Via Hardball Talk, Bryan Curtis chronicles the history of steroid reporting.
I actually find the review at Hardball Talk quite interesting.
When a reporter is working hard to break something — when that one story becomes their only job for months on end, as deep-digging investigative work requires it to be — the story ends up assuming an outsized importance. It’s their whole life so it’s obviously huge to them, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the biggest thing on the planet. Or the most important thing in baseball. If you’re looking at only one thing, perspective is lost.
I feel like, because PEDs became — as Curtis deftly describes — THE BIG GET of the baseball media for a number of years, it managed to be taken as bigger than it is in terms of baseball impact by many in the media. It became the way a reporter could place his own personal stamp on baseball because, eventually, he knew that world very well and it became the media’s value proposition in baseball analysis to play up that side when people in the game would not. When the most important and most unique thing you have to say about Barry Bonds, for example, comes from the media’s reams of scoops and stories, the baseball realities of Barry Bonds — that he was nonetheless an amazing, amazing ballplayer — is lost to some degree and the PED side is oversold.
Be sure to read both.
Excellent article. This is why I’m not indignant about the PED use, it was at least suspected if not outright common knowledge for years and nothing was done. If you’re going to keep Bonds & Clemens out, then every writer who was not reporting at the time should lose his vote as well.
I don’t have a problem blocking Manny though, as he did fail two drug tests. That’s my standard: two JDA violations at any time in your career (minors as well as majors) and you’re banned from the HoF. Once, I’ll allow for a mistake but not twice.
“Which made Canseco’s second benefactor — Mike Wallace — all the more important. John Hamlin, a producer at 60 Minutes, had gotten a tip about Canseco’s book from a friend at another network. (The friend couldn’t act on it because his employer was a Major League Baseball rights holder.)”
That’s interesting. was the friend’s employer worried about backlash from MLB? Why, after all, Bud Selig for years wanted to clean up baseball, why would he threaten a network? (missing the sarcasm font)
Dan Shaugnessy wrote an article recently (not steroids) where he basically said most baseball writers were writing for the team or the leagues interests.
The writers turned on PED’s at about the same time as MLB and the teams did, after Balco and Congressional Investigations. Then the league and teams went from promoting and encouraging steroids to declaring War on Steroids and cleaning the game up. The writers followed, and the players who used steroids to the delight of MLB, teams, fans and writers, and who saved the game, became the villians.
The hypocrisy makes me cringe.
The Bryan Curtis piece was in some places a bit of an apologist piece, blaming editors, the writers ignorance and fear of law suits in accusing players for their staying on the sidelines. Although I think he was just trying to be balanced and present the writers excuses.
However, you did not need to name individuals to write an article on the apparent use of PED’s and lack of a testing program. Those articles were almost non-existent because MLB and the teams liked the status quo. Teams lectured players on how to properly use steroids. MLB lectured teams on the benefits of steroid. All was good until Congress threatened to impose their own testing program.