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Champagne moments go flat
Champagne moments go flat, By: Dan Moffett
June 24, 2007
Sammy Sosa drove a hanging curveball over the right-field fence at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, Wednesday night, in what should have been one of the great moments in baseball history.
It was Mr. Sosa's 600th home run. In the game's modern history, which spans 104 years, only four other players have reached 600: Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Barry Bonds (748) and Hank Aaron (755).
There should have been an outpouring of celebration as Mr. Sosa hopped across home plate. They should have stopped the game and ushered out a herd of Texas dignitaries to congratulate him. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig should have been there to shake his hand and offer some words of fitting banality. They should have planted Mr. Sosa behind a microphone stand and had him tell the crowd that on this day, he feels like the luckiest man alive.
Instead, there was a short minute of applause and a polite curtain call, after which Mr. Sosa took a seat in the dugout, and ESPN switched to its regularly scheduled game. Mr. Selig was nowhere to be found.
In 1998, Mr. Sosa was the toast of baseball when he hit 62 home runs and battled Mark McGwire blast for blast, a Ruthian race many credit for resurrecting a game that was foundering because of poor attendance and low TV ratings.
In 2007, the 600 homers aside, Mr. Sosa is a fading and compromised anti-hero, whose name is asterisked and smeared by scandal. Despite denials to Congress and the public, he is widely regarded as a synthetic slugger - one who used steroids to build muscles, and then used them to wipe out some of baseball's most cherished records.
As Mr. Sosa rounded the bases Wednesday night, he looked like a deflated version of the sinewy hunk hitter of nine years ago. Many players who were bulked out in the late '90s have resurfaced looking like yoga instructors now that baseball has started testing for steroids and the game has come under the scrutiny of law enforcement.
As unsatisfying as No. 600 was for Mr. Sosa, baseball's real panic attack will come when Mr. Bonds catches Mr. Aaron, perhaps this summer. The Giants star has been implicated in a federal investigation of a steroid distribution operation in the San Francisco Bay area.
Mr. Selig already is hyperventilating over how to get out of that one and what baseball should do to acknowledge Mr. Bonds' seizure of the most sacred statistic in sports. It figures to be a ceremony as rich in decorum as a rubbernecking accident on Interstate 95.
The collateral damage of baseball's steroid problems has shown up in college and high school sports. Young athletes are particularly susceptible to the influence of professional stars, and the examples set at the top of the games are reflected all the way down. Congress heard last year from parents and coaches who linked the suicides of young players to steroid mood swings and depression. Permanent damage to major organs is another consequence.
This spring, law-enforcement authorities in Florida and New York closed down a steroid and growth hormone network that reached into Palm Beach County. Agents raided the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center in Jupiter and found performance-enhancing drugs. Joseph Raich, who ran the business, was a prominent booster at Jupiter Christian School, which last year became the smallest school to win a state wrestling title. Florida High School Athletic Association investigators have found no evidence that Jupiter Christian's wrestlers used illegal drugs. But, as with baseball's new-age sluggers, steroids leave a stigma by association.
The day before Mr. Sosa's milestone homer, Gov. Crist signed into law an experimental steroid testing program that will check randomly about 1 percent of the state's 60,000 high school participants in football, baseball and weight-lifting. Athletes who test positive for steroids face a 90-day suspension.
Before too much blame goes to pro athletes for leading kids astray, save some for the owners of pro franchises who looked the other way while the turnstiles were spinning. Baseball players got a pass to cheat because too many owners tested positive for greed.
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