A-Roid

Robert DeNiro, while portraying Al Capone in the film The Untouchables, gave a speech about the duality of baseball. While at bat, a player is out for individual achievement. But, he says, you get nowhere "unless the team wins." Then he proceeded to bash one of his lieutenants repeatedly with a baseball bat, so as to make his point more forcefully. I'm not sure why I kept thinking about that scene today after learning that Alex Rodriquez tested positive for using anabolic steroids in 2003. Maybe it's because everyone in baseball forgot that it's about the team. Forgot that individual achievement at any cost is antithetical to the point of baseball.

This story is, in many ways, more fascinating than the Barry Bonds saga. Its easy to villify Bonds, a selfish, surly malcontent who never connected with fans even when he was breaking every record in the book. A-Rod, though, was supposed to be different. Sure, he seemed a little too clean cut, a little too perfect, but he was the guy who would restore order to the baseball galaxy. He'd ride in on his white horse and smash Bonds' record, and he'd do it without a siringe hanging off his ass cheek. Even with the recent bullshit with Madonna, and cheating on his wife, and being called out as "A-Fraud" and "Single White Female" in Joe Torre's book, at least he was clean. He was someone that kids could look up to for "doing it the right way". So what if he was insecure, or had a weird personal life? When he was on the field, you could look at him and see what a baseball player is supposed to be.

Now, all of that is gone. And, with it, the thin veneer that baseball from 1990-2003 was even remotely on the level. We all hung on, hoping that it wasn't really as bad as all that, and that while a few big stars were taking steroids the rest were clean. With A-Rod falling (and, I'd bet, many more to come if the entire list was leaked) we can't delude ourselves anymore. Baseball for most of my childhood was completely fraudulent. In a lot of ways, I feel like my childhood is being taken away. I don't say that lightly, because baseball really was the most important thing in my life from the time I was 8 until I was about 15 or 16. It's tough to look back on the 1996 and 1997 Orioles fondly any more, because it seems likely that many of the players on those teams were juicing.

Rather than look at this as devastating news, however, I'm inclined to see it as the light at the end of the tunnel. Lies don't end until the truth comes out. I have been suspicious of A-Rod for a while now, and while I'm not happy to find out that he used steroids it is a hell of a lot better than not knowing for sure. I want to kick the dust of that era off my feet and move into a new day for baseball. That probably won't truly happen until guys like A-Rod retire, but I think the sea change is in full effect. Now that baseball has a strong drug testing policy, it's no longer a game of Russian roulette to root for younger players. I don't have to really worry that I'll see Nick Markakis' name on ESPN for being linked to steroids. I can look at guys like David Wright, Ryan Braun, and (I grit my teeth as I write this) Dustin Pedroia and be excited about the game's new direction. Yeah, there will always be those who try to skirt the rules and do whatever they can to get an edge, but I think we are past the time when steroid use is a raging epidemic. It is becoming the exception, not the rule.

Baseball is no longer a game for individual achievement. If nothing else, hopefully the steroid era will finally end the obsession with numbers. Maybe we can get to a point where hitting 40 home runs is a monumental achievement like it used to be. Maybe we won't have to have cartoon figures hitting massive bombs, but instead enjoy the 6-4-3 a little more. Maybe kids being born today won't have to look back at their childhood memories and shake their heads. Maybe A-Rod can do more for the game than breaking Bonds' record ever could.