Authors: George Vecsey
It was quite evident that Rose had a lusty appetite for various pleasures and diversions, including gambling. At the Florida racetracks and greyhound courses and jai-alai frontons, one could only wonder if there were three Peter Edward Roses, with his Prince Valiant haircut bobbing as he hustled between the seller's window and, occasionally, the cashier's window.
Management overlooked Rose's habits until very late in his career, when he came home as the Reds' player-manager. There were concerns that he was involved with steroid suppliers and bookmakers, betting on sports, maybe even his own, which was specifically banned, according to regulations printed in English and Spanish (and now in Japanese as well) on every clubhouse door.
Ueberroth hauled him in for a meeting, only to have Rose assure him he was not betting on baseball, absolutely not. Pete Rose would never do such a thing. When Ueberroth departed, Rose became the
problem of Bart Giamatti, who regarded gambling, particularly government-operated lotteries, as a moral flaw. After investigators compiled a dossier on Rose, he stonewalled them in private confrontations.
Ultimately, in 1989, Giamatti and his lawyers persuaded Rose's lawyers to make Rose accept a lifetime ban from the game, with the written promise that he could reapply after one year. Perhaps Rose believed this scenario but, when his ban was announced in a major press conference, Giamatti, in response to a question, said he had “concluded” that Rose had bet on baseball, including the Reds. This public judgment was not part of the deal Rose had anticipated. Rose quickly realized he had been given the bum's rush out of the game.
Anybody who has ever dealt with addictive behavior could detect the blatant denial in Rose, but Giamatti seemed to take Rose's bluster personally, dismissing him in a fury. Giamatti went on vacation in New England and died of a heart attack eight days later, at the age of fifty-one. Rose was not always good at reading the racing charts but he could figure out there was only one way Giamatti's death was going to play out: Pete Killed Bart.
The next two commissioners, Fay Vincent and Bud Selig, remained staunchly in favor of a lifetime ban, at least unless Rose repented. Rose did not help himself through a decade of further denial and his five months in prison for tax evasion. He emerged as the star attraction at autograph shows, signing memorabilia, showing up in Cooperstown during the annual Hall of Fame bash, a seedy ghost who would not go away.
Rose haunted the game in 1999 when fans were asked to punch out computer cards to select a best-of-the-century team, in a promotion by a credit card company. To the chagrin of Selig, and just about everybody else, Rose was voted onto the team by a nation hooked on Las Vegas, office pools, and lotteries. When the thirty-man team was introduced during the World Series in Atlanta, Rose hustled in, appropriately enough, from Atlantic City, straight from an autograph bazaar, and immediately made a belligerent appearance on national television.
“Charles Manson can get a hearing,” Rose told NBC reporter Jim Gray. “I hope they don't wait till 2060 to review my case.” Charlie Hustle even upstaged the ailing Ted Williams during the introductions.
Years later, while promoting his book, Rose admitted he had bet on baseball, but by then even tolerant fans had lost sympathy with him. The public did not have any moral problem with his gambling, apparently, but now found him a bore. He realized he was facing a very long wait before any commissioner would ever reinstate him. Rose had wanted to become Ty Cobb. Instead he had become Shoeless Joe Jackson.
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Head in the sand, baseball contributed to the drug epidemic, the collusion penalties, and the festering Rose problem. For a long time, the fourth scandal did not seem like a crisis at all, but rather a jubilee, a Fourth of July fireworks display, an exploding score-board's worth of home runs.
The owners did not want to know. Starting in the early 1990s, players became noticeably thicker in the shoulders, forearms, and necks. A willowy player could bid farewell to teammates at the end of the season and reappear the following spring with a physique most approximating the main character of the television series
The Incredible Hulk
, with mood swings to match. Facial bone structure seemed to change overnight, with jaws protruding to Cro-Magnon dimensions. Players coming out of the clubhouse shower would inadvertently display a raging case of acne on their backs, a telltale sign of steroid usage. But there was no testing for bodybuilding drugs, and everybody went along.
Many players openly used creatine, a bodybuilding substance not banned by baseball. I can still see a certain owner distributing creatine shakes to players in the center of the clubhouse during spring training. It was baseball's version of the Gold Rush.
The facile explanation is that management was looking for a quick fix of home runs after the labor stoppage of 1994–95, but just like the folk legend that baseballs were knowingly juiced up after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, the explanation is more complicated.
By the 1990s, the Silly Boys on the television sports shows were hung up on showing endless clips of home runs. The players were no fools. They wanted to be on the highlight films. You didn't get time on ESPN by dropping a perfect bunt.
Management was thrilled at the perfect antidote for the labor blues. In 1998, two sluggers, Mark McGwire of St. Louis and Sammy Sosa of the Cubs, chased the home run records of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. Both were appealing in their own way, with McGwire somewhat intense and private and Sosa more gregarious, frequently waving to the fans.
One day, Steve Wilstein of the Associated Press was waiting to interview McGwire in front of his locker, a totally normal process in a sport that provides daily access before and after every game. Wilstein idly noticed a package labeled “androstenedione” in plain view on McGwire's shelf, and later he discovered this was a steroid-like substance that increased body mass and could be bought over the counter, and was not banned by baseball, but was outlawed in most Olympic sports.
After diligent reporting, Wilstein wrote about the stuff in McGwire's locker, prompting a furor. McGwire did not deny using andro, as it is known, but he did claim Wilstein had intruded on his privacy. McGwire wound up breaking the record and finishing the season with 70 home runs while Sosa hit 66, and both were given credit for “saving” baseball after the labor dispute. In fact, attendance had already surged upward after the stoppage.
Faced with public concern, McGwire soon announced he would no longer use androstenedione because it set a bad example to the youth of America, who were bulking up for sports and self-esteem but later facing emotional and physical dangers. His body no longer able to ward off injuries, McGwire retired after the 2001 season, but by that time he no longer held the home run record. Barry Bonds, son of a major-leaguer, hit 73 home runs that year, with his compact swing and marvelous discipline and a body that seemed vastly more muscular than the whippet-like frame of his early days.
With suspicion growing about Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa, Major League Baseball and the Players Association agreed to the
first mandatory testing of drugs in the history of collective bargaining, but the testing was widely criticized for its limitations.
The association was forced on the defensive in spring training of 2003, when a young pitcher for Baltimore, Steve Bechler, died of heatstroke after a workout. It was later determined that Bechler, concerned about being overweight, had been taking an over-the-counter supplement that contained ephedrine, a diuretic used for weight loss. Ephedrine was already banned in college sports, the Olympics, and the National Football League. Congress quickly banned ephedrine, forcing management and the union to amend their agreement to include ephedrine, a highly unusual concession by the players.
Another disgrace followed. Under the new labor agreement, since more than 5 percent of the players had tested positive in 2003, public disclosure of violators and their penalties automatically went into effect.
Things got worse late in 2003, when word came out of northern California that a federal grand jury was investigating steroid and other drug usage by many prominent athletes with links to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). The
San Francisco Chronicle
later revealed that Barry Bonds had told the grand jury in 2003 that he had received a clear substance and a cream from his personal trainer, and supplied by BALCO. Bonds claimed he had believed they were a nutritional supplement, flaxseed oil, and a balm for arthritis. The newspaper also claimed that prosecutors had found Bonds's name on a BALCO list, linking him with “human growth hormone, Depo-Testosterone, undetectable steroids known as ‘the cream’ and ‘the clear,’ insulin and Clomid, a drug for female infertility sometimes used to enhance the effect of testosterone.”
The newspaper also claimed that Jason Giambi of the Yankees had testified in December of 2003 that he had injected himself with human growth hormone and had also used steroids as early as 2001.
These revelations put intense pressure on Donald Fehr, who had been serving as an advisor to the United States Olympic Committee while that organization was trying to combat drugs, yet at the
same time Fehr had steadfastly resisted significant testing for his clients in the Players Association. As the BALCO scandal deepened, Fehr left his advisory post with the USOC.
The embarrassment only got worse for Selig and Fehr. On March 17, 2005, a congressional subcommittee held a long day of hearings into steroid usage. After gripping testimony from several parents whose athlete sons had committed suicide during withdrawal from steroids, an international drug expert, Dr. Gary I. Wadler, described an epidemic of a million youths using steroids without medical supervision.
Nobody came off well in the afternoon hearing. Jose Canseco, a retired slugger, reiterated charges in his book that he and several other players in the room had used steroids. Sosa said little, retreating behind the use of a translator. McGwire, badgered by legislators to discuss his possible use of bodybuilding drugs, abjectly replied he did not want to delve into the past. Curt Schilling, a pitcher who had been billed as the hearing's star critic of steroids, managed to look ridiculous by testifying that he actually did not know much at all. And Rafael Palmeiro, a hitter with Hall of Fame statistics, wagged his finger at the members of Congress and said that despite Canseco's charges, “I have never used steroids— period.”
The mood became even more acrimonious in a late-afternoon session when members of the subcommittee ridiculed Selig and Fehr for their bland answers about drug usage. The members of Congress had started out the long day fawning over the celebrities and expressing their undying love for the national game. By the end of the day they were threatening the entire industry with an anti-steroid law if baseball did not wise up.
The public scolding was the best thing that ever could have happened to Allan H. Selig. Over the years, management had taken a series of lickings from Miller and Fehr in private negotiations, but now the members of Congress had publicly given Selig orders to fight back. In front of a separate committee a few months later, Fightin' Bud came out firmly in favor of tougher testing and tougher penalties.
On July 1, 2005, the finger-waving Palmeiro tested positive for stanozolol, a bodybuilding steroid that is almost always taken via injection, and not accidentally as part of a medication or vitamin supplement. Palmeiro was suspended for the maximum 10 games but his reputation was shattered, his Hall of Fame aspirations in jeopardy.
Bonds sat out most of the 2005 season because his injured knee did not respond to surgery and rehabilitation, but he returned in 2006; although he was considerably slowed down by age and injuries, he passed Ruth's old home run record of 714 in late May and trudged after Aaron's mark of 755. Bonds soon discovered that the rules had changed.
After the intense criticism from Congress, management and the players had accepted a three-strikes-and-out policy for 2006, with penalties of 50- and 100-game suspensions for the first two offenses, followed by a lifetime suspension for the third, bringing baseball in line with the general drug policies of most other sports, and sending the message to young people not to start using illegal drugs to bulk up. As usual, baseball had reacted to a crisis rather than anticipating it.
With critical books and articles starting to come out about Bonds, Major League Baseball and even his own team seemed to tiptoe around him. Bonds claimed he was a victim of racial prejudice because he was African-American, insisting that baseball had shown little stomach for going after the white McGwire and the Latino Sosa during their peak years. More to the point, Bonds had the misfortune of still being active when circumstances and legal investigations caught up with baseball, and perhaps even with him.
Selig, who had presided so happily over the home run festivals a few years earlier, was now under huge public pressure to do something. He appointed a former senator, George Mitchell, to lead an investigation into steroid usage in the sport. Facing severe penalties for testing positive, the post-2005 players seemed to get smaller before our eyes, as if magically reversing the previous generation of muscle development. Baseball had also been forced to test for amphetamines for the first time, ushering in an entirely new chemical era.
With McGwire already retired, and with Sosa and Palmeiro unsigned in 2006, Bonds was out there by himself, while the public debated whether the four of them might lose popularity as well as votes for the Hall of Fame when they became eligible five years after their respective retirements. Some sports reporters said they might withhold votes for these sluggers as a gesture of criticism. While my employer, the
New York Times
, does not permit reporters to vote for any award—a sensible policy, since the
Times
wants us to report news, not make it—we are allowed to express our opinions. My own reaction is that the commissioner and the union ducked drug testing for a generation, making it legally impossible to penalize players who were never tested.