Rumors Of Baseball's Death Greatly Exaggerated

It's finally official folks.  This has gone far enough.

As if the daily updates on Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens aren’t enough, now we are bombarded with articles about how Alex Rodriguez’s now-confirmed use of steroids in 2003 has single-handedly wiped out the future of baseball.  We hear how the numbers and statistics that are so hallowed in baseball lore are forever tarnished and how the sport’s most hallowed record is tainted.

Baseball will be dead if fans and analysts don’t stop and do two things immediately.

First, fans need to call it an era and leave the steroids to the history books. 

Second, they need to start recognizing players who are too new to be tainted by the likes of Bonds and Clemens.

Tim Lincecum, Josh Hamilton, Edinson Volquez, Cole Hamels, Evan Longoria, Hunter Pence, Nate McLouth, Geovanny Soto…the list goes on and on.

These players have no ties to the steroids era.  At best, they were in the minors when everything exploded.  Some weren’t even drafted yet.  These players are baseball’s future.  The juicers, Rodriguez included, are its past now.  Fans should stop lamenting the losses of the last decade and a half and start celebrating the bright future the sport has in front of it.

The other disturbing feature of this whole debacle is how the records that the juiced players hold (or will hold) are now suddenly unbreakable.  Maybe a little history lesson would be helpful here in lending some perspective.  No one thought a player would hit 60 home runs in a season after Babe Ruth did it.  No one thought Hank Aaron’s home run record (which had already been made “unbreakable” by Ruth before him) would fall.  No one else was supposed to win 300 games after Greg Maddux and Clemens did it, yet Tom Glavine already has eclipsed 300 and Randy Johnson should be able to manage it before the All-Star Break in 2009.  Records, like rules, are made to be broken.

Who is to say that Lincecum isn’t the next 300 game winner?  Why not add Hamels and Volquez to that list too?  Who’s to say that Longoria won’t turn into a more prolific third baseman than A-Rod or Hamilton a better slugger than Bonds?  No one can say that.  That, not the stale numbers game, is what makes baseball so thrilling to watch.  There’s always another young player ready to step into the spotlight.

It’s a shame that the office cooler talk less than a week before Spring Training opens isn’t focused on that.  They’re missing out on some great stuff.

The talent runs deeper than the current crop of young major league phenoms.  The minors is full of names who could someday eclipse the accomplishments of players affiliated with the—hopefully fading—steroid era.  What about Pedro Alvarez as the next Rodriguez (sans the ‘roids)?  How about Matt Weiters as the next Johnny Bench?  Anything is possible and the talent pool is teeming with eager young players waiting for their chance to take their place in history.

Did steroid use happen? Yes.  Was it wrong?  Yes.  Is it something that should forever condemn the game?  No way.

Baseball has been through these earth-shattering moments before.  The Black Sox scandal in 1919 was probably the most recent example.  The players strike in 1994 was also a very low point in the game’s history.  But baseball rose up from that and remade itself.  It can, and will, do so again. 

But first, before any of that can happen, the fans have to stop worrying about who injected who with what in 2003.  The commissioner needs to either move on visibly from the scandals or he needs to get out of the way for someone who will move on.  The players need to embrace the fans again and regain their trust and admiration.

It’s time to move on.  It’s not too late to save baseball.