Few people in the United States have been able to escape the media barrage against San Francisco Giant’s slugger Barry Bonds. For years we’ve been told that a grand jury indictment was “just around the corner” or that the “clock was ticking” for Bonds. The sports media universally denounces his supposedly obvious guilt, as slews of mostly white callers on AM talk radio shows rant about the need to put an asterisk next to his name in the record books.
But Bonds has never tested positive for steroids. And the main witnesses testifying against him in the recent grand jury
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Now, years after the investigation started, cracks in the media coverage are beginning to surface. Even right-wing columnists are finding it increasingly difficult to deny the bias. Jordan Kobritz of Arizona’s Daily Courier wrote on Aug. 3, “After four years investigating Bonds, and millions in tax dollars, the government’s actions smack of a vendetta. The U.S. Attorney fulfilled his sworn obligation when he completed the BALCO investigation. [BALCO is the lab that allegedly supplied MLB players with steroids.—DW] Bonds is baseball’s problem, a problem that won’t go away even if he is convicted of perjury. It’s time for the government to say ‘enough’.”
Racism in baseball
Why would the corporate institution of Major League Baseball feel so set on crucifying one of its brightest stars?
Perhaps in order to keep attention away from the complicit role that baseball’s owners and executives played in the widespread proliferation and abuse of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. If someone has to go down for the crisis surrounding the exposure of steroids in baseball, then the owners would prefer it to be the “malcontent” Barry Bonds. It’s also racism.
Major League Baseball has a long history of racism. Years of segregated leagues and racist attitudes helped shape the social culture of the sport. When Jackie Robinson became the first African American player in the modern era to play in the major leagues in 1947, he faced death threats, constant harassment, and racist jeers from white crowds.
In April 1974, when Hank Aaron, an African American, surpassed Babe Ruth as the most prolific home run hitter in baseball history, it was accompanied by hundreds of pieces of racist hate mail to Aaron: “Dear N****r Henry, You are (not) going to break this record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it. … Whites are far more superior. … My gun is watching your every black move.” That’s just one awful example. Babe Ruth’s records were viewed as untouchable by white racist baseball fans.
These racist notions are still playing into the hysteria surrounding Bonds today. Just months before Bonds broke Ruth’s record on May 28, 2006, he acknowledged this reality.
“If I was a long ways from Babe Ruth, this wouldn’t be the same,” Bonds said at a news conference on his arrival to spring training. “Because Babe Ruth is one of the greatest baseball players ever, and Babe Ruth ain’t black. I’m black. Blacks, we go through a little more, and that’s the truth. Unfortunately, I said it. And I’m not a racist, but I live in the real world.”
Steroid use encouraged by owners
There is no way to determine whether or not Bonds used steroids. Bonds, an outstanding talent to be sure, is the son
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Bonds’ detractors argue that these numbers are immaterial because of his “obvious use of steroids.” Yet, recent revelations about the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball show that even if he accomplished some of this while using drugs (although there is no evidence that he did), he would have been hitting off of “juiced” pitchers. The widespread use of steroids among MLB pitchers is well known.
In capitalist societies, professional sports are a means for the capitalist owners of sports franchises to accumulate profits. Professional baseball is a big business and it is getting bigger. In baseball, profits primarily come from the selling of tickets, merchandise, and lucrative television contracts.
Nothing excites fans of the game like a home run. A home run can change the entire course of a game with one crack of the bat. More home runs translates into more tickets sold, more overpriced concessions purchased, more TV viewers—more profit.
In the 1980s, the popularity of baseball began to dwindle in the face of competition from rising sports like professional football. Baseball’s popularity was further hurt by the 1994 lockout, when baseball became the first major sport to cancel an entire post-season during a labor dispute between players and owners. Then Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds began blasting home runs at a higher rate than ever before. Their explosive bats and record-setting seasons brought fans and big money back to the game.
During the mid-1990s, performance-enhancing drugs where handed out to countless players by team trainers and shady doctors. Not only were the owners aware of what was occurring, they were the main beneficiaries, reaping immense profits as a result in the overall increase in home runs. They were not troubled by the serious danger posed to the health of the athletes being pushed to use these drugs.
The widespread abuse of performance-enhancing drugs at the professional level of baseball and other sports quickly sent the message to college and high school athletes that steroid use was both acceptable and necessary for success. After all, if “everyone is doing it,” young athletes might well conclude that abstaining from steroid use would doom their hopes to even make the team, much less win. The problem is that steroids can cause severe short- and long-term medical and psychological problems.
Once information about the culture of steroid-use made its way to the public around 2000, the owners and executives began to cover their tracks and shift blame for the political crisis that was unfolding around them. They attempted to place total culpability on individual athletes.
Owners and media on the same page
The corporate sports media gladly went along with this strategy, placing blame on players and ruining lives and careers. They did this, in part, because of their deep connections with the sports owners. Sports media outlets and reporters help owners make money, while they benefit from getting exclusive stories, access to players and endless perks. The owners wanted the media to help them pin drug use on a couple of “bad apple” players so they wouldn’t be implicated and could get back to making money.
It’s not hard to see why one of the first targets of the steroid-use witch hunt was Barry Bonds, a Black player known for
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Last March, Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Inc., launched his own “independent investigation” into the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The investigation is headed by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell. But Mitchell is hardly an unbiased investigator. He has direct ties to baseball team owners and is a current director of the Boston Red Sox. We can assume that the role of this “investigation” will be to further wash ownership and management hands of responsibility for the scandal.
As revolutionaries, we need to have a clear, sober outlook on situations like the steroids scandal in baseball and recognize that the issue isn’t divorced from the general characteristics of American society and the racism promoted by capitalism. The attacks on Barry Bonds by the media, baseball owners, and the government should be viewed in this context. It’s in the interest of the owners and the sports media to pass off all responsibility for the scandal on a few players like Bonds.
