Steroids

I've only been running this here blog for a month or so, and I've got less than a dozen posts to my record. That will take care of itself in time, but my three loyal readers will have to believe me when I say that I used to be more than skeptical about the issue of steroids in baseball. Whether there were those who were cheating really didn't bother me, and regardless, baseball's problem was nowhere near that of football where pituitary cases reign.

(Am I truly to believe that there are literally hundreds of muscular men who weigh more than 250 pounds? Why don't I ride the Metro with anyone who looks like this? I mean, in real life I've met plenty of people over 6' 6" tall -- my sister dated one -- and didn't play professional basketball. But I've never met anyone who looks like he could play in the NFL but doesn't. But I digress. Go Patriots.)

All that changed at some random point that I can't recall. See, this is where my lack of a record is a hindrance. If The Gray Pages were three years old, then I'd be able to link to the game story of whatever game it was when a second baseman, I assume someone on the Sox, hit a homerun that I witnessed and thought -- and I might be paraphrasing here -- "Yeah, right."

When one cannot believe what one saw with his own eyes, an event ceases to be live history and becomes a magic act. Now, I like magic. My minor obsession with cheating the system -- not actually cheating it, mind you, just looking for the loophole -- has always meant that I'm dying to know just how they did that. (Man, that special on NBC with the masked wrestlers explaining how each move is choreographed -- good television.) (And yet I didn't watch the specials about magic tricks themselves. This is what makes me so interesting.)

But, unlike a magic act, we don't watch baseball to wonder what we just saw, but to believe it. As Keith Foulke tossed that ball in slow motion to Doug Mienktiewicz -- time enough for my phone to ring five times and terrible possibilities to emerge in my mind -- one thought to pervaded: "So, that's what it looks like." I had always wondered what it would look like if the Sox won. Now I knew.

I need to believe that a home run is really a home run, and not a fly ball assisted by whatever comprises the next generation of artificial muscles. Without some sort of steroid policy -- however tepid -- baseball threatens to become theater.

So I'm pleased that the forces that be figured out some sort of plan to test for steroids, to give a little bit of credibility back to the sport I love. From what I've read thus far, it seems adequate. Tough it isn't. Tough isn't making the punishment fit the crime, but deterrence. And a chance at a ten-game suspension isn't a deterrent. But it's a start.