|
Home Runs, Heroes, and
Hypocrisy
Performance Enhancement in Black and White
By Tim Wise
Within a matter of
several weeks, it is a virtual certainty that Barry
Bonds will become the all-time home run king of Major
League Baseball. When this moment arrives, survey data
suggests that the majority of white baseball fans will
yell and scream at their televisions and curse the
Giants' slugger, having concluded, beyond any doubt that
Bonds used steroids for at least a few seasons in the
early 2000s, so as to help obtain the record.
Most blacks, on the
other hand, either doubt that Bonds used steroids, or at
least feel as though the allegations haven't been
proven. So while most of black America cheers Barry on,
an awful lot of whites are wishing (often quite openly)
for the aging star to be injured, or for pitchers to
deliberately walk him from now till retirement, just to
deprive him of the honor, even if it would mean walking
in the winning run in an important game.
As for me, I have
no idea whether or not Barry Bonds used anabolic
steroids, knowingly or otherwise. Circumstantial
evidence suggests he did, yet whatever proof exists is
apparently too weak to secure an indictment for lying to
a grand jury about the matter. But having concluded that
Bonds is guilty, evidence notwithstanding, white
baseball fans are overwhelmingly demanding that an
asterisk be placed by Bonds's name in the record books.
Yes, he may come to own the record, they'll aver, but
only because of performance-enhancing supplements. As
such, he shouldn't be regarded in the same light, or
spoken of in the same breath as Hank Aaron (the current
record-holder) or Babe Ruth.
For the time being,
let's put aside the issue of whether Bonds is guilty of
having used steroids. And let's put aside whether or not
the steroids he's accused of using can really help a
batter hit a 95-mile an hour fastball (possibly thrown
by a pitcher who was also juiced, given the ubiquity of
steroids in the game in the 90s and early 2000s, all
with the knowledge of team owners). And let's also put
aside the issue of how many additional home runs Bonds
may have hit, which he wouldn't have hit anyway, but for
the steroids.* While all are important matters, there is
a more fundamental issue to address when it comes to how
Bonds is to be viewed in the history books. For how can
white Americans call for Bonds to have his records
marred by an asterisk, while continuing to revere the
records and performances of their white baseball heroes
of eras past—folks
with names like DiMaggio, Williams, Ruth and Cobb—who
benefited from a much greater "performance enhancement"
than that which steroids can provide: namely, the racist
exclusion of black athletes from the major leagues?
Steroids vs.
Segregation: Which One Provides More of an Unearned
Advantage?
There is no denying
that anabolic steroids can enhance athletic performance,
primarily by allowing athletes to rapidly rebuild
damaged muscle mass, and recover more quickly from
injury. Whether or not they can cause batters to hit
balls for greater distance is an open question, to which
no one has provided an answer. Although home runs
increased across Major League Baseball during the era of
unregulated steroid use (and have remained high by
historical standards since the crackdown), there are
several factors that could have produced that result,
even without a single batter being juiced. As sports
columnist Dave Zirin notes, in his amazing new book,
Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and
Promise of Sports, these alternative
explanations include shorter fences in the dozen or so
new ballparks built during this period; balls that many
experts believe are being wound more tightly than in the
past; better training equipment (including computer
technology that allows hitters to graphically analyze
their swings and make corrections quickly), and much
smaller strike zones. The last of these—imposed
on umpires by team owners around the same time as the
steroid boom—has
forced pitchers to throw into prime hitting zones,
thereby guaranteeing that good hitters (and everyone
agrees Bonds is one, with or without drugs), are going
to hit more home runs.
In other words, it
is impossible to know whether or not Bonds's home run
spree in the years from 1999 to 2003 was due to steroid
use, or whether he may have hit the same number even
without them. But we do know one thing for certain: from
1887, when blacks were run out of white-dominated
professional baseball leagues, until 1947, when Jackie
Robinson first stepped onto a field for the Brooklyn
Dodgers, every white baseball player for six decades had
been protected from black competition. And protection
from competition is the most profound form of artificial
performance enhancement imaginable.
It was none other
than Joe DiMaggio who said—having
once faced Negro League great, Satchel Paige in an
exhibition game—that
Paige was the greatest pitcher he'd ever come up
against. But of course, in DiMaggio's 1941 season,
during which he hit in 56 consecutive games for the
Yankees (still a record), he wouldn't have to face
Paige, or any other black pitching legends. Though Paige
would go on to play in the major leagues, it would only
be after reaching his 42nd birthday, and a full fourteen
years after his legendary 31-4 record in 1934, during
which season he pitched sixty-four consecutive scoreless
innings and won twenty-one games in a row.
That black players
were fully the equals of their white counterparts is
hard to deny. Throughout several exhibition games,
involving each league's All-Stars, the two leagues split
games roughly fifty-fifty. Considering that the Negro
League teams had fewer resources to develop players, and
typically carried smaller rosters (with weaker benches),
this was no small feat. Had certain players been allowed
in the majors, there is little doubt but that white
record holders, then or now, would have faced longer
odds when it came to recording their feats. Pitchers
like Smokey Joe Williams (who shutout the 1915 National
League champion Philadelphia Phillies in an exhibition),
or Paige (who was able to pitch three shutout innings in
the major leagues at the age of sixty, in a special 1965
appearance with the Kansas City A's), would have wreaked
havoc with the bats of white players, had they been
given the chance.
By the same token,
sluggers like Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Oscar
Charleston (who hit .318 with eleven home runs in
fifty-three exhibitions against white major leaguers,
and is considered the fourth best player in history by
baseball historian Bill James) would have easily vied
for many of the records set by whites, some of which
stand to this day. This would have been especially true
had they been able to play in homer-friendly Yankee
stadium, which originally had home run fences down the
right and left field lines that were less than 300 feet
from home plate, so as to accommodate the likes of Babe
Ruth. (As a side note, it's interesting how no one ever
suggests Ruth's accomplishments should be looked at
skeptically because he was swinging at fences that I was
able to reach routinely at the age of fifteen).
And speedsters like
Cool Papa Bell, given the chance, would certainly have
challenged Ty Cobb's record of stolen bases, long before
Lou Brock ultimately obliterated it in 1978 (since
eclipsed by Rickey Henderson). Not to mention, had
players like Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella or
Don Newcombe—who
ultimately played major league ball but got their start
in the Negro Leagues—been
able to start their big league careers earlier, who
knows what records they might have set?
One thing is
certain: all of the records set by white players prior
to 1947 are tainted. Any time that someone is protected
from competition (be that someone an athlete or a
corporation), the one who is protected gets to shine,
without having to prove themselves against the full
range of possible talent. Barry Bonds, on the other
hand, even if juiced by steroids, had to compete against
the best (many of whom were no doubt also using such
medicinal enhancements), and as such, enjoyed far less
of a relative boost in his career than white players did
for nearly half of the twentieth century.**
And No, It's Not
Different: The Absurdity of the "Segregation Was Legal"
Excuse
Confronted with the
argument that maybe Williams, DiMaggio, and especially
Babe Ruth wouldn't have been as good, had they been
required to play against black players, most white folks
fall back on what they consider their trump card, which,
to them seems to differentiate the performance
enhancement of steroids from the performance enhancement
of white privilege and institutionalized favoritism.
Namely, they suggest, Barry Bonds broke the rules, while
Ruth and company merely played within the boundaries of
the rules, as they existed at the time. While most
everyone acknowledges that racism in baseball was a
shameful stain on the game, you'll often hear it said
that segregation was "just the way it was." The implicit
argument here is that we shouldn't lower our estimation
of white players due to segregation, since they weren't
the ones who enforced the color barrier, but rather,
just played by the rules as they found them.
But there are
several things about this argument that are wrong,
illogical, or ethically indefensible. To begin with,
during the period of Bonds's steroid use, there was
actually no rule against steroids in major league
baseball. So, in point of fact, Bonds—assuming
he used steroids—did
not break the rules of the game. Yes, using the
substances without a prescription is illegal, but we
don't take records away from players for breaking the
law. If we did, we'd have to erase pitcher Doc Ellis's
perfect game in 1970, which he claims to have tossed
while tripping on acid. We'd have to disregard the
performance of Keith Hernandez, who has admitted to
using cocaine during his years on the field, and who
once suggested that upwards of forty percent of all
players were using blow. Or what of Willie Mays and
Willie Stargell (two of the game's all-time greats), who
were accused in the mid-80s (though, like Bonds, never
tried or convicted) of providing amphetamines to
players? Should we erase their records as well? Or what
of Ruth, who once tried injecting himself with sheep
hormones to get an edge on the competition, and who kept
right on drinking, even in the age of prohibition when
booze were outlawed?
Even worse, the
argument that segregation was "just the way it was,"
implies that we are not under any obligation to
challenge injustice, unless we ourselves created it, and
that if we collaborate with it, we bear no moral
responsibility for its perpetuation. But what kind of
moral standard is that? By that logic, folks who stood
by and remained silent during Jim Crow, during lynchings,
during the Holocaust of European Jewry or American
Holocaust of indigenous persons, did nothing wrong. By
that logic, we should teach our children that whenever
they see an injustice, so long as it benefits them, they
should go along to get along. But any parent who taught
their kids such a thing would be shirking their
responsibilities as a moral guide.
The truth is, had
even a handful of the top white players refused to play
until the major leagues were integrated—especially
in the 20s, 30s or early 40s, by which time the sport
had become "America's pastime"—it
is almost certain that the color barrier would have
fallen more quickly. After all, it was in large part
because of the demands of 19th century great Cap Anson,
a player-manager, that blacks were booted from the game
in the first place. Players did have power. They were
the ones fans came to see and for whom they paid good
money. There is no way that baseball could have remained
all-white, for example, if Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig had
said they were sitting down until blacks were allowed to
play. Had Gehrig ended his long-standing record of
consecutive games played because of opposition to
racism, it would have been one of the most important
sports stories of all time. That he didn't, and that no
white players had the courage to take this step is far
from inconsequential, and it calls into question their
character, whether or not white fans are prepared to
hear this uncomfortable truth.
In other words,
whites, by knowingly protecting themselves from some of
the game's greatest players, "cheated" every bit as much
as Bonds may have, via the use of anabolics. That the
method for cheating was institutionalized, so that the
rules themselves amounted to fraud, and that racial
cheating was given the imprimatur of law hardly provides
moral cover for the practice's ethical failings, and the
failings of those who took advantage.
Oh, and not to put
too fine a point on it, but in parts of the country
(including most of the Northeast) the laws of the local
communities actually prohibited segregation by race. Of
course, northern cities ignored these laws, and persons
of color were subject to intense racism there, as with
the South. But if our concern is the law, and how the
law was for segregation (and how therefore players can't
be accused of having broken the rules), we should
remember that teams like the Yankees were essentially
breaking local and state law by keeping blacks off their
squads. So perhaps we should erase the records of the
Yankees, erase the Babe, erase Ted Williams' 1941 season
in which he hit .406 for the Red Sox: another team in a
Northern city, with laws against segregation, but which
remained segregated anyway (and in Boston's case, they
were the longest holdout against black players due to
the legendary racism of their owner).
But is it
Racism? Demeanor and Double Standards in the White
Imagination
Of course, there is
still the question of whether or not those whites who
root against Bonds, or who want to see that asterisk by
his name, feel the way they do because of racism. On
this point, honest people can truly disagree. After all,
many of the white fans who disparage Bonds love other
black athletes, including the man who Bonds is poised to
overtake. That Aaron set the mark of 755 homers without
any enhancements, without short fences, without juiced
balls, and despite the hostility often dispensed to
black players during his heyday, suggests to many
(myself included) that Aaron's accomplishments are, in
many ways, more impressive.
And of course,
there are reasons to dislike Bonds having nothing to do
with his race. Among the most often cited: his generally
churlish, even openly hostile attitude to the press, and
the general public. But here is where the issue of race
becomes especially interesting as it relates to white
folks' estimation of Bonds.
Fact is, just
because whites love certain black athletes, doesn't mean
that racial animosity or racism are not in the equation
on the occasions when they feel decidedly otherwise.
Racism can indeed be operating when whites respond
negatively to the "attitudes" of persons of color, if
they fail to do so when encountering the same attitudes
from whites. Studies have found that when people of
color act in ways that trigger negative group
associations in the minds of whites, those whites often
react in a much harsher manner than when a white person
evinces the same attitude or behavior. The white athlete
who is arrogant or ill tempered is seen through an
individual lens, while the black athlete who does the
same is seen as a representative of a larger racial
group, and deemed threatening, angry, maybe even
violent.
So Roger Clemens
can deliberately throw at the heads of batters, to
either back them off the plate, or in retaliation for a
player on his team being hit by a pitch, and no one
seems to care, let alone accuse him of aggravated
assault with a deadly weapon (which a 97-mile per hour
fastball surely is). And pitcher Randy Johnson can act
like an ass, even pushing a New York cameraperson upon
his arrival to the Yankees several years back, and yet
have few fans turn on him. As long as he was producing,
his attitude was overlooked, as with basketball coach
Bobby Knight, baseball coaches Earl Weaver and Leo
Durocher, or, for that matter Ruth, Ty Cobb and Mickey
Mantle, who were—according
to pretty much everyone who knew them—utter
bastards. So if there is a racially differential way in
which Bonds's rudeness is interpreted, as opposed to any
number of white athletes (think John McEnroe, as one
final example), then there are few ways to interpret the
difference, other than as a racial matter.
Additionally, if
whites respond negatively to blacks whose demeanor is
seen as hostile or arrogant, but respond well to blacks
who seem less gruff, it may well be that the first of
these has to do with the way in which certain behavior
prompts negative stereotypes in white folks' minds. Once
prompted, white racial hostility may be triggered in
this kind of situation, even though it wouldn't be
deployed against blacks whose behavior ran counter to
white folks' preconceived biases.
Far from mere
speculation, it is precisely the difference in white
perceptions of some blacks relative to others, which
prompted Branch Rickey to choose Jackie Robinson as the
instrument of integration in baseball, over other
equally or more talented black ball players. Though
Robinson was no sell-out, as is often alleged, he was
clearly more accommodating in his style to the racial
taunts it was feared he would (and often did) receive
from white fans. Rickey realized that certain black
players would rub whites the wrong way, thanks to
racism, but that Robinson would project the kind of
image that would be less likely to trigger latent biases
on the part of white fans.
Whites have long
demonstrated a preference for gregarious and smiling
black folks, ever since the days of slavery, when such
characters reinforced white assumptions about the
fairness of the society. If black folks play by the
script set up by whites—don't
be angry, don't question authority, don't be arrogant
(read: uppity), don't be political (like John Carlos and
Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics, or Muhammad Ali,
whose reputation with many whites was forever tainted by
his anti-Vietnam war commentary), and don't purposely
seek to tweak white folks' racial fears (as with fighter
Jack Johnson who often taunted whites about his white
female companions)—then
everything will be O.K. But if blacks deviate, or cop a
"to hell with you" attitude, whites often see it as a
racial challenge (in ways they wouldn't if another white
person did it), and react angrily.
So whites loved
Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson (understandably of
course, given their talent), but detest many of today's
younger, amazingly capable, but often brash black
ballers—and
not only the ones who have been in trouble with the law.
For that matter, whites never much cared for Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar either, after he became a Muslim and
changed his name from Lew Alcindor. Kareem was seen by
many (still is) as unfriendly, brooding, and arrogant,
and this perception has hurt his ability to land a
much-deserved (and desired) coaching gig anywhere in the
NBA, despite his demonstrated basketball genius.
Conclusion:
Letting Go of the Mythology of Baseball's Glory Days
As a final thought,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that at least part of
white America's anger at Bonds's accomplishments, is in
keeping with white folks' general anxiety over the loss
of a mythologized past: one in which a supposedly more
innocent, decent society held sway, folks played by the
rules, and all was right with the world. While black
folks know this world never existed, at least for them,
white folks' hagiographic history tends to gloss over
the racial injustices of past eras, rather choosing to
hold them up as the "good old days," of mom, apple pie,
I Love Lucy, and Radio Flyers zooming down snow-covered
hills.
This romantic
notion of our national past is especially strong when it
comes to baseball. Whites wistfully praise the
accomplishments of the 1927 Yankees, even though, in
terms of sheer strength and talent, they would get their
clocks cleaned by even the sub-.500 Yankees of the
current season, largely due to better conditioning
routines in the present day. Babe Ruth was an
overweight, out of shape drunk, whose home runs were hit
disproportionately in a stadium with fences that were
set at a distance more appropriate for high school kids.
Our glorifying of these faded icons speaks more to the
nostalgic tendencies of whites, adrift in a culture
that, although still dominated by folks like us, isn't
completely defined by those like us any longer. As
society changes, those who always benefited most from
the traditional arrangement naturally resist the seismic
shifts in national consciousness, to say nothing of
demographics. If you think the falloff in fan support
for Major League Baseball isn't related to the
increasing Latinization of the sport at the highest
levels, in other words, then perhaps you'd like to
purchase my beachfront property in Missouri.
In the final
analysis, it is not Barry Bonds who is the problem, but
white sports fans, longing for those olden days,
irrespective of the injustices that defined them. The
problem is white folks who want and apparently need
black athletes to pander to our tastes, kiss our asses,
and tell us how wonderful everything is with the system
and society in which we live. Too bad for us. Bottom
line: Barry Bonds is a better hitter than any white ball
player who ever lived. Period, end of story. And he is
equal to Aaron and Mays even if not better overall. And
if you don't like that, pick up a bat and try to be
better. Good damned luck.
NOTES
*Bonds's critics
claim that only steroids could have produced the
slugger's 73 home run season of 2001, since his highest
total prior to that time had been 49 in the course of a
year. Yet, what they conveniently ignore is how white
ball players often have remarkable years, unduplicated
over the lifetimes of their careers. So, for instance,
Roger Maris (who held the record for single-season home
runs, at 61, from 1961 until 1998, at which point Mark
McGuire and Sammy Sosa both surpassed him), had hit only
thirty-nine home runs the year before his record. The
year after, Maris hit only thirty-three, and then hit
only seventy home runs over a five year period,
beginning in 1963 and ending with the 1967 season.
Indeed, roughly one-fourth of Maris's career home runs
occurred in that single magical season, out of a total
career that lasted twelve years.
**It should be
noted that steroids would likely be of more direct
benefit to pitchers than to hitters—something
to keep in mind since Bonds likely faced many
steroid-enhanced pitchers during the years of his
alleged use. After all, steroids allow players to have
shorter down time in the case of injury, which is
especially important to pitchers, who by definition are
in on every play when they're on the field. Wrenching
your arm forward 100 times a game, or throwing utterly
unnatural curve balls takes a toll on pitchers, which
toll can be dramatically lessened by anabolic steroids.
Which is all to say that Bonds' use (assuming it
happened exactly as alleged) may well have only placed
him on an even keel with many of the pitchers he faced.
While the commonality of use hardly makes it acceptable
to use steroids, it does suggest that the comparative
advantage Bonds would have obtained from steroids would
have possibly been quite small.
Source: Black
Agenda Report
* * * *
*
updated 24 February 2008 |
