|
This was an ESPN Insider article that I found interesting...
Jim Kaat was in baseball as a player, coach and broadcaster for 50 years, and recently, he read a column by former commissioner Fay Vincent in the aftermath of the Mitchell report that closed with the kicker, "Now we see that we have to value those who win while playing fairly."
What follows is Jim's response to that:
] The players have been tagged as the most culpable, and I would suggest that they are not culpable at all.
Baseball, on the major league level, has been never a "great game of honor," like golf is reputed to be. My job as a pitcher was to do all I could to help my team win, and from a selfish standpoint, to perform well enough to earn as much money as I could during a limited number of years to earn it. In 25 seasons in the major leagues, I averaged about $80,000 a year and thought, for many of those years, that I was overpaid.
I cringe when I hear or see a former player speak out about erasing records set during this era. Here is my own example of a "performance-enhancing method." Pitching outdoors in Minnesota, a pitcher needed something to help him grip the ball without having it slip out of his hand. Games were played in temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, and the ball was slick like a frozen snowball. I used pine tar and later a solution my pitching coach, Johnny Sain, concocted by boiling resin and adding a little turpentine and a few other ingredients. It was against the rules. "No foreign substance is to be applied to the ball." No punishment was ever noted. Veteran umpire Jim Honochick, known later for his role in the Miller Lite commercials with Boog Powell, approached me on the mound from his position at second base one day and said, "Lefty, you're putting a foreign substance on the ball. That's illegal." I quickly replied, "Jim, that's not a foreign substance. It's made in North Carolina." He chuckled and went back to his position.
My point is that there were plenty of "tricks" to help you enhance your performance. Baseball never had a set punishment in place. Hall of Fame pitchers have written in books about scuffing the ball with a filed ring worn like a wedding ring that had a sharp edge. Players put Vaseline on the balls. Sandpaper rings were used that you could quickly flip off if an umpire came out to question the unusual movement of the pitch. One well-known pitcher who has been very outspoken about the records achieved with the use of performance-enhancing drugs used to file a sharp edge on his belt buckle to scuff the ball -- which helps a pitcher to get it to sink and dive different ways. Infielders had sharp objects hidden in their gloves and as the ball was tossed around the infield after an out, they could scuff it up. Hitters corked their bats.
Owners, general managers, umpires, and the commissioner and his staff knew these things went on and did very little about it. Occasionally, a pitcher might be warned about "doctoring" the ball or a hitter might be caught corking a bat. The Graig Nettles incident has been well-documented: "Puff," Graig's nickname, hit a ball off the end of his bat, and the hollowed-out end came loose and a golf ball, two superballs and a dowel of cork went rolling down the third-base line. It was looked upon as a funny incident. "Corking" is meant to increase the "coefficient of restitution" -- the speed with which the ball bounces back off the bat. Pretty heady terminology for a former left-handed pitcher!
As a pitcher who gave up a lot of home runs, I could recognize when a ball carried an unusual distance, particularly to the opposite field. I was always the curious type and one night, when I saw a ball fly into the upper deck to the opposite field off the bat of a hitter known for his batting titles and not his home runs, I investigated. Over the years, I became friendly with most of the clubhouse attendants; you see more of them during the season than you do your teammates or family. I would stop in to visit them well before games on occasion, and have, as we used to say, a cup of "big league coffee." (Just an expression, not a special brew.) I would notice the bags that held the bats and see where the ends had been hollowed out on some and a noticeable circle where cork or some other objects had been inserted. It confirmed what I thought about the bat of the hitter who hit the opposite-field home run. Because I was visiting a friend in the visiting clubhouse, I would never report anything like that and jeopardize my friendship with the clubhouse guys.
My reason for pointing out these examples of "performance enhancements" or cheating is that it has been going on as long as the game itself. Steroids that help you perform better are no different except they can affect your health. I didn't suffer any illness or debilitating condition from using pine tar. Athletes have died from using anabolic steroids.
The non-uniformed personnel are all hiding behind the doors and going nameless while players' reputations are tarnished forever.
The blame should be shared by the administration and the union. Since baseball took a public-interest hit after the 1994 strike and home runs began flying out of parks in record numbers, they turned their back on what they knew to be the reason for it. Being in clubhouses and around players with their torsos exposed, you don't have to be exceptionally intelligent to see body changes that would be impossible to achieve with normal weight and strength training.
I did the normal training to make my career last as long as possible. It lasted until I was 45 years old. Regular, normal training wouldn't help achieve the "spike" in players' performances that we have witnessed in recent years from hitters and pitchers.
Anyone have an answer to this question: Why hasn't any player hit 60 or more home runs since drug testing began?
I have a simple solution (and I have made this known to the current commissioner during a telecast of a game I was doing on YES). When the administration and the union realized what was going on -- and they knew ever since the Canseco era, which was about 1990 to a few years ago when testing began -- two things should have been presented to the players, privately, in meetings with each individual team …
A spokesman from the commissioner's office and the Players Association could have made it clear that they knew what was going on and that the players could:
1. Take anything and everything available to them to help their performance, and as a result, their team's performance, while understanding that there are potential health issues and legal issues if they are obtained without prescription.
2. Enter into an agreement between the union and Major League Baseball whereby any player caught in the authorized testing program using illegal performance-enhancing drugs (listed in clubhouses and training rooms) will be banned for life.
In other words, a level field for everyone.
If a lifetime ban was the punishment for using pine tar, do you think I would have taken a chance and used it? I would hope not.
I grew up studying baseball history. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed commissioner in the early part of last century to rid the game of players involved in fixing games by cooperating with gamblers. We will never have a dictatorial commissioner like him again. However, we need some leadership that will protect the integrity of the game, and it should come from the administration and union leaders. They should have been more interested in serious issues like this instead of record-setting revenues and benefits for players. Unfortunately, that's all they have ever been interested in, and they probably always will be. It's too late to repair what damage has been done in the past, but an agreement with some teeth in it could be crafted immediately.
You may have lost whatever respect you had for players who were your heroes, but don't blame them for the current problem. |
|
