being afraid of the resulting exile from Major League Baseball that would have taken place had they stabbed their players in the back by outing them in public.
Also, in the case of Torre, much has been made of the large number of players mentioned in the Mitchell Report who played for him at times (although as Quinn points out, many of these players did so for a very brief period of time). Let's not forget that Radomski and McNamee were in the Mets and Yankees clubhouses, thus leading to most of the players listed being former Yankees and Mets. If the men giving names had worked in the Cubs and White Sox clubhouses, the numbers would be equally skewed. And for LaRussa, there should be much more concern about the pattern of alcohol problems in the Cardinals clubhouse than about his silence (in which he was joined by every other manager and sports writer) regarding steroids.
Further, I'm also really sick of the attention being paid to the steroid issue in baseball as compared to the complete and utter absence of attention being paid to players in other sports. Wouldn't Quinn and other members of the media be to blame for this shaping of the story? Let's not pretend that when it comes down to it, it is the media that shapes the news. There isn't actually some qualitative difference between a football player using steroids and HGH and a baseball player who uses the same substances. But according to the media one would never know it. Bonds and Clemens use steroids and their reputations are irrevocably damaged. Shawn Merriman does the same thing and you'd never know it happened for all the attention it gets now. Where are the accusations against respected coaches in the NFL like Parcells and Dungy for their obvious silence in regards to what is obviously significant HGH and Steroid use in the NFL? Or is it not obvious? Perhaps football players were able to reach their massive sizes and recover from injuries quickly without any outside help and baseball players are just somehow lesser human beings as they fall prey to the desire to perform at a high level at any cost.
I personally don't feel there is any higher level of responsibility for coaches in any sport to break their silence and thus betray the players on their teams. Obviously Quinn differs in his view, and would rather men like LaRussa and Torre, and thus Parcells and Dungy, sell their friends down the river so they could feel self-righteous in their feeling of integrity.
This sentiment has been shared by many before, but it is time to move forward and try to figure out the way out of this mess. Continuing to look for those to blame is pointless. The use of steroids and HGH is so massive in scale the it is outright absurdity to expect to know the individuals to blame. It was obvious that players were using performance enhancing drugs, it was even more obvious to players, managers and writers who had significant access to clubhouses and training rooms. Those of us who are simply fans knew, and we know now that many of the athletes we still love and root for have used or are using. We're all to blame, and that truth gets us nowhere, it's simply time to decide where to move next. (As an aside, the decision of where to go next should be handled by the MLB and the fact that Congress would even consider ignoring much more serious problems to carry out trials and probes investigating cheating in a GAME is the height of insanity).
The use of performance enhancing drugs is widespread. It's naive to believe that any professional sport is immune, or that somehow
our favorite team happens to be the only one where everyone is going out there and playing clean. Everyone knew for a long time before it became a big story, or in some sports, everyone knows and it hasn't yet become a big story. This is true, and the questions can no longer be "Who knew?", "When did they know?" and "Who is to blame?", the only remaining question simply has to be, "Where do we go from here?"
