Where have all the baseball heroes gone?

There’s a ten-year-old boy out there right now, hitting ball after ball after ball off a tee in his backyard. As the sun goes down, he imagines himself at Yankees Stadium on a brisk October night, stepping up to the plate, a full count, bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, the Yanks down by one. He launches the game winning homerun and as he runs around the imaginary bases, with the imaginary crowd screaming in his ear, he wishes that one day his dream of playing in the major league, along side his heroes will come true.Fast-forward seven years. That same boy is now a senior in high school and as he sits in the quiet locker room before a game, he glances around nervously to make sure no one is looking. He then injects himself with a performance-enhancing drug, just the way his heroes do. He wants to play professional baseball and he believes this is the way to do it. Just ask his heroes.

What happened to our heroes?  Where are the Lou Gehrigs, Babe Ruths and Mickey Mantles? They’re all gone now replaced by Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs have now replaced their natural talent. These are the men that our sons and daughters look up to now. Our kids look at how big these men are and read about the drugs they use to get that way and they assume that the only way to be the next Barry Bonds is to shoot themselves up with a drug.

Who do we blame for the demise of the baseball hero? Do we blame the players for choosing to play for the love of money, over the love of the game? Do we blame the coaches and general managers who pressure the players to do everything possible to win, in order to bring more revenue into the ballparks? Do we blame the fans, who continue to shell out enormous amounts of money to attend a single game, so that the men on the field and the men in the front office continue to get richer?  Or perhaps the corporate sponsors who pressure the players to be all that they can be in order to increase sales of their products?

Professional sports is a corrupt world. A world where money and fame overshadow the dream that those players once had when they were ten-years old and hitting a small ball off a tee. But it makes you wonder. When little Barry Bonds was hitting fly balls in his backyard, did he ever think in the back of his mind that he would one day be the man he has become today? A man corrupt by the money and fame he has received for being a good baseball player? “Good”, now being questioned due to his use of steroids. Did he ever imagine that his amazing career and records would be questioned because he is now considered a cheater?

Barry Bonds is no Lou Gehrig nor is he a Babe Ruth or Mike Schmidt. No, Barry Bonds is an example of the man that we were all taught not to become. A man who shrugs off his fans and pockets their hard earned money, while cheating them out of the glory that was once the sport of baseball. A man who had them all believe that a record he smashed a few years a go, a record that was broken before him by another man accused of using performance enhancing drugs, was a reflection of his hard work and strength. In the end, his demolishing of Mark McGwire’s record was another slap in the face to Roger Maris who broke the record using nothing more than his bat and was forever punished with an asterisk.

Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Richie Ashburn, these men were heroes. Men who captured our imaginations, our hearts and played for the love of the game and the reaction from their adoring fans. And yet, as they fade further and further into history, so does the ghosts of heroes of the past. Hopefully, the ghost of Barry Bonds’ career will go right along with them. Barry Bonds is no hero; he’s the villain.