Steroids in Baseball:The Next Chapter...Crocidile Tears and "Apologies"

Greg Couch, of my hometown newspaper the Chicago Sun Times, has an excellent article about the evolving steroid scandal in baseball. The latest chapter appears to be empty apologies by players named in the Mitchell Report. I say they are empty because they are all different. Eric Gagne apologized for being a distraction. Paul Lo Duca apologized for lapses on judgement. The best one came from Matt Herges, of the Colorado Rockies...

Rockies pitcher Matt Herges said being named in the report as an HGH user actually gave him relief.

''If I'm not standing there naked in front of the world with my big secret, I'd still be holding on to it, hiding it,'' he said. ''It would still be eating at me.''

I have to admit it. That one sounds good. But he was forced into it. And maybe there is nothing else these guys can do now to make it right. But if that's an unfair position, then it's the one they put themselves in.

As Couch rightly points out, despite Herges' crisis of conscience, he waited until he was named to lift this incredible burden from his shoulders. The apologies ring hollow to me because there is one word that is constantly missing from them, cheat. If these players can't own up to what they did, how sorry are they? Even Andy Pettitte couldn't bring himself to admit that he cheated. Rather, he went through some sort of circular logic that rationalized his HGH use as something other than cheating. Injuries are a part of baseball, like any other sport, and using something artificial to recover from them is cheating. Pettitte was nearly universally lauded for his "heartfelt" apology but that apology, like everyone else's, didn't include the most important admission of all...that he cheated.

That is the crux of this issue, and in order for baseball to move on it must be dealt with. For all of the apologies that I heard, there were none to the opponents. After all, it is them they cheated. We will likely never know the whole truth of the scandal, but folks like Gagne and Lo Duca came out of nowhere at times correspondent to their cheating in the Mitchell Report. It is possible then that these players literally stole careers and lives from players who, for whatever reason, never succombed to the temptation of cheating themselves. Because they didn't, they sacrificed their dreams, their careers, and millions of dollars on top of it. That is what bothers me most. Lo Duca, Gagne, and others have sat behind microphones in shame and embarrassment and said they were sorry, but so what. They literally stole fames, fortunes, careers, and lives from others who played by the rules. How does someone apologize for that?

I don't mean to sit on some sort of morality perch and pass judgement. I have plenty of faults and I certainly don't think it is proper for me to pass judgement on them. That said, if baseball is to move on, we must all reconcile the unbelievable wrong that was perpetrated on a systemic level. These players didn't merely gain an artificial advantage but they literally stole lives from others who didn't bow to the same pressures. In order to reconcile that, the punishment these players face must be equal to the damage they have done.

How does baseball reconcile that? It certainly isn't going to be with a mere apology. After their apologies are over, they will go back to spring training. They will have their contracts and most of them will likely have the adulation of fans everywhere. In order for baseball to really move on, there must be real punishment for this cheating. Cheating is the worst thing any competitor can do. It threatens the very fabric of the sport itself. These players committed the worst sin against the sport that gave them everything. Some crocodile tears and empty apologies aren't going to make up for the horrible wrong they have committed against baseball.