Steroid talk doesn’t faze sports fans

Think about cooking a thick, juicy steak on the grill on the Fourth of July, then having young and impish Chuckie notice a fly hovering nearby and address the issue by coating the steak with the spray of bug repellent.

The steak still looks good, but it’s forever poisoned.

I get a similar vision when lamenting about how steroid abuse is damaging the sports world, though sometimes I think most fans could care less as long as they are entertained.

How else to explain the crowds that still flock to watch Major League Baseball, a pastime that thrives on history and statistics but has had its most precious records subject to the asterisk game thanks to an era when chemicals seemingly overtook hand-to-eye coordination as the critical component of a successful swing?

Sure, everyone boos Barry Bonds, but that’s easy because he’s never been a genial sort. But even as accusations of steroid use continue to swirl around him, he remains a top draw as he approaches a career home run record he has no business taking from Henry Aaron, a modest man who played by the rules and never hit more than 47 homers in a season.

And nearly a decade after the fact I still reflect painfully on being duped during the magical summer of 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought baseball back to prominence by dueling for Roger Maris’ single-season mark of 61 home runs.

Do I know for sure that both were juiced up as they thrilled the nation and brought renewed energy to every ballpark in America? No court has said so, but there’s an adage about a duck that applies here – and McGwire did have androstenedione in his locker.

Both later appeared before Congress to discuss the issue, but Sosa suddenly couldn’t understand English anymore and McGwire came off more like a mouse than the Paul Bunyan clone he resembled during his home run-hitting prime.

Of course, as long as baseball fans still buy $75 tickets to get a crack at an $8 beer, baseball will spin its heartfelt concern to the public while continuing to turn a blind eye to the reality of the situation. And the beat writers who are so self-righteous about their sport will still vote these bums into the Hall of Fame.

No way the sport is better for any of that.

Now comes the recent murder-suicide involving pro wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and 7-year-old son. While the effects of steroids have not yet been determined to be the underlying cause of the tragedy, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest a link.

Fans of stick-and-ball sports cringe at any connection made between such a pristine part of Americana as baseball and a scripted entertainment vehicle such as wrestling with a long history of its athletes dying young due to steroid abuse.

But steroids have been used to manipulate performance in both sports, and both have plenty of willing enablers. They are the executives who ignore the warning signs for the good of the bottom line, the fans who pay to watch events that are manipulated in laboratories rather than decided in the arena, and a society content with having the only penalty for violating of the spirit of the game with steroids being the inevitable health issues facing these tainted athletes.

I, too, have been an enabler over the years, but with every discredited record or tragic death I grow more weary – and a bit angrier, too.

But anger is wasted energy, and it’s time for a barbecue. Enjoy the Fourth.

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net