Will baseball create a 'Hall of Shame'?

Ed Smith, the ex England cricketer and a fine and thoughtful writer on sport, called baseball cricket's 'spiritual cousin' and pointed to the parallels of the game's rich culture, literature, love of statistics and to the 'extraordinary devotion that [it] inspires among all different types of Americans, from philosophy professors to bartenders. It is a connoisseur's game for everyone'.

It is these traditions and values that make the revelations about baseball's steroid abuse all the more shocking - America's 'national pastime' is currently in the gutter.

Mitchell report reveals extent of drug abuse

Senator George Mitchell's investigation has revealed not only that performance enhancing drug abuse in Major League Baseball is endemic but also that virtually everyone in the sport has known about it for years. Here is what Mitchell said:

'For more than a decade there has been widespread illegal use of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances by players in Major League Baseball, in violation of federal law and baseball policy. Club officials routinely have discussed the possibility of such substance use when evaluating players. Those who have illegally used these substances range from players whose major league careers were brief to potential members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. They include both pitchers and position players, and their backgrounds are as diverse as those of all major league players.'

Mitchell's revelations show that the pursuit of fame and fortune by teams and players over a period of more than fifteen years has meant not only that they have illegally used drugs but that there has been a conspiracy of silence about it. The extent of that conspiracy is clear from Mitchell's detailing of how the baseball 'Players Association' refused to cooperate with his investigation and tried to obstruct it at every turn. It's a truly shameful story.

Follow the money

If you want to understand any phenomenon in modern sport it pays to follow the money. The earnings potential for baseball players is breathtaking - the top 25 players this year each earned more than $14m - a figure that most could expect to double with endorsements, sponsorships and promotions.

Ten years ago the highest salary was 'only' $10m and ten years earlier it was a little over $2m. Over the years during which players' earnings sky-rocketed the use of steroids became widespread - cause and effect without doubt. But baseball has become a very big business indeed.

Over the past ten year the value of the New York Yankees, for example, has tripled and it is now well over a billion dollars - when there is money like that in the sport no wonder nobody wants to kill the golden goose.

Hypocrisy and arrogance

Major League Baseball dates back over a hundred years and some of the names of the great players - Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle - are icons of American culture.

Even though the sport of baseball has never really moved much away from North America the fame of its iconic players often did. The building of 'Brand America', the most successful national brand exercise of all time, included not just Hollywood and Coca-Cola but also Ruth and DiMaggio.

But the successors to these greats, earning a hundred times what their forbears did, are icons of a different America. The successor to Aaron and Ruth as holder of the record for Home Runs is Barry Bonds - one of those most under suspicion in the steroid abuse scandal.

The pitcher Roger Clemens, arguably the greatest of the modern era is, like Bonds, hugely physically changed in recent times - also allegedly from steroids abuse. So a sport that arguably once stood for all that was good about the American dream now stands for illegality, hypocrisy and overweening arrogance. At a time when America needs desperately to improve its international image, one of its major sports is covered with detritus.

Sport defines our character

Simon Barnes, in his recent book 'The Meaning of Sport', says that sport '…tells us something about ourselves, as a nation, as individuals'. The greatest sportsmen I have seen or been privileged to get to know over the years all have a strength of character which transcends their sports.

I'm not suggesting that they are angels, but there is a personal integrity in a Sachin Tendulkar, a Roger Federer or a Steve Redgrave which is greater than 'just' their status as champion sportsmen. I think I see this also in Tiger Woods in the same way that I did in Jack Nicklaus - I certainly hope so.

But there is no integrity at all in the eighty eight current and former baseball players named in the Mitchell report (all of whom should be cited in a 'Hall of Shame') - the sadness is not only that they have dishonoured themselves and their sport, but they have brought discredit on their nation as well.

See also:
Sport and drugs - where to draw the line?
Missing a drugs test means you're guilty