WATCHING BASEBALL REALLY IS A GUILTY PLEASURE

Even the author's beloved Blue Jays are not above suspicion -- but it can be safely assumed that steroids and HGH have not fueled the K.C. Royals' 14-42 record.

What's illuminating about the Jason Grimsley HGH revelations isn't the news itself – it’s how people learn to deal.

The scariest aspect isn't just that the ex-Diamondbacks reliever being implicated in a U.S. federal steroids probe that might – nay, will - stick to baseball.

This is rich. You have a veteran player and a federal affidavit with blacked-out names. This will have legs. Yet at the same time, every fan knows it exists. It’s just a question of whether baseball gets it right this time, or tries to play defence on this one and sweep this latest scourge of the sport under the rug. Last year showed the sport was beneath embarrassment – and now this happens.

Sixty per cent of respondents to an ESPN poll believe Barry Bonds/BALCO is far worse. Just how Grimsley and Bonds are separate when it's all part of one mass investigation is beyond me. However, the poll numbers are illuminating, since it seems to reveal how baseball fans can pretend this away.

Nearly 95% believe Grimsley was entirely truthful when he said "boatloads" of players are using HGH – but about 60% are saying they don't develop suspicion "when you see a player have a huge game or go on a long streak."

Really, how else are you supposed to deal with it? Baseball’s hamfisted attempt to put a gloss over the steroids scandal last year makes every fan a little bit guilty. We are taking pleasure in a sport that you know has been altered by drug cheats, knowing that there are strings attached. Sure, there have been some failed steroid tests, but save for Rafael Palmeiro, it's almost always a minor leaguer or the 11th man on the pitching staff. Paraphrasing what Bob McCown noted on The Fan 590 a couple weeks ago: it's odd how this bigger, better net has yet to catch any really big fish.

You know something is going on, but you’re in no position to do anything about it. Well, you could watch less on TV, or go to fewer games, and some people do pack the willpower for this, but a lot of us are weak, so we compromise – like when you see an angry parent grab a small child by the arm or think better of correcting some moron who refers to a woman as a "bitch."

The media, as Jeff Pearlman noted in a Slate article last Friday, is complicit too. Very complicit: "A little more than one year removed from congressional hearings that produced the most humiliating images in the game's history, baseball writers have a duty to second-guess everything. Instead, everyone is taking (Albert) Pujols' test results at face value. Have we forgotten that Barry Bonds has never failed one of Major League Baseball's drug tests?"

Eerily enough, within 48 hours after Pearlman's piece appeared, Pujols went on the disabled list with a strained oblique injury -- the type of injury that can be a symptom of being overly muscle-bound. His Cubs counterpart and rival for NL MVP honours, Derrek Lee, has missed much of this year after enjoying a 2005 season that far surpassed his previous performance. Of course, you can't say this is evidence either player did anything indecorous. That’s the hell of it all.

As Pearlman acknowledges, it's extremely hard for a beat writer to raise these questions. Put yourself in the shoes of the Toronto Star’s baseball guy, Geoff Baker, who just received a National Newspaper Award for an investigative series that detailed the prevalence of steroids among teenaged baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic.

Now Baker has to go about his job in the Jays clubhouse, on their turf, poking his nose in their business with his questions.

As a Jays fan, do I think steroids have, or have ever had, or might in the future, have a presence in the organization? Sure – the Jays have had a minor-leaguer fail a test and it’s hard to believe they would be any different from the other 29 major-league clubs.

That's the upshot until such time that we're positive we have drug-free sport. Or we could go completely the other way and understand that athletes are going to try to use every opportunity to get better, and that we'd be better off trying to control steroids and HGH and reducing the long-term side effects of using performance enhancers. Until then, any ballplayer who has a sudden jump in performance is suspect. Just look at the comments over at Deadspin -- it's gotta be him .... no, it's him.

Just compare the improvement in the OPS (on-base and slugging averages) of three players so far this season compared to all of last year:

Player A: .929 vs. .818 in’05
Player B: .918 vs. .744
Player C: .962 vs. 729

Those players are Frank Catalanatto, Reed Johnson and Gregg Zaun, all platoon player types on my Blue Jays. None have the body types that scream, “Steroid Users.” Neither does the lanky Alex Rios, who fits the Dave Winfield / Darryl Strawberry mould of the tall player who isn’t so muscle-bound that his body can’t handle the fluid movements baseball requires. But the current climate means that Rios has to be second-guessed when he has as many homers this season as he had in all of his first year-and-a-half in the majors.

It takes a unique skill set to be able to play major-league baseball, and once there, you have to work your ass off to stay there. It’s just that until such time that baseball has a testing policy that passes the smell test – or that sports and society drops the pretense of pretending about drug cheats, admits it’s all for the money – you just won’t know who’s clean and who isn’t.

Is that going to happen? No. It’s all about the plausible deniability.

You’ll have to compromise until Bud Selig and the boys take their heads out of the sand and stop trying to win the P.R. game. Learn to like it.

June 7, 2006
Ottawa, Ont.
neatesager@yahoo.ca