Rose and Bonds Have Nothing To Do With One Another

For the past week I’ve been reading columnists, and hearing talking heads, who constantly make reference to Pete Rose when addressing the Barry Bonds issue. Some say that Rose should be reinstated, or Hall of Fame eligible, because what he did was no worse than what Barry Bonds is accused of, and Bonds is still in the game. Others say that Bonds should be banished from the game and Hall of Fame, ala Pete Rose, because he has cheated, and tarnished the integrity of the game in a way that even Charlie Hustle didn’t.

Not only are both points of view incorrect, but Rose should forever stay banned from the game and HOF, and Bonds should never be banned from the game or HOF. Their situations, their crimes, share no similarities. As a matter of fact, they are as different as night and day.
First, what is cheating? Is cheating becoming bigger, stronger, or faster than your opponent? Is cheating the affecting of a game’s outcome by gaining an unfair advantage? Is cheating merely an act that violates a rule of the game?

Pete Rose was never accused of cheating. He was proven of having gambled on the sport of baseball. He was proven to have engaged in behavior that has the potential to cast a cloud of doubt on the integrity and outcome of every contested baseball game. It doesn’t matter that Pete Rose never gambled against his own team. What matters is that if a player is allowed to gamble on his sport, on his team, it opens the door for the questioning of the honesty of each games outcome. “Was that an honest error, or is he throwing the game? Did the manager put on a hit and run with a strikeout hitter by accident or was he throwing the game? That pitch was a bp fastball right down the middle, was he trying to give up a homerun?”

With gambling allowed, and not punished by the `death penalty’, we would never know if the game was decided honestly, and that inevitably would lead to the `death penalty’ for the entire sport. Rose should never be reinstated to the game, nor eligible for the Hall, because he, and he alone, jeopardized the entire foundation of the sport. Not only that, he signed an agreement banning him for life. He essentially affirmed the rectitude of baseball’s most important rule, and the punishment for violating it.

Rose’s situation is diametrically different than that of Barry Bonds. Some say Barry Bonds cheated. I don’t agree with that. Cheating is doctoring baseballs. Cheating is stealing signs. Cheating directly affects the outcome of a game. Gaylord Perry cheated. The 1951 New York Giants cheated. It was admitted years later that the Giants stole the Dodgers catcher signs during the 1951 season. The `shot heard `round the world’ was quite possibly due to Bobby Thompson knowing what kind of pitch was coming.

What Barry Bonds did was get bigger and stronger. He obviously accomplished this by some artificial means. However, that was not cheating. He still had to hit those pitches. He still had to hit those pitches squarely. He still had to lift those weights. He still had to catch up to those balls. Steroids don’t make you some sort of automatic machine. Steroids don’t give you an unfair advantage in a baseball contest. Steroids improve physique, not physics. Steroids don’t affect your discipline, your patience, your game IQ.

Many players get bigger and stronger. If a hitter lifts weights and a pitcher does not, does the hitter have an unfair advantage? If a pitcher drinks loads of caffeine on game day so that he can have an adrenaline rush, and more juice on his pitches, does he have an unfair advantage?  Don’t get me wrong, this is no endorsement of steroid use. Steroids are dangerous drugs with dangerous side effects that should only be used for medicinal purposes, and under a doctor’s supervision.

The problem is not that steroids are performance enhancing, the problem is that their purpose is not to enhance performance but to aid a medical problem. Weight lifting is performance enhancing. Nutritional supplements are performance enhancing. Caffeine is performance enhancing. Believe that if scientists could find a way to produce steroids that have no debilitating side effects, and whose purpose is solely to provide supplemental energy and strength, that those steroids would be legal.

I’m simply drawing an analogy here. The difference between steroids and `nutritional’ supplements is the same difference between cocaine and alcohol. One’s legal and considered less dangerous, the other is illegal and thought to be extremely dangerous. However, they both do the same thing. They alter your ability. In the case of drugs and alcohol, your ability to think rationally is altered. In the case of steroids and supplements, your ability to get stronger is altered.

Bonds didn’t cheat because we know the outcome of his games, of his at-bats, were due solely to his ability and not to some underlying, nefarious motivations. That can be said of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, Ken Caminitti, Jose Canseco, and the rest of the accused steroid users.

What’s odd in this entire ordeal is not just the attempt to purify Rose by crucifying Bonds, but it’s also the singular crucifixion of Barry Bonds. How and why is Barry Bonds being singled out for punishment? I haven’t heard anyone advocate the league investigating and punishing Jason Giambi. I haven’t heard anyone advocate the league retroactively placing asterisks on, or expunging, the statistics of Mark McGwire. It seems Barry Bonds is being solely targeted for immediate punitive action. Not only has that, Bonds seemed to have become the recipient of so much malicious venom. I’ve read columnists write that the ultimate revenge will be when Bonds’ body begins to malfunction and his health deteriorates. The wishing of ill will towards Bonds is not something that was witnessed with McGwire. No one celebrated in 2004 when Jason Giambi was out ill with a possible steroid related health problem.

I’m wishing ill towards Bonds also. I hope he has an ill April and passes George Herman Ruth by the middle of the month. And, I’m hoping he has an ill May, June, July, and August, and passes Hammerin’ Hank Aaron by middle September.