That’s what it felt like was being dumped in baseball fans’ Christmas stockings last week, when former Senator George Mitchell released his report on performance enhancing drug use by major league baseball players.
Of course it ‘s probably true that for those who grew up in the 50s and 60s, when names like Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Willie Mays dazzled the fans, modern baseball has already lost some of its appeal.
When players with lifetime batting averages below .300, and pitchers with earned run averages over 3.00 earn million dollar contracts, the illusion that players play for the love of the game can no longer be sustained.
And with free agency, players jump ship for bigger contracts when it suits them, and team identity goes out the window.
So you’re a St. Louis Cardinal fan, so what? You actually do need a score card to know who’s playing the game each year.
The era when a player might spend his entire career with one team is long gone, and the thought that mediocre players earn millions playing a game that kids play for fun is depressing.
Now with the revelation that steroids, not to mention other banned drugs probably have been used by many players for years, the bloom is definitely off the rose.
They say Babe Ruth trained on hot dogs and beer, and Mickey Mantle yanked many a ball out of the park while nursing a monstrous hangover from late night partying.
How many homers could those two have hit with modern training techniques, let alone performance enhancing drugs?
Would they have succumbed to the temptation and taken them?
Who knows?
But one thing’s for sure.
Every record from the last few years will carry an asterisk, whether official or just in the fans’ minds, after the Mitchell report.
Until the sport can clean up its act and restore the fans’ faith in the integrity of the game, it’ll be harder to come up with the big bucks it takes to see a major league baseball game, or devote the TV time to watching grown men who should’ve known better play a kids game.
It’s a downer to find out the athletes one watched over the years might have been cheating all along, even though we may have suspected as much.
Then again, who’s to say we mere mortals might not have done the same, faced with the same temptation?
