STEFAN KANFER'S GADFLIGHTS

I DON’T CARE IF I NEVER COME BACK

By Stefan Kanfer

“The umpires always say ‘Play ball.’ They don’t say ‘Work ball.’ ”
Willie Stargell, Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder.

Once upon an era the owners screwed the ballplayers.

Then the ballplayers formed a union, acquired agents, and learned how to screw the owners.

Now the two sides have come to a common agreement. They work together to screw the fans.

For the owners this is a money matter. Ballplayers demand gargantuan wages: second string catchers can gross more than a million a year, and headliners not only have five-car garages, they sometimes fly their own planes. All this costs the owners a lot of revenue. Where does it come from? Their own bottomless pockets? Hardly. It comes from television payments for broadcasting the games; from licensing fees for items like warmup jackets, caps and tee shirts with the team logo; from ludicrously overpriced refreshments at the arena; and, of course, from ticket sales, forever pushing the pliant consumers who bitch about it, but then obediently fork up out whatever price the box office demands.

For the players, the screwing takes a different form. Once upon an era, batters cheated by corking their bats, and pitchers by using foreign substances on the ball, or sandpapering between the seams. This now seems sandlot stuff compared to the latest revelations.

Anabolic steroids, compounds used to build muscle, enabling an ordinary guy to balloon up to Schwartzenegger proportions, are now rampant in locker rooms across the American and National leagues.

With the exception of track and field contests, long marred by chemical abuse, baseball is the most statistical sport in the world. Shelves full of books have been written about the double-entry bookkeeping of baseball, the ERA’s of pitchers vs. the on-base averages of hitters. These are broken down into columns of infinite refinement: defensive stats, the achievements of left-handers vs. right-handers, the miles per hour of fastball hurlers, inherited runners of relief pitchers, power numbers, at-bats, doubles, triples, and that most precious and misleading of stats, home runs.

Misleading because baseball has become a game of HR uber alles. It’s all very well for a shortstop to flash leather, but the big roar comes from the round-trippers. These have become more frequent in recent times, and the argument used to be that the pitching talent was thin, that the outfield fences were brought in, and that ballplayers are bigger and stronger than they used to be, simply because almost all American boys are bigger and stronger than their fathers were.

Well, now we know better. All of the above may be true, but steroids are the real reason why the ball travels farther and records are broken like fungo bats. According to 1, 438 “survey” tests given during the past season, more than five percent of major leaguers were guilty of steroid use.

Baseball management was, of course, shocked, shocked, to discover that the athletes were swallowing designer drugs to make them brawnier and quicker (yes, certain steroids can make hand-eye coordination accelerate.)

So something had to be done. And the owners did it. Carefully removing any teeth from their strictures, they decreed that a multiple offender—which is to say any player dumb enough to be caught five times will receive a one-year suspension without pay, and/or fine of up to $100.000.

Jose Canseco, a large man with a quick bat and small brother, admitted that he used steroids. So did former MVP Ken Caminiti. Both testified that steroid use was widespread in the majors. If they are telling the truth, a lot of offensive records are tainted, and pitchers have right to be riled. And so they are. A war is brewing between the hurlers and the hitters, and look for it to get worse this season.

Meantime, look for nothing but obfuscation and tap dancing from baseball’s powers that be. Gene Orza, the Players Union general counsel, recently gave his overview of anabolic steroids: "I have no doubt that they are not worse than cigarettes." Right, and gonorrhea is no worse than a bad cold. Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball and one of the dullest men this side of Al Gore, has ordered clubs not discuss steroids with the press.

A Solomonic move. For the fans, who work themselves into a lather about Pete Rose’s eligibility for the Hall of Fame, made no outcry when Mark McGuire conceded that he used androstenedione, a body-building drug, in his 70 home run season. They will make no noise about Barry Bonds or Jason Giambi or anyone else whose stats might or might not be under suspicion.

Fair enough. They get what they pay for. Bogus arithmetic, and phony numbers, leading them to believe that baseball never had so much talent.

Stargell was right. The umpires say “Play ball.” They don’t say “Work ball.” They don’t say “Sleazeball,” either. But they should.