The Chris Moeller Archives

Bags, Robbie, and Hammerin' Hank

The baseball season is off to a terrific start. The Cardinals have been busy digging themselves out of their early 0-3 hole, and their ace Chris Carpenter's landed himself on the disabled list, but the pitching rotation shows promise otherwise, and there have been some fun ballgames all around the big leagues. To what to do you suppose we owe Fox Sports' decision to stop waiting until after Memorial Day to begin airings of the Saturday Game of the Week?

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The Cardinals should feel privileged to have been the visiting club at Jeff Bagwell Day at Houston's Minute Maid Park. The Astros honored their former firstbaseman Friday night, and that guy was always a class act. On the Cards' TV broadcast that night, "Bags" said some really nice things about the St. Louis organization and their fans. It's fantastic not to have to watch Cardinals pitchers try to get him out anymore, but the teams' rivalry will never be quite the same.

Bagwell's a sure Hall of Famer, and his induction will be one of the next significant exposures of hypocritical Hall voting. The slugger has never been linked with steroids in any conceivable way, but his career as a renowned slugger completely overlaps "the steroid era." He's never tested positive for an illegal substance, but nor have Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa. Are our self-important baseball scribes just going to assume Bagwell was always clean, because they like him personally, like they did with Cal Ripken Jr.? Will the long-time Astros thumper wind up getting a Hall pass simply because his public profile in 2005 wasn't considered great enough to warrant a Congressional subpoena?

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If I were a big league ballplayer: I would request to wear Jackie Robinson's uniform #42 on the anniversary of the pioneer's Major League debut April 15th. Kudos to the Cardinals, Phillies, and a couple other clubs on their decisions to have their entire roster wear Robinson's old number on Sunday. Why do you have to be a black player to wear #42? Jackie Robinson's achievements belong to all of us. That will look so cool on television when all the Cardinals are wearing the same uniform. They should put his name on their backs as well. Why not? This is the team's best idea since the bratzel. Also, the union should call on players to wear Curt Flood's #21 every June 19th, the date in 1972 that the Supreme Court denied the outfielder's request for free agency. Flood's personal and professional sacrifice for the sake of today's players was unparalleled.

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It'll be a bush-league move by Hank Aaron if he's not in attendance later this summer when Barry Bonds breaks his all-time home run record. "I'd probably fly to West Palm Beach to play golf," Aaron was quoted as saying in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitutional, "It has nothing to do with anybody, other than I had enough of it. I don't want to be around that sort of thing anymore. I just want to be at peace with myself. I don't want to answer questions. It's going to be a no-win situation for me anyway. If I go, people are going to say, 'Well, he went because of this.' If I don't go, they'll say whatever. I'll just let them make up their own minds."

And make up their minds, they surely will. It's a slap in the face to a ballplayer that Aaron should know is every bit his equal. It's called sportsmanship. But you can bet Aaron's former boss in Milwaukee, current MLB commissioner Bud Selig, won't be among those speaking publicly. Acting on behalf of the league, the man perhaps most responsible for the "anything-goes" attitude towards steroids in baseball for two decades and more will throw Bonds willingly to the media dogs.

For Hank Aaron, sidestepping controversy is nothing new. In 1970, he criticized the aforementioned Curt Flood for Flood's decision to challenge baseball's reserve clause, binding a player to one team for life. Aaron sided with well-established stars of the time like Carl Yastremski and Harmon Killebrew against Flood, saying specifically that other players were "left out in the cold" by Flood's decision to sue baseball, and that they "should have been consulted." Shortly after his comments, Aaron signed a two-year contract with Atlanta for the then-monumental sum of $250,000.

You may also recall a story from two years ago about former MLB pitcher Tom House. The hurler admitted to using steroids as far back as the 1960s, and said that the use of performance-enhancers was widespread among his teammates and opponents-- including the use of amphetamines, Human Growth Hormone, and "whatever steroid they could find." (Another House quote from April of '05: "We were doing steroids they wouldn't give to horses.") Before this public confession, House was probably best known for catching Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th home run in the Braves' bullpen in 1974. He was Aaron's teammate for four years, and as a member of the same organization, would have shared six training camps.

According to Rep. Henry Waxman's opening statement at the Congressional steroid hearings in 2005, the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce first investigated drugs and professional sports in 1973. The baseball commissioner at the time, the late Bowie Kuhn, worked to squash the publicity surrounding the episode because a certain slugger was closing in on Babe Ruth's hallowed home run record. Might steroids be the reason Aaron was able to hit 40 home runs in just 120 games and 392 at-bats in 1973 at the age of 39? Might this be the reason the all-time home run king has "tired" of answering questions about Bonds and steroids?

posted by CM @ 8:28 PM