We can endlessly parse the meaning of the word “valuable” and wonder how valuable any ballplayer, even the incomparable A-Rod, can be when his team finishes in last place. Where would the Texas Rangers have been without their MVP shortstop? Well, still last. OK, maybe a little laster.
The awarding of the coveted National League MVP award to Barry Bonds provoked plenty of debate, too. And it is not exactly the kind that Major League Baseball covets.
By winning his third MVP in a row, his sixth overall–a record, and double-up on baseball immortals like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle–Bonds appears to be in a league of his own. Which, inevitably, gives rise to this question: is Bonds the greatest baseball player in history?
That might be a fun notion to bat around if it didn’t lead so quickly to a far more complex question, one that has overshadowed the MVP glories of this past week. It revolves around the impact of steroids on the game and whether Major League Baseball’s new testing policy is a meaningful step to combat the problem.
Baseball was anxious to use the modest 5 percent to 7 percent failure rate of its first testing season as evidence that steroid use, while certainly a concern, is not quite the epidemic that the game’s Cassandras foretold. That view is a joke. When 5 percent of ballplayers flunk a simple test about which they have plenty of advance warning, it’s a travesty. That’s the equivalent of warning a class of sixth graders about a spelling test on the words C-A-T and D-O-G the next morning–and still watching a handful get tripped up.
So what does all this have to do with the relative merits of Bonds, Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio in baseball’s pantheon? Simply that nobody who cherishes the game is very comfortable with the coronation of Bonds as baseball’s all-time king–no matter how many MVPs he wins–if there is any possibility that his extraordinary prowess is the byproduct of illegal drugs.
No evidence has been produced that Bonds has cheated with drugs. Of course, it is very hard to produce hard evidence in a sport that has resisted drug testing for so many years. Thus, unlike, say, Lance Armstrong, a superstar who has been the target of drug rumors for many years, Bonds can’t point to hundreds of clean drug tests as ample answer to any accusers.
Bonds is hardly alone when it comes to baseball’s rumor mill. Many of the game’s premier sluggers have heard the whispers. But Bonds is singled out most frequently because of his transcendent stature in the game (and possibly also, I concede, because of his unpopularity with the press). Still, there is considerable circumstantial evidence that supports those rumors. First there have been wholesale changes in Bonds’s physique, from the sleek, young outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates to the superspecimen–The Incredible Hunk–who now, at age 39, patrols the outfield for the Giants.
Second are the unprecedented late-career improvements in his stats. For the first seven years of his career, all with Pittsburgh, Bonds averaged one home run every 20 at bats and never hit more than 34. Arriving, at age 28, in San Francisco (and at a notoriously bad hitter’s park), Bonds showed the expected improvement in what are regarded as a baseball player’s prime years. Over the next six seasons, he hit a home run every 13 at bats and boosted his top homer mark to 46.
Then at age 34, Bonds’s career really took off. Traditionally the game’s top sluggers have gone into steady decline in their late 30s. For example, Willie Mays, the greatest Giant of all time and Bonds’s godfather, went from averaging 46 home runs per season in his prime years to an average of 25 homers from age 34 to 39. Bonds, however, over the past five seasons has averaged a home run every 8.5 at bats, which is slightly better than Babe Ruth did the year he hit his record 60. And at age 37, Bonds obliterated Mark McGwire’s short-lived home-run record by blasting 73.
Bonds, when he has addressed the suspicions that whirl about him, denies taking illegal drugs and attributes his great late success to scientific advancements–improvements in both his training regimen and the nutritional supplements available to him. In fact, Bonds has specifically cited his fortuitous association with the high-tech nutrition company, BALCO. (His testament was even featured on the company’s Web site.) So what are we to think now that BALCO is the focus of a massive federal investigation into designer steroids and other illegal drugs distributed to elite athletes? Or when Bonds’s personal trainer has been identified as a target of that same investigation, which led to Bonds being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury? (BALCO has denied that it distributes illegal drugs.)
I suppose that as good Americans we should assume that he is innocent until proven guilty. But truth is we all have a little Patriot Act in us. And we will believe what, I suspect, most of us already do–the worst–regardless. Bonds has no defense against that, thanks to the toothless testing policy that is being implemented by Major League Baseball. Its “five strikes and you’re out” punishment component smacks of parody (and brings to mind the tangled web between George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin).
Which is why I have no stomach for the debate over whether Bonds is the greatest baseball player of all time. And would much prefer to argue about whether the star of a last-place team can possibly be worthy of an MVP award. In A-Rod’s case, I say, why the heck not?
Many thanks to the thousands of voters who ignored my compelling argument that Bill Parcells is the best NFL coach of all time and, in NEWSWEEK’s survey, voted instead for Vince Lombardi. I can’t quarrel with your choice. On the other hand, I was unmoved by all those Redskins fans who denounced me, demanding that I withdraw my harsh comments now that Washington has played two competitive games in a row. As Mr. Parcells says, “You are what your record is.” I am content to wait to season’s end and let that judgment stand on the Redskins and my assessment.
