Opinion: Lance Armstrong and the problems of the sports world
Nick Cesare says, “Blame the culture, not the game” for recent doping incidents. (Photograph by Rogerio Barbosa/AFP/Getty Images)
By Nick Cesare, Contributing Writer
In light of the termination of Nike’s relationship with Lance Armstrong, in the wake of his fall from grace in the cycling world, I believe it is important to reflect on what exactly goes wrong when our athletes decide to deviate from the path of integrity. Unfortunately like many great athletes before him Mr. Armstrong is now caught up in a scandal revolving around his usage of performance enhancing drugs and his adamant denial of it. Across the sports world, there has not been a more widespread and damaging case of performance enhancing drugs and the subsequent culture they create than in Major League Baseball.
In his essay “We, the Public, Place the Best Athletes on Pedestals,” William Moller contends that the fans and other outside influences are responsible for players’ use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. He illustrates professional ball players, mainly Alex Rodriguez, as victims of an unfair spotlight that athletes are put under. In the height of the steroid era, the culture of Major League Baseball condoned the use of performance enhancing drugs. This is because of outside influences as well as internal pressures. Moller contends that the main perpetrator of the steroid breakout is the fan base because of the enormous pressures they put on the players.
In terms of the total argument, I agree with Moller’s overarching premise. I do not believe in putting steroid users in baseball on a scaffold to be shamed and tarnished. I believe that their motives, however warped and misshapen, have some faint underlying light of human necessity. It is the same kind of desperateness that a student can show at a deadline or a businessperson trying to make a masterstroke deal. However, I disagree with Moller when he says that the public and other outside pressures are responsible for the players’ actions. In the steroid era, the culture of desperateness on the part of players to stay in the league allowed the use of performance enhancing drugs to grow and become part of the landscape of all thirty major league clubhouses.
I believe that this pressure to perform is internal. These men are at the top of their field, so to speak. They are ultra-competitive. That is the type of personality it takes, along with the natural physical gifts, to rise to the top of an athletic profession. They scour their resources endlessly to find an edge. Anyone who is left behind will be back riding the buses in the minor leagues. The runt of the litter always dies. It is often said that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. In sports, the rich can get poor and the poor can get rich in a millisecond. Teams are always willing to pay for premium talent.
From the superstar’s perspective, he is always trying to remain top dog. From the marginal fringe player’s perspective he has a choice. He can choose not to give in and remain in baseball purgatory of being too good for AAA, but not good enough for the big leagues or staying in the big leagues for good. In fact, in the Mitchell Report made by former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell in 2007 had many of these types of players named. While the report named high profile players such as Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, the majority of the players named were not star-caliber players. They were players just trying to stay in the league and in many respects desperate to do the best they could for themselves and their families. Fans and media forget that these players are real men with real problems. They are made out to be more machine than man and the public holds them accountable as such.
In reality, away from the field, they have real families and real fears like everyone else. In addition, up until very recently, Major League Baseball had the weakest anti-drug testing policy in professional sports. As a consequence, advertently or not, this condoned the behavior of the players. Moller goes on to say that pitcher Andy Pettitte took HGH because “he didn’t think he’d get caught, not because he knew it was wrong, not because he thought it was acceptable.” This is a perfect example of the culture that existed among players. There was nothing to be afraid of, so why hide? Players will do whatever they can to can an edge, especially when they are desperate enough. This was never more evident than in the steroid era, where this behavior was so palpable it had an entity of its own. So much so in fact, it was no longer seen as cheating. The ultra-competitive culture of Major League Baseball had forced the players hand into using steroids just to remain on par with everyone else.
The first step in this mud-slinging cycle is the media. Moller states, “The entire steroid outcry is pure hypocrisy. Look, you and I both understand that the majority of the best players in baseball are steroid users. And so are a good portion of the less-than-best. And when I say that, I do so without adding the negative connotation added by the self-righteous media types who make a living by drumming up indignation from the masses.” As it can be said that fans have grown closer to players via social media, the same can be said tenfold for the men and women who cover teams on a daily basis.
The media sees themselves, with merit, as intermediaries between fans and their favorite players. Some writers and reporters do their job well and objectively while others decide to use the pen and keyboard allotted to them as tools meant to pester and destroy major league clubhouses from the inside out. Members of the media let their personal biases and agendas get in the way of fair reporting. As such, steroids are labeled as taboo and swept under the rug. The media, the body of people who are around the players more than anyone, act like steroids are permanently expelled from Major League Baseball. These people are intelligent or they would not be credentialed members of the press. In fact, it’s conceivable that some media members may know more about players than the team’s hierarchy. It is obvious that they can see what is coming in and out of the players’ lockers. It’s the perfect example of the two-face culture of the majority of the media. They will support players until they need to fulfill their own personal agendas. To them, steroids are not an issue until they need more followers on twitter. From this, descent and anger resonated with the fans.
The fans split into separate schools of thought about what steroids meant to the game, how to deal with them and how to move forward. When all is boiled down, there are two clashing camps. On one side, you have fans that just want to move on from the steroid era. To them, the record books are what they are, tainted or not, and it is best for baseball as an industry and a sport to move on. On the other side there are supremely traditional fans that want to iconoclastically tear down every known steroid user and their stats and purge the ones who have not yet been discovered. These fans claim that steroids destroyed the game and they make bold claims like they will never give another cent to Major League
Baseball and their allegiance to their teams are in dire straights. Personally, I believe that these fans are not seeing the big picture. Blame the culture, not the players. Not one of these fans can definitely say that if the scientific means existed when their old time heroes played they would not have jumped in. Both the media and fans are guilty of viewing the players as sheer entertainment value. As if the players were terminators sent from the future, they are expected to be laser precise in their public image and decision-making. When they falter, they are tossed into the ring for the wolves.
Again, the culture of Major League Baseball created this mess. No one should blame the players.
No matter what walk of life one follows, there will always be competition to get to the top. There is no better example than professional sports, where Major League Baseball in particular had a scandal unlike any other major sport. William Moller illustrates this in his essay “We, the Public, Place the Best Athletes on Pedestals,” as an external issue. Moller blames the fan base for putting too much pressure on players in the 24/7 all access world we live in. However, even with all the means that now exist to connect fans with players, the steroid issue in baseball is and has always been internal.
The desperateness of the players to stick in the league and the culture of the steroid era allowed steroids to grow and become commonplace in the game. Once the culture of Major League Baseball changed, the steroid era slowly began to die out. If fans told the players to stop using, the players would not have thrown out a single dosage. After all, it’s just the competitive juices.
