Posted in The Soapbox
2 comments
08/25 2010

Hit a Lot of Dingers? Clearly, Steroids is the Reason.

Posted by Dash Treyhorn.

If it’s baseball season in the 21st century, you can be relatively certain that someone, somewhere, is saying something stupid about a player who is having a career year.

This year, it’s Damien Cox, a Toronto Star hockey writer who most were not familiar with, at least not until this past weekend, when he suggested that Jose Bautista’s ascent to 40 homers requires the mandatory line of questioning that starts and ends with “Did he use PEDs?”

In the blog entry, titled “Gotta At Least Ask the Question,” Cox makes comparisons to Brady Anderson’s 50-homer season, Bautista’s desire to get paid after this season (“That would motivate any player to find a way to improve his stats,” writes Cox), and the legacy of PED-abuse that Toronto has left behind, thanks to the likes of Roger Clemens, Gregg Zaun, and Troy Glaus.

(*Quick aside about Brady Anderson: Sure, he hit a ton of home runs in 1996, but the fact that he never came close to those numbers again would suggest, just as strongly, that it was a fluke season and nothing else. One season does not the steroid user make, it at all. Joe Posnanski, via Eric Walker, wrote an intriguing piece on whether or not steroids actually help hitters increase their power. Good read. Back to your regularly scheduled column.)

All told, it’s a flimsy foundation to build upon, even if it is merely a suggestion.

And if this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It was only last year when a blogger named Jerod Morris wrote something similar about Philadelphia’s Raul Ibanez, who was amid the hottest start to his career. He was ripped for it on a local and national level, with blogger and non-blogger weighing in on his article, culminating in an appearance on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” alongside Ken Rosenthal and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s John Gonzalez, who first linked to Morris’ article in the mainstream Philly media after seeing it at HHR.

In fairness to Morris, he didn’t solely suggest that steroids were the reason for Ibanez’s sudden ascent into the baseball stratosphere – he made salient arguments to suggest that the new confines of Citizens Bank Park were responsible for his hot streak, or that the pitching was weaker, or that a lineup of All Stars could go a long way in helping out a hitter.

But even so, the suggestion that steroids could have played a role, no matter how innocuous, was enough to turn an article from a small blog into a national story – that’s the kind of juice that these suggestions have, even if he wasn’t making any direct accusations or allegations. The thought of it is enough.

So why, then, is Damien Cox not receiving the same level of scorn and criticism for suggesting something similar about Jose Bautista, when he, unlike Morris, made no mention of other possible reasons to explain his power surge? There has been some, of course, (Keith Law hit it out of the park), but very little…especially in comparison to Morris and especially from people in mainstream media. What’s the deal? Have we collectively decided to ignore the talking heads, or does the mainstream not care because it was one of their own?

Whatever the reasons, we have to be better than this. Questions concerning the integrity of the game are going to be asked, but it is the obligation of the media to make sure they are doing their due diligence before they begin to cast aspersions, no matter how harmless they may appear.

Cox finishes his piece with this:

But the fact is that baseball’s history, and the Nixonian way in which the Selig administration and the players association have chosen to deal with the steroid issue over the years, should compel any intelligent person to wonder when a player suddenly starts displaying abilities never before seen in his career.

The bungling of the steroid era by Bud Selig and company in 1998 should not impact how we cover the game in 2010. Make no mistake, we cannot view the game through rose colored lenses, but we also cannot be so jaded by the past that we assume that every player with a spike in productivity has been abusing PEDs.

Ultimately, it’s about responsibility. We need to be more responsible with our words, even if it is simple harmless speculation that is being asked, simply for the sake of being asked. When you have a blog, or a column, or a radio show – whatever – you have a voice, and you have a moral obligation, both to yourself and to the sport, to make sure that the voice is accurate. They are called the gatekeepers for a reason.

Yesterday, Dan wrote about how professional teams don’t trust bloggers. How long before they don’t trust anyone?

(More of Dash Treyhorn can be found over at The Fightins)

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Posted on August 25, 2010 at 12:21PM

 

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  1. Marissa Roberto
    08/25 2010

    Liked the article. I would say, however, that Damien Cox is a well known name to any sports fan in Toronto that has picked up a ‘Toronto Star’ or tuned into TSN. There were a lot of angry callers on Fan590, yesterday, expressing their disdain for the writer and the article.

  2. Press Coverage – Over/Under: Media Reaction To Baseball’s Newest Hall of Famers
    08/25 2010

    [...] despite the 2009 witch hunt of a blogger who did something far less egregious to Raul Ibanez. I wrote about it earlier this year, and Dave Cameron of USSMariner.com and Fan Graphs elucidated that point a little further and [...]