It seems like that once you become a major professional sport, you invite controversy into your home like an unwanted in-law. This morning I opened up my favourite American sports news site and there on the front page was the headline: “Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers suspended for 50 games.”
Manny Ramirez, for those not familiar with baseball, is an enigmatic figure that has not only been one of the best players in the league over the past ten years with nine Silver Slugger Awards (SSA), two Hank Aaron Awards and twelve All Star team selections, he was also part of the storied Red Sox team in 2004.
The team that broke the fabled curse of Babe Ruth after experiencing some 90 years of championship drought.
That 2004 Red Sox team came back from 3-0 down in a best of seven series, the only team to ever do so, against their arch rivals the Yankees no less, and then went on to win the World Series.
The problem now, however, is that in baseball, Ramirez sits in rather good company. Here are just three of the multiple all stars who have since been linked to performance enhancing drugs:
Barry Bonds (7 MVPs, 14 time All star): perhaps the most complete player of his era, and definitely the most hated for his link to steroids and surly attitude.
Alex Rodriguez (3 MVPs, 12 time All star): the US$275m dollar man and considered the player who would erase Bonds from the record books.
Mark Maguire(12 times All Star): the winner of the home run chase which broke the 37 year old single season home run record. In 2005, he attended a congressional hearing and quite comically refused to answer questions that related to his own steroid use.
For mine, though, the true villains in this are the administrators of the sport. These are the morally bankrupt individuals who had to be brought before a congressional hearing and threatened with regulation before they would act on steroids in their sport.
After all, the steroids era actually gave them the home runs, 100 mph pitches and the excitement required to engage with fans that were disenfranchised following the strike in 1994.
Just like the athletes they tacitly encouraged, these administrators used steroids to give them a little something extra when they found their game lacking.
The tragedy for their sport is that whilst the athletes primarily damaged to their own reputations and legacies the administrators have created a black hole in the history of a sport described as a nations past time.
A black hole which tarnishes the legacy of every player ever involved in the game.
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