Special Guest Column: Innocence Lost

When you saw the title you probably thought this column would be about Tewks and a nubile, young woman... but you're mistaken.

This is an entry where my good buddy C-Szem discusses the Mitchel Report and it's fallout.

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This is my first guest column in this space. I had intended for my first foray into the blogging world to be insightful, but humourous. My predecessors on this blog have managed to entertain the readers, and I had hoped to do the same. But today, my passion for sport compels me to offer my first entry with a far more serious tone. I hope that you’ll come back to read more. Without ado.....

These are dark days. As a baseball fan, this seems an obvious statement. But from a societal perspective, on a day when heroes were torn down with a swift, 409 page report, the world seems a slightly more hardened place.

I’ll preface this column with the admission that today’s report included the name of one of my personal favourite players, Gregg Zaun. Zaun is, or so I thought he was, a player that embodies everything I value in sport. Hard-work, determination, taking every last bit of effort possible and achieving more than God-given talents should warrant. And now I feel like Gregg Zaun has dropped my heart into a bucket of boiling tears, and then hit my soul in the groin with a frozen sledgehammer.

The release of United States Senator George Mitchell’s report regarding his probe into steroids and performance enhancing drugs in the world of professional baseball leaves us with more questions than answers. The probe was intended to provide closure on an era marred by uncertainty and suspicion, but it seems that it’s done nothing to appease anyone. The report spreads the blame to all areas of baseball, for enabling the behaviour that eventually ran rampant throughout the game. And what was accomplished by this?

Yes, we identified some names that confirmed suspicions to this point. Roger Clemens started taking steroids in 1998, and went on to have arguably the most significant career resurrection ever seen by a pitcher over 33 years of age. Eric Gagne started taking steroids, and went from a middling starting pitcher with a 93 mph fastball, to an absolutely lights out closer with a 98 mph fastball. These are NOT revelations. Further, we identified that players like Mike Lansing and the immortal F.P. Santangelo took steroids, presumably to prolong their careers as their skills diminished below the required level to maintain employment in professional baseball. Again, this is NOT a revelation.

So what DID Senator Mitchell’s report accomplish? It managed to turn an entire generation of baseball fans cynical to everything they see. Until now, fans still had the option to respect the history and the tradition of the game, and enjoy every accomplishment with the necessary reverence. Baseball fans in general (at least those outside of Boston) wanted to believe that a 45 year old man could take the hill every 5 days and be a dominant starter. It’s a great story, really. But now, with the definitive tone of the report, it seems that every accomplishment in the world of sports will be questioned in the court of public opinion. Athletes that have evidently done things "the right way" will, even if not formally accused, have a shadow cast over their accomplishments. Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, every sprinter that breaks the 100 m World Record, every cyclist who wins the Tour de France….these people will all feel the effects of increasing cynicism (Note: I have long held disdain for Alex Rodriguez, but unless having purple lips and cheating on your wife are included in the unfortunate side effects of steroids, the guy’s clean. But how can anyone break a record now without having it called into question, at least a little).

Certainly the argument could be made that scepticism in the fans/media of baseball was already extremely prevalent, and naturally this is true. The breadth and scope of this report, however, will make it seemingly impossible for players to improve their skills without suspicion. If you woke up Thursday morning confident that Mark McGwire never took performance enhancing drugs, then I don’t know what to tell you (other than that you live in a dream world), but if you (like me) went into work on Thursday feeling like it was possible for "good stories" to exist in the world of sport, this report has hit you the hardest. Brian Roberts (2B for the Baltimore Orioles…..for now) is a good example. Here’s a guy who seemed to steadily improve throughout his career, and then it culminated in a really big year, and a few quite strong years to follow – that’s a good story! Sure it would never make the first 10 minutes of Sportscentre, but this is the kind of accomplishment that should give hope to every underachiever that loves to play sports. Benito Santiago and Gregg Zaun, two catchers seemingly well past their primes, battled through whatever earlier career problems they had, and became productive players in the latter stages of their career. Again, this is a good story. With the release of this report, however, how is a baseball fan expected to accept improvement and excellence for being honest effort and hard work?

But the problem runs much deeper than scepticism in the world of baseball. Baseball has long been America’s pastime, and has embodied values that closely reflect that of society. This has been obvious throughout the history of the game. Jackie Robinson breaking the colour barrier was not only a seminal moment in sport, but a major occurrence in the civil rights movement within American society.

With today’s report, I can’t help but wonder if December 13th, 2007 will be a date that lives in infamy, not only in the future of sport within North American society, but also in the way society interacts with, and views, the games that have been held so dearly over the last 100 or so years. Today’s report merged politics and sport unlike ever before, and with the sports-obsessed society we live in, it seems likely that the apparent transparency of the report today will become the new gold standard for the information desired by the public in regards the games they follow so closely.

But is this a good thing? Part of the allure of sport is the unknown – which leads to the reverence we pay to the athletes who can achieve things the rest of us only dream of. The increased flow of information between the world of sports and the public feeds the desire to be closer to the games than ever before. The more and more we know, the less the mystique that remains. And with every factoid or revelation, a little bit of innocence is lost.

C-Szem