You do not care about steroids in Major League Baseball or the National Football League.
You may be up in arms, in a huff, in high dudgeon over the quasi-admission by Alex Rodriguez that he took a “substance.”
But what you really care about are winning teams and star players.
I’ve never had one person say or write to me: “I will never buy another ticket to a Rockies or Broncos game because they had steroid users.”
When the Mitchell report was published in December 2007 and listed the names of nine Rockies players (including one who pitched for them last year), as well as a coach and clubhouse attendant, I wrote about the issue and the Colorado connections. The number of reader comments attached at the bottom of the column and the e-mails totaled zero.
If I write that the Rockies are no good, the responses total several hundred.
When a Broncos defensive lineman was suspended for four games in 2007 for “violation of the league’s steroid policy,” nobody seemed to care. When the same defensive lineman didn’t play well in 2008, everybody seemed to care.
The Rockies signed a pitcher in December 2000 to a five-year, $51 million contract. Although he was mentioned in the Mitchell report, the pitcher is condemned in Denver for a 19-23 record with the Rockies and his public liaison with a prostitute.
Former Broncos who played in the Super Bowl have told me they used steroids, and I reported the information. Nobody reacted negatively.
It’s not just you.
When the steroid allegations swirled around Barry Bonds, who defended him, cheered him and crammed the ballpark for Giants home games? The fans in San Francisco.
When A-Rod comes to the plate for the first game in new (and full) Yankee Stadium, he will be booed — because of his confession and because a lot of people in New York just don’t like him. If he hits a three-run homer, he will be cheered. If Rodriguez hits .242 and the Yankees don’t go to the postseason, he will be vilified by the masses. If they win the World Series and he’s the MVP, he will be revered in a ticker-tape parade.
The 2007 Yankees are poster boys for steroid use.
When the best defensive player for the San Diego Chargers is suspended for a “substance” violation, he is not run out of town, but welcomed back.
Despite the “Steroid Era” in baseball, the sport continues to attract record attendance. The “Steroid Era” can be defined as being from 1985, when Jose Canseco said he began taking steroids, to 2009 and beyond. That’s longer than baseball’s “Dead Ball Era,” which began in 1900 and ended the same season as The Black Sox Scandal erupted. This is The Black Hole Scandal.
More than 125 current or former Major League Baseball players have been linked to steroid use. Canseco, who has turned steroids into a cottage industry, once claimed 85 percent of players had tried steroids or human growth hormone. He could be off by more than 75 percent, but who do you trust any more?
Who cares?
Media act like they care, maybe because we were duped or feel completely stupid or were decades behind the story.
I chased Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa late in 1998 as they chased the home run record. I watched Bonds hit the ball high and deep into the South Stands at old Mile High Stadium and didn’t get that when I had met him as a kid at spring training, he didn’t have the same body or power. I saw and smelled the results of steroid injections in the Broncos’ locker room in the 1970s and didn’t understand, or investigate.
I must not have cared enough.
In late November 2000, Rodriguez, who was baseball’s most coveted free agent at 25, visited Denver and met with Rockies officials. But he signed with the Texas Rangers — for $25 million a year. (The Rockies signed two pitchers; one was named in the Mitchell report.) In light of the A-Rod interview, Rangers owner Tom Hicks says he was “betrayed.”
What if Rodriguez had come to Denver and still played for the Rockies? Would the Rox owners feel “betrayed”? Would they keep him? Would you buy tickets to see him play?
Would you care?
• • •
On the Friday afternoon before the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., a man approached me and said his name: “Darren Holmes.” He was with the Rockies from the franchise’s first season, 1993, until ’97. The 6-foot, 200-pound right-handed reliever recorded 46 saves with the Rockies. Now he looks like he weighs 175.
We talked for a while. Finally, I said: “I’m glad you got through the steroids thing.” He replied: “My shoulder was badly injured.” He acknowledged in 2007 that he ordered, and received, HGH in 2003 — after his final season in baseball, but said he never tried it.
Holmes and John Smoltz are partners in Accelerated Sports Institute, which provides clients with sports performance training — and supplements.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
