The steroids era in history

Posted May 12, 1009

Will Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez's 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance tarnish his legacy as one of baseball's greatest hitters? The Times addressed a similar question two years ago, when all-time homerun king Barry Bonds was caught in perhaps baseball's biggest performance-enhancing drugs scandal. Then, The Times urged caution in determining the slugger's status in baseball history, noting that superstars of generations past who were widely maligned in their time have repaired their reputations.

The first editorial addresses Bonds' legacy. The second was writing in reaction to Bonds' federal indictment for perjury.

Thursday, August 09, 2007
The way the ball bounces
Barry Bonds' record may be a source of grumbling now, but who's to say how it will play in the future?

The left fielder was the best hitter of his generation -- some said of all time -- but he didn't exactly win any Mr. Congeniality awards. He was hostile to the media, indifferent at best toward the fans and fumed when his jaw-dropping batting records weren't treated with the respect they deserved. Critics rightly pointed out that he never won a World Series ring, played subpar defense the last decade of his career and was the beneficiary of an inflationary offensive context.

Still, the baseball world eventually came around to forgive and even embrace Ted Williams. Will it do the same for Barry Bonds?

One of the beauties of sport is that there's no way to predict how events will look in the rearview mirror. Three decades ago, Steve Garvey looked like a surefire Hall of Famer and a squeaky-clean citizen too. As recently as 1992, one could -- as Bonds did -- finish second in the league with 34 home runs; nowadays that total isn't likely to crack the top 10. Did Bonds change? Certainly. But so did the game.

The next year, in fact, the National League expanded from 12 teams to 14. Every expansion in the history of baseball has boosted offense in the short-term, particularly the number of home runs hit by its top sluggers; Bonds boosted his homer total to a career-high 46. Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's single-season record in the expansion year of 1961, and Maris' record fell to Mark McGwire in 1998, when the NL expanded yet again, to 16 teams. What's more, the league's stadiums are much smaller now than they were 15 years ago. With this and other changes, home runs became nearly twice as frequent within just eight years.

Did steroids and various hormones play a role in the homer splurge, including Bonds'? Possibly, but we don't know to what extent, and definitely not with the numerical quasi-certainty displayed daily on the nation's sports pages and talk-radio shows. Marginal slap-hitters and pitchers (including the guy who surrendered Bonds' record-tying 755th home run) turn out to be the types disproportionately caught under baseball's belated drug-testing rules -- rules that Bonds has never provably violated. Implicit in much of the criticism is the notion that steroids can on their own create useful musculature and help turn 90-mph sliders into home runs, instead of merely allowing athletes to recover more quickly from weightlifting sessions of the kind Bonds is famous for.

No amount of contextualizing can alter the fact that Barry Bonds, from ages 36 to 39 -- a time when most great careers are winding down -- performed at a higher level than the game had ever seen. We may yet discover evidence stronger than journalistic hearsay that he did so by cheating and breaking the law. And we may also change the way we look at those facts, much as fans think much differently today about McGwire's admitted supplement use than they did in 1998. By then, the home run record is likely to have been broken anew. The pastime may be national, but it's far from being static.

Saturday, November 17, 2007
Out or safe?
Rumors of steroid use have dogged baseball star Barry Bonds for years. Now, we may finally get to the truth.

This week's federal indictment against baseball star Barry Bonds was something that prosecutors, Major League Baseball and even Bonds himself seemed to have wanted for years. Now that it has been filed, though, it's not making any of them look good.

The case against Bonds grew out of an investigation into a Bay Area firm called BALCO that allegedly distributed illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Prosecutors granted Bonds immunity to testify in December 2003, only to hear him repeatedly tell a federal grand jury that he never took such drugs, at least knowingly. Four years later, a second grand jury accused Bonds of lying under oath and obstructing justice. But just as with the cases against Martha Stewart and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the indictment's focus on procedural missteps allowed critics to complain of overzealous prosecution.

For the league, meanwhile, the Bonds controversy has been a festering sore. The first reports tying Bonds and other ballplayers to BALCO's drugs came out in 2004, and the accusations against athletes have been matched by harsh criticism of the game's permissive approach to steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. After months of pummeling by lawmakers, fans and the media, the league and the players union finally agreed to more rigorous testing practices and tougher penalties.

Nevertheless, a cloud continued to hang over Bonds, darkening his pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home-run mark with relentless questions about the integrity of his statistics and the game itself. The indictment will probably sideline Bonds, a free agent, eliminating the distraction of having one of the game's marquee players dogged by steroid rumors. But it also reminds the public how slow and ineffectual the league has been in dealing with the situation.

Bonds has steadfastly maintained that he never knowingly used steroids, and he has complained repeatedly that his achievements have been besmirched by rumors and innuendo. After the indictment became public, his defense lawyer, Michael Rains, welcomed the chance for Bonds to clear his name. "Now the public will get the whole truth, not just selectively leaked fabrications from anonymous sources," Rains said.

Bonds' legacy, however, hangs in the balance. To prove its case, the government will try to show that Bonds knowingly took a regimen of illegal drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone. If it succeeds, Bonds' records will be tainted beyond any reasonable doubt. And even if it fails, he may never play in the major leagues again. What a sad end to the career of arguably the most talented man ever to step up to the plate.