Every summer, it happens all over again. I fall in love. However, this is not the type of love that happens with just one other person. No, this is for something much greater: the game of baseball, America’s true national past time.
Photo courtesy of zimbio.com
Every year, Opening Day brings unending excitement and nerves. Could this finally be the Tigers’ year? Will the single season home run record be broken? Who will be the MVP this season, and who will be the Cy Young. However, the game of baseball represents much more than just a compilation of numerical values, and who can hit a baseball further.
It’s about cities and people from different backgrounds coming together to support something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s about grabbing a friend, driving down to the ballpark on a summer evening, buying a hot dog, and remembering your days growing up and playing ball on the neighborhood streets. It’s about the legends such as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Roberto Clemente, and many more who saw their time with the game before the modern age. It’s about continuing a true American tradition. This is baseball, and this is why I love the game.
What is not baseball is the brawls, mass ejections, and the usage of performance enhancing drugs. When I sat down with Cal Ripken Junior a few months ago, one of the true legends of the game, I asked the respected great what he thought the biggest problem was in baseball. The man chuckled and asked me what I thought was baseball’s biggest problem. I replied, “steroids.”
While, by in large, Major League Baseball has made strong efforts to rid baseball of steroid users since the days of Mark McGwire, the BALCO scandal, and Jose Conseco’s book outlining steroid usage in the MLB, it is now evident that they did not do enough.
On June 4, a report linked a shady clinic near Miami to roughly 20 Major League baseball players receiving performance enhancing drugs by a man by the name of Tony Bosch. While the MLB continues to look into claims and documents, the steroid rage of the past resurfaced and is taking center stage in the MLB once more. Names such as Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Jhonny Peralta, Nelson Cruz, and Bartolo Colon were included in the report and could face suspensions for their drug use.
What a shame. This is not what baseball is about, and if Major League Baseball wants to rid itself of steroids and make the fans happy, they must act swiftly. For every provable offense of steroid usage, the MLB should ban the guilty player from the game never to return again.
If “Shoeless” Joe Jackson was kicked out the game for gambling speculation, shouldn’t proven cheaters be taken out as well?