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Baseball, the World Series and Steroids: George W. Bush Was Right

1 year ago
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Carl M. Cannon
Carl M. Cannon
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When he was part of the syndicate that owned the Texas Rangers, George W. Bush usually eschewed the owners' box for a seat in the stands, all the better to shuck peanuts and kibitz with the players, sometimes in his basic Spanish. Now that the Rangers are finally in the World Series – which opened Wednesday night in San Francisco -- the network cameras will scan the box seats looking for Bush, who likes to sit next to his old friend Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan.
Perhaps some of Bush's old critics ought to also search him out -- and apologize. Baseball is a better game, a truer game, than it was a decade ago, and Bush and a handful of fellow gutsy politicians (yes, that means you, John McCain -- and you, too, Henry Waxman) are a big part of the reason.
Jack Keefe, the fictional major leaguer invented and immortalized by Ring Lardner, called baseball's Fall Classic the "World Serious." This inadvertent play on words was a sign of the player's naïveté (and of Lardner's wit), but if baseball is only a game, steroid abuse is a serious problem -- and cheating is rarely funny. As a Rangers executive before he entered politics, George W. Bush was a player's guy, and a baseball purist. Apparently not greedy enough for his fellow owners, he was denied the job that would have suited him best, commissioner of baseball.
george w. bush, world seriesThat was baseball's loss, not to mention Al Gore's, for however one comes down on important policy questions such as the war in Iraq, education reform, gay marriage, tax cuts, or the Medicare drug benefit signed into law by the 43rd president, one thing is clear as Bush's boyhood team squares off against his adopted team in the fall classic: He was on the mark when it came to the pernicious influence of steroids in sports.
In the famously greedy decades of the1980s and 1990s, no one was more avaricious than the Lords of Baseball. Counting their money and laughing at history, these reluctant stewards of the game were content to let their sport wallow in a vast drug scandal that obliterated the record books, consigned honest players to careers in the minor leagues, and transfigured mediocrities into demigods. In the process, they turned the national pastime into a rigged dice game. In his Jan. 20, 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush called baseball out:
Athletics play such an important role in our society, but, unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example. The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message -- that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character. So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.
The reaction that night was revealing. National Football League officials applauded the president's remarks, pointing out that they had instituted a policy of random, year-round testing with immediate suspensions some 14 years earlier. Major League Baseball, belatedly beginning to address steroids, issued a pro-forma statement claiming solicitude for the president's vision and pointing the finger at the player's union, which refused comment.
Was it Presidential?
Outside the world of athletics, Bush was widely mocked. Numerous critics expressed the view that this was a trivial matter for a State of the Union address. The snarky comments spanned the political spectrum. Economic conservative Andrew Stuttaford wrote about "a speech that had time for such patronizing trivia as that new nonsense over steroids and the old rubbish on drug testing." Daniel W. Drezner , a libertarian conservative and foreign policy expert, echoed this thought: "What the hell are steroids in professional sports doing in the friggin' State of the Union?"
Journalist Andrew Sullivan pointed to the steroids comments to bolster the conceit of a column in which he dubbed Bush the "Nanny in Chief. And while accepting her fifth Golden Globe award that year (she's since won two more), actress Meryl Streep opined, "I just want to say that I don't think the two biggest problems in America are that too many people want to commit their lives to one another 'til death do us part, and steroids in sports."
The dig about gay marriage was on point -- Streep was being honored for her performance in "Angels in America" -- but Bush never said steroids was one of the most important issues facing the country. It was one paragraph in a 54-minute speech. But it was a paragraph that almost certainly saved lives.
Professional football banned steroids in 1990, but it was too late for Lyle Alzado. An All-Pro defensive lineman, Alzado had always denied using any performance-enhancing drugs. But, as he admitted in a heart-rending, first-person Sports Illustrated article, he had always been lying about that. Even after he retired in 1985 to make movies, Alzado ingested steroids, supplementing them with a new substance that came on the black market that year: human growth hormone. In March of 1991, while living in West Los Angeles, the 42-year-old Alzado married a lovely fashion model. Two days later, he went to the hospital and got the diagnosis that would end his life: brain cancer.
By that time, baseball players were starting to look like football players -- and not because of increased weight training. One of those ballplayers, 1996 National League MVP Ken Caminiti, was dead by age 41. A heart attack, the doctors said. Drugs, said his friends. Caminiti, too, had admitted his steroid use by then. "He was a great player, but he got mixed up in the wrong things," said former teammate Steve Finley. "It's a sad reminder of how bad drugs are and what they can do to your body."
"Cammy" died six years ago this October, which is baseball's defining month. Twelve days later, President Bush signed into law the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004. The next night, the Boston Red Sox took the field against the St. Louis Cardinals, sweeping the Series in four straight games and ending nearly a century of futility for their franchise and their fans. Yet today, we know that some of the slugging stars of that storied team were not clean.
As the Steroid Era dominated baseball, apologists asked: What's the harm? And what's really new here? Those are pretty cynical questions considering how drugs warped the sport -- and other sports. Illegal drugs fed to defenseless thoroughbreds eroded the public's faith in horse racing -- and damaged the quality of the American breed. Widespread cheating helped make track and field an afterthought in this country. Doping is so endemic in bicycle racing that the sport has become an international joke. In organized baseball, more than the sport's integrity was damaged. Organized baseball presented singular challenges. For one thing, a sport so romanticized had always lent itself to hero worship, a problematic tendency in the best of times. Then baseball began paying astronomical salaries to the game's stars, especially those who could hit for power. And when the truth trickled out, as it has a way of doing, that a generation of stars got strong in the lab instead of the gym, the effects rippled through society -- sometimes with tragic results. This was the point made by President Bush.
'I'm a Baseball Player'
One needn't be a sports fan to see the harm. Meryl Streep may not care that unworthies Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa obliterated the home run records of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris (or that Barry Bonds topped them all) while bulking up with their concoctions of illegal substances. But the famously empathetic actress would surely weep if she ever spoke to Ray and Denise Garibaldi, whose family was shattered by steroids.
Their son Rob, a terrific high school baseball player, had his dreams of playing in the World Series one day. He kept being told he had to get bigger -- and do so in a hurry -- if he ever wanted to set foot in a major league outfield. But as Rob got big and strong, he also became moody, depressed, and delusional. In the summer of 2002, his father confronted his son. What's going on with you? As the parents later related to courageous San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada, Rob erupted, choking his father and yelling at him:
"I'm on steroids, what do you think? Who do you think I am? I'm a baseball player, baseball players take steroids. How do you think Bonds hits all his home runs? How do you think all these guys do all this stuff?"
As a kid growing up in Northern California, Rob Garibaldi had idolized Barry Bonds, whose face you will also see on television during the 2010 World Series. Denise, a clinical psychologist, is convinced that was a crucial part of the dynamic that led to her son's steroid use.
"As far as he was concerned, Bonds gave him permission to use," she told Fainaru-Wada, "[Rob] said that in order to make it into that caliber, you had to do steroids. And if Barry Bonds is doing it, Mark McGwire was doing it, then skinny little old him for sure had to be doing it." But Rob's system didn't handle the drugs as well as the Sosas, McGwires, Bonds, and the others. On Oct. 1, 2002, while sitting in a car in his parents' neighborhood, Rob shot and killed himself with a stolen handgun.
What Makes the Game Great
As baseball players have resumed their previous physical shapes, so has the game of baseball itself. This season has already been dubbed The Year of the Pitcher, and it has been that indeed. The collective batting average is the lowest it's been since George W. Bush's father was president. Five no-hitters were pitched this season, two of them perfect games. (There would have been a third perfect game except for an inexplicable umpiring error. The only time there were even two perfect games in the same season was in 1880.) One of this year's perfect games was pitched by Roy Halladay. All "Doc" Halladay did was follow that performance up with another no-hitter in the playoffs.
In the 2000 season, at the height of the Steroid Era, some 5,700 home runs were hit in the major leagues. This year, about 1,000 fewer dingers were launched. Runs are expected to be difficult to come by in this World Series. But whatever transpires, those of us watching will know that the players on the field got there the hard way. And as another fictional baseball man, Jimmy Dugan, noted: Baseball is supposed to be hard. "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it," the manager of the Rockford Peaches tells Dottie Hinson, his star player. "The hard is what makes it great."
Thank you for the reminder, Skipper. Thank you, too, Mr. President.
Tagged: baseball, Mark McGwire, NolanRyan, Performance Enhancing Drugs, Sammy Sosa, steroids, world series
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22 Comments

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trb2244

I suspect that, before all is said and done, we'll find out President G. W. Bush was correct about a number of things. By the way, Dems, is the War over yet?

October 28 2010 at 9:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve Strickland

Thank you Mr. Cannon for addressing a serious topic and for having the courage to admit that President Bush got something right. I don't even mind the gratuitous dig at some of presidential actions because he probably would have been just as happy to be baseball commissioner as president

October 28 2010 at 3:42 PM Report abuse +5 rate up rate down Reply
ranger964x4

In defense of the steroid users in baseball, since baseball did not outlaw thier use, the players did nothing illegal. It's just like when they outlawed the spit ball for pitchers, up to then it was legal and all records stood. In defense of the long ball hitters, size always helps but having a good eye for the ball is what gives you that perfect contact and other than maybe eye wear, which will always be legal, is a natural gift. There can be no doubt Babe Ruth had this gift and thier no telling how he would have performed if he would have layed off alcohol. I once heard a remark of one of his team mates that he showed up so intoxicated that he had to lean on the bat on deck to keep on his feet but on that day he went 2 for 4, one hit was a homer. All I can is God, I love the game!

October 28 2010 at 3:13 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to ranger964x4's comment
nyynut2798

Steroids became illegal to use without Doctor approval in the U.S. in 1990. So they were still breaking the law after that point, even if it wasn't illegal in Baseball.

October 28 2010 at 3:32 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
eldicko

Baseball has a testing policy designed to NOT catch the cheaters. In order to test for Human Growth Hormone, a blood test is necessary. The players union won't allow blood tests, only urine tests. One would have to be naive to think that nearly everone is using H.G.H. If baseball was serious about preventing performance enhancing drugs, they would do what pro cycling does and track & field. Numerous in season and out of season tests, with no warning. Miss a test, you are gone for two years. Come up positive, two year suspension. Yes, those other sports have a lot of people caught, including their super stars, but that is because the tests are designed to catch them. Two years ago at the Tour de France they gave out over 500 drug tests. Lance Armstrong was tested 17 times during the tour. Baseball (not to mention the other pro sports in America) has more drug users than it doesn't.

October 28 2010 at 3:07 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
John D Wysong

"W" is a Good God Fearing Man - and history will prove he was a GREAT President.

October 28 2010 at 2:45 PM Report abuse +9 rate up rate down Reply
nyynut2798

Bush was still a co-owner of a team that had more than a couple steroid users. Canseco, and Palmeiro, are on record as being so, and who knows how many more there were. Bush, like most of the owners of the time simply didn't care, or want to know. They were just happy to see how much money was coming in. And to be honest, as a fan, it was fun to watch. So if Bush helped in cleaning up baseball, it should also be added that he was in a position to do something when steroid use ramped up, and didn't.

October 28 2010 at 1:25 PM Report abuse -5 rate up rate down Reply
Cameron

You all need to watch the documentary, "Bigger, Stronger, Faster." Get an education about steroids.

October 28 2010 at 1:12 PM Report abuse +4 rate up rate down Reply
P-Body

At least the man as president didn't degrade the office by going on the tonight show or comedy central or blame Clinton for every mistake that he made.

October 28 2010 at 1:07 PM Report abuse +18 rate up rate down Reply
GNP+USA

The sad part of having to police a game in banding serniods is that the band trickle down to all people. Most of these serniods where created to help people with medical problems like cancer, aids, auto immune patients. Now that the cruse is on legetiment serniods too, many Doctors are afraid to write a scrip for any one and many have suffered from the pride and corruption in baseball. The Bush band may have help a sick baseball indrustry, but has harmed many in need of their medicine. Sad, Very Sad

October 28 2010 at 12:45 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
CHABSENTIA

First of all, The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007. Congress enacts Legislation and approves the Budget. There are Three Branches of Government. Congress is called the Legislative Branch.The Office of the President is the Executive Branch. They dont Legislate or approve the Busget etc. This Branch enforces thr rules of Congress. Anyhting that Bush got or didnt get during the last two years of his Presidency was courtesy of the Democrats including the TARP Bill.The turning point for this recession was 1999 when that Administration allowed people that could afford homes to buy them with no money down. Part of the package was that Fannie and Freddie guaranteed the Loans so the Bankers approved them. When the Democrats took control of Congress inn January 2007 they increased this percentage and the Baners approved even more bad Loans, Do a Serch on the Community Reinvestment act and look at the cause and turning point and who revived it in 1999 if you dont know who was President.The probrelm now is there are no checks and balances. More democrats were elected in 2008 and now have a super majority and Obam, Pelosi and Reid rubber stamp each other in Social Engineering etc.

October 28 2010 at 12:39 PM Report abuse +7 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to CHABSENTIA's comment
depotofam

When the democrats controlled congress during president Bush's last two years, the president vetoed any bill he did not like and signed the bills that he did. He has to take responsibility for what he signed.

October 28 2010 at 1:18 PM Report abuse +6 rate up rate down Reply
cmdrhlamb

depotofam, most excellent.....someone who knows what a veto is, most peeps on here never heard of one.......you could'nt be more right, anything passed that hurt this country passed with his signature on it......

October 28 2010 at 3:04 PM Report abuse +3 rate up rate down Reply

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