Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
Here’s a fun activity.
Try looking up any of the league’s premiere power hitters on Google: Ryan Howard, Jose Bautista, Miguel Cabrera, etc. See what happens when you do. Did you find that before you finished typing in their last name that Google already guessed what you might be looking for, that being the player’s name followed by the word “steroids”?
Why is that? Because whether by a lowly blogger or a national website, thoughts have surrounded these players when it comes to answering the question: did they use steroids?
And that is the problem with MLB right now. No player is safe from suspicion. Even when a player such as Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez, deny using steroids, actions speak louder than words. It is sad but true that this is what it has come to: fans not even being able to trust players because of all of the ones who have lied in the past.
Some of these guys are or have been chasing the vaunted home run record. No, not Barry Bonds‘ 73, but Roger Maris‘ 61. When Howard approached the record in 2006, the Maris family was on record saying that they would honor it if he broke it because they believed Howard was clean — so did most, if not all of baseball.
But can we ever really know for sure? Since that year, Howard’s power has declined and the injuries have started to become the norm. Could that be a result of the damage done by taking steroids?
I’m not implicating Howard, but rather using him to make the example.Due to the steroid era, any time a player has a season like Howard’s or Bautista’s 54-homer season, it draws suspicion no matter how unfair it might be. Chris Davis is pursuing it now with 40 HRs and 50 games left — is he going to be accused of PED use by the end of the season?
Is it wrong to automatically to take the approach guilty until proven innocent? Isn’t but that doesn’t mean it is going to stop. Because of the steroid era and the amount of players that have been suspected, implicated and suspended, it is hard to acknowledge a record pursuit as legitimate anymore.
It is also hard to figure out who the new face of baseball is going to be. It was once Rodriguez, but proved to be as guilty — if not more so than Bonds before him. It leaves one to wonder if fans will ever be able to believe a player when they deny PED use. I say this because it will unfortunately affect the careers of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, two outstanding young players of whom much is expected.
What is to say either of these guys will stay clean their entire career? What is to say they aren’t using now?
MLB wants to eradicate steroids once and for all, but will it ever happen? Can it ever happen?
As long as the most talented players with the best swings are questioned at ever turn, then the answer is a sad, but resounding no.
Marilee Gallagher is a baseball writer for www.RantSports.com. You can follow her on Twitter @MGallagher17 like her page on Facebook, or join her network on Google.
