The 'Roids of Summer

Now that the Mitchell report has been released, the untouchable teflon wall erected around Clemons, the multi-Cy Young award-winning pitcher, while the home-run champion, Bonds, was being savaged, has now crumbled as it should.

In fact I would say, if the pitchers were on steroids, the hitters arguably had a duty to counter their pitching advantage with their own steroid use. I probably would not use steroids, but then again, I'm not being judged on how well I am hitting against steroid-enhanced pitching, which also could affect the size of the contract I could get next season based on my hitting. Bonds and others could certainly have used this rationale, and probably did. But let us not forget one important fact, Bonds never failed a drug test, and based on that, remains innocent of all charges.

But I have another angle that is seldom considered, all of baseball history and records are suspect, going back to the days of segregated baseball. The white 'record-holders' like Ruth, Cobb, etc., got those records by being shielded through the farce of segregation, from the pitching and fielding of many of the superior negro-leaguers like Satchel Paige and others. Had they had to face them, many doubt they would have obtained a fraction of those records.

So once again, this country's sorry racist history is coming back to bite it, and baseball now embroiled in the steroid scandal, is 'reaping-what-it-sowed' for disenfranchising worthy black ballplayers for 50 years, and denying them an equal opportunity to make a living and earn the records that whites got credited for, by not having to earn them on a level playing field.

Those early records should have been given an asterisk but were not, now the current records are plastered with those asterisks. And the Hall of Fame, which had already embraced wife beaters, murderers, gamblers, and drunkards, now has to embrace 'Roiders....so much for baseball's supposed 'integrity'