The Badger Beat with Charlie Viana

It’s the game we have all grown to love, the game we started to play when we were too young to remember, this is the game that has grown into the embarrassment that it is today. BASEBALL.

America’s pastime, as it once was referred to, should no longer be referred to anymore. The game is now tarnished, and players that we all grew to admire are now the ones who we wish we never watched play the game.

Why? Why did Major League Baseball wait so long to investigate and bust these players on the use of steroids? Why are these players taking these performance-enhancing drugs to better themselves when a lot of the ones being scrutinized for using them are Hall of Fame players on their own God-given ability?

The home run chase back in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa was everything that game wanted and needed. Night in and night out these two were the main attraction in any ball park: even if they weren’t playing in that particular ball park, fans wanted to know when they were up and what they did in their at bat.

Mr. Barry B*nds in 2001 broke McGwire’s 1998 record of 70 by bashing 73 homers. The mere mention of steroids or any performance enhancing drugs being used by any of these three during this magical three year stretch was the furthest thing on anyone’s mind. Baseball was in love with the fact that these guys were crushing balls out of the park and planting fans in the seats.

B*nds, the all-time home run leader, never hit more than 50 home runs in a season except his record breaking 73 in 2001.

Now, those years are nothing but a bitter memory, and when looking back at what these players did, THE BEST THING FOR THE GAME, what more can be said than, ‘it means nothing’? They cheated.

Players sat in front of Congress saying over and over they did not take steroids, then got caught taking steroids after the fact, and probably, the most comical of them all, Sosa all of a sudden didn’t understand English when being asked by Congress if he ever took steroids.

Sosa must have forgotten how to speak and comprehend English because as I remember, and I’m sure everyone else does too, he understood every question being thrown his way by the media during his home run-filled season in 1998 with McGwire. But I can see how Sosa suddenly needs an interpreter, just like how we all saw his corked bat explode across the infield while he was with the Chicago Cubs.

The Mitchell Report sums it all up. It truly shows how the game of baseball is no longer the game it once was, and no longer the game we all have grown to love.

It is simply unfair. Unfair to the clean players, the fans, the families of the players, the organizations, and the players whose records are being broken by players who feel the need to cheat and ruin a sport that so many love.

Players have to come clean or just deny, deny, deny. Either way these players will never be looked at the same. So what if they come clean and do the right thing by telling the truth? They cheated themselves and the game that has or was supposed to give them a job where they got to play the sport that they loved for millions of dollars. They are selfish and do not realize how lucky they are, and how many people would have loved to be in their shoes.

When you hear or read about Major League Baseball, it’s not like it used to be, it’s about steroids. Steroids, steroids, steroids, that is all we hear, and it will carry itself with baseball for a long time to come. Even if no one ever takes another steroid again, baseball now has a brand to it, a brand that it does not deserve, but a brand it is stuck with.