While the trio of Johan Santana, J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez combined on a 6-hit, shutout of Milwaukee this afternoon, there’s an highlight from the Mets’ come-from-behind, 5-4 win Friday night that’s stuck in the craw of the New York Daily News’ Fillip Bondy. Of Mets fans’ rapturous reaction to Gary Sheffield’s 500th career HR, Bondy sneers, “you don’t turn your back on history, even if it is a bit tainted.”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Sheffield would say. “There’s a reason I hit 19 homers instead of 20 last year. Doing it on the biggest stage, it makes it that much more special to me.” Then he talked a bit piously about “a higher purpose” and “a bigger reason.”
Sheffield is only the 25th player to enter the 500 Club, the fourth oldest, yet his accomplishment deserves one of the larger asterisks handed out in the steroid era. His election to the Hall of Fame is far from assured, despite this statistical feat. Sheffield has admitted to using a performance-enhancing cream back in 2001 while claiming he had no idea at the time about its chemical makeup or potency. He is named in the Mitchell Report.
His narrative on that subject is about as believable as the tales we have been hearing from Marion Jones and Barry Bonds all these years. Friday night, no reporter was going to bother Sheffield about such things when the slugger showed up at the postgame press conference with two children on his knees and his wife at his side. And again, if you think the crowd at Citi Field cared in the least about any of this in the seventh inning, down a run, then you don’t know much about baseball fans. They’d cheer the cream itself, right there in the container, if they thought it could win them a pennant.
Yeah, I was watching ESPN’s coverage of this and the word “steroid” never came up. The HOF stats rattled off assured the panel that Sheff will get in, and while “the clear” never left my mind, it gave me some reason to think people are just sick of hearing about it. With 500 + HRs, a lifetime .292, plus steroids, I’m not so sure he’s a lock. Sammy Sosa has 600. Does anyone think he’s a no-braniner for Hall voters? Still, I can’t muster the contempt for the players alone anymore. If Sheff gets the *, so do the Yankee teams he played for and everything they won.
Did Bondy just wake up? This is the second time he has mentioned it. I think a lot of people in baseball know and knew. Detroit took him from the Yankees regardless of the fact he would probably be off it and on the decline.
I have gone from proponent of making the records disappear to just letting them in. There was no testing therefore none of it could be enforced and still there are bizarre double-standards like the JC Romero situation. Guys like Mike Cameron appeared in the Mitchell Report for reasons that had to do with personal wellness and that report was run by a guy with connections to the Boston Red Sox and only concentrated on three suppliers, BALCO, Radomski (Who has said the MR was just the tip of the iceberg), and McNamee. There were not just three of them. Teammates were pushing them like LoDuca.
The only way we will know everything is if we give clemency against players, managers, and trainers currently as well as former players.
The Black Sox scandal only showed the iron fist that MLB could bring and quite frankly I would say the taint of Sheffield dogging it and throwing games, admitting so in fact, to get traded to the Brewers is a bigger indictment than steroids. But also the Black Sox Scandal did nothing to look into the past of people who gambled and dropped games which a lot of people thought was rampant and included Ty Cobb among other legends and Hall of Famers. The way baseball has handled this scandal has only be consistent of looking worse. The NFL never did this then again, I would say their system is smoke and mirrors. But the testing is because of that.
**from the Brewers**