Lots of people are granted exemptions to this or that body of law. I’m against such exemptions, but even if there are exemptions, it doesn’t magically make Congress in charge of how baseball is run.
I’ll say it again: the only reason Congress is involved in baseball is that people in Congress love to waste taxpayer dollars on things that allow members to preen in front of cameras on a hot topic where they can look like moralistic heroes. There’s nothing more to it.
Don’t forget that GWB himself has vowed to get steroids out of baseball. It wouldn’t surprise me if the White House is behind this.
Were you ever watching? And I doubt you would watch even if they had the “testing program” of the NFL.
Oh please what? Baseball sucks and I don’t give two shits about the sport OR McGuire. I’m not defending either of them. All, ALL professional athletes use performance-enhancing drugs. Period. At some point in their career they will have abused drugs in some way. Many, are just smart enough to do so in the off-season when they can do so and get away with it. That and the Feds need to back the fuck off and let the people and business of baseball regulate their use of drugs.
And another thing, steroids aren’t “illegal”, and neither are their use. Te police do not and will not get involved in such a manner unless they’re trying to take down a scumbag who is selling them to kids. Steroids are regulated drugs and they are illegal to dispense or use without a prescription, but they aren’t illegal like, say, cocaine, and you can’t just call your local coppers and tell them about someone who you know uses roids. The Feds and the DEA generally get involved in these situations, but only after exhaustive research and surveillance.
Sam
As one of the Congressman pointed out at the hearing, Congress holds hearings to investigate Enron and other corporate shenigans, should the Ken Lays and Jeffrey Skillings be able to appear and say “I don’t want to talk about the past. I just want to talk about the future, and how to make it better”? Because that’s what McGwire said, repeatedly. Securities fraud is already a crime, and there are ample laws to enforce, so why should a Lay testify?
You beat me to it, villa.
I agree with everyone here who says that Congress probably shouldn’t be wasting their time with this crap. I also agree with everyone who assumes, a priori, that most of baseball’s big sluggers are juiced up. And, much as i think Mark McGwire is a fucking dick, i agree with the position he took on the stand.
But, as villa said, Congress has already taken a very specific interest in baseball, without which the sport might well not enjoy the business success that it currently does.
So, to those who are criticizing Congess for this intervention: would you also call for Congress to remove the anti-trust exemption and make baseball subject to the same cartel and monopoly rules as every other business? And if not, why not?
Well, that’s true. But doesn’t Congress also have the authority, perhaps even the obligation, to ensure that businesses which are granted special exemptions deserve them?
And if, through this enquiry, they find that baseball has become a hotbed of cheating and/or illegality, wouldn’t it be reasonable for them to say,“We no longer feel that your anti-trust exemption is warranted, because the benefits of the exemption no longer outweigh the drawbacks of the sport”?
You mean the same rules that apply to the National Football League, which makes money hand over fist? Well, sure, why not?
You’re going to be very hard pressed to show the anti-trust exemption really does much. MLB isn’t exactly running away with the money while all the other sports leagues go broke.
Good. That’s all i really wanted to know.
I made no claim about how much the exemption actually helps the league. I don’t know and, for the purposes of my post, it really doesn’t matter.
The fact is that they do have the exemption, and i was genuinely wondering whether people would be happy to see the exemption lifted, and whether people see any connection between Congress’s intervention in that area of MLB affairs, and the steroid situation.
I used to be a fan, but my interest started to wane when the Expos were shut out of the pennant race.
When McGuire and Sosa were battling it out for the home-run record, the rumors about 'roid use really started to stink, and I decided I had better things to do than watch baseball.
Ah, yeah, I can’t blame any Expos fan for giving up on baseball. Completely disgraceful - far more shameful than steroids, IMO.
Personally, I don’t think any athlete should juice up, whether it’s baseball, football, bodybuilding, whatever. On the other hand, shouldn’t the Congress have more important things to do? It looks like diversion to me, diversion of public attention away from other more serious issues.
Instead of this grandstanding, just let the baseball commissioner institute a policy of internal policing. If you get caught juicing, your contract is cancelled and you are out.
Side note: It’s amusing that Babe Ruth, who is sort of a baseball god, never juiced up, and instead built his career on beer and junk food. Steroids may enhance your size and performance, but the innate ability still has to be there.
Steroids are so last year anyway. Now it’s nanobots and gamma rays. AAARRRRRR smash! :eek:
I commend McGwire for not plea copping and ratting out anyone else. If Congress wants a witch hunt, let them do their own dirty work.
Jon Stewart made exactly this point on The Daily show the other night.
They ran a clip from an interview, where Tim Russert asks one of the Congressman on the Committee how widely they could take their investigation. The Congressman says that the Committe’s rules give them the authority to “hold a hearing on any matter at any time.”
Stewart responds: “ANY matter at ANY time? Enron. Halliburton. No WMDs. Abu Ghraib. And you went with…baseball! Way to go!”
You can view the video from this page. Click on “The Unnatural.”
Babe Ruth also spent most of his career taking shots at a 296-foot fence. Willie Mays? He spent half of his career hitting in the Polo Grounds, where you could hit it around 500 feet dead center for an out or you could hit it 260 feet down either line for a home run. Where do you think most of his home runs went?
Don’t kid yourself. The Babe did what he wanted. Note that for most of his career is was Prohibition. Yeah, good law-abiding guy there. Looking at the history he would have been a good candidate for steroids. Then again, with the condition he kept himself in, he’d need steroids because otherwise he’d never get a second look from the talent scouts and GMs of today.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: other than raw numbers there is no comparison between Babe Ruth and players of today. The rules may be mostly the same, but that’s about all that is.
The current hearings are farcical idiocy. But what do you expect? The Repubs own the White House and Congress. You give Repubs power, this is the kind of shit you get. Wait’ll the new FCC Chairman gets things rolling. Gonna be a nasty four years. On the bright side, we’ll have plenty to complain about …
It’s certainly true that Republicans control Congress, and that much of the stuff going on in Congress reflects the Republican agenda.
But there are plenty of Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee that is dealing with this issue, and some of the interviews i’ve seen (like the ones i mentioned in the previous post) have involved Democrats like California’s Henry Waxman. Waxman and Virginia Republican Tom Davis are the lead investigators on this issue.
Neither Willie Mays nor Babe Ruth were significantly helped by their home parks; actually, Ruth was hurt.
Mays hit 335 homers at home, 325 on the road.
Ruth hit 347 at home, 367 on the road.
Yes, it was 296 down the line in old Yankee Stadium; yes, it was very short down the Polo Grounds foul lines. In the major leagues you can’t hit every ball down the line.
In fact, of the top home run hitters of all time, few were helped to a significant extent by their home ballpark. Of all the players with 500 or more homers, the only ones who had a home park benefit of more than 50 homers were Ernie Banks (68) Jimmie Foxx (64) Mel Ott (135 - !!!) and Frank Robinson (56). A shocking number actually hit more homers on the road, including Ruth, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Mark McGwire, Ted Williams, Eddie Murray, Willie McCovey, Eddie Mathews, and Barry Bonds.
Babe Ruth was a terrific, natural athlete, strong and fast with a cannon for an arm. The scouts and GMs of that day were just as hung up on athletic appearance as they are today, maybe more so. For most of the first half of his career, Ruth was in very good shape. He was kind of barrel chested, but he wasn’t at all overweight. The images of him fat and roly-poly are pictures taken in the latter stages of his career.
I’m pretty sure the Babe would have taken roids if he’d had the chance, though. It was not in his nature to follow the rules.
Of course he would, pretty much every player would. As Jim Bouton said in Ball Four, if there was a pill you could take that would guarantee you would win 20 games but at the same time would take 5 years off your life, almost every pitcher would take it without a second thought.
Interesting statistics. Hoever, before we get too carried away with them, let’s think about this: in 1920, the Babe’s first season in the Polo Grounds (Yankee Stadium was not opened until 1923), he hit 54 home runs, which broke the existing record for home runs by 25 and beat the second place home run hitter, George Sisler, by 31(Cite). He beat that record in only 12 more games and 26 more at-bats than the previous year (Cite), and remember, this was still the dead-ball era. The spitball was still legal.
All things being equal, you can say that he was on something, or it was the ballpark. What changed in order to make this explosion possible? Only his team, hence his home park. Compare the demensions of the Polo Grounds in 1920 to those of Fenway Park. The Polo Grounds was shorter down the line and didn’t have the muderous 385-foot power alley. The Polo Grounds did have a much deeper center field, but that resulted in more inside-the-park homers since the center field bleachers were only reached 3 times.
And now for the funny thing: with that correlation I have proven nothing. What I have proven is that looking at raw data Babe Ruth was a 'roid boy according to the standard of proof that you guys seem to require today. There’s no way you can prove that steroids have had that much of an effect on the game, try as you might. The ball, the ballparks, the training, the conditioning, it’s all had an effect. How can Steroids be determined as the key factor with all the other variables? Answer: they can’t.
But regardless, I’m not interested in this tangent, I just didn’t want to start another thread to beat it to death some more. I’m more interested in why people think that Congress has the right to stick their nose into stuff like this and why people shouldn’t go tell Congress to suck wind more often.
And people have answered why. If you take the benefit, you take the oversight. Baseball has fought in the past tooth and nail to keep its anti-trust exemption. It doesn’t matter that people here don’t think it is that valuable, because MLB clearly does. Without it, MLB would have to actually start managing itself competently, like the NFL does. And apparently that is something those in charge of the game will do anything to avoid, include putting up with pompous windbaggery by Congress on an issue such as this.
That doesn’t make any sense. The only thing the anti-trust exemption really does nowadays is allow baseball to prevent teams from moving. What does that have to do with managing itself?