OK, I Did It, and So Did He--Can I Go?
BAILIFF: Do you intend to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
WITNESS: I do. As long as you don’t hold it against me.
So here I stand, the average man, the average fan, and the feds have discovered that I have used (abused? misused?) illegal drugs in my day, that I have purchased dope or seen it sold, that I have had involvement in a felonious crime, that I can identify the perpetrators, as the cops say, and that if I don’t get my butt over there on the witness stand and spill my guts, it’s off to jail I go. Truth or consequences.
No concessions. No deals. None of this immunity nonsense. Because I am just an ordinary citizen with the same rights and wrongs as everybody else, and ignorance of the law is no excuse.
But your honor, I object. If it pleases the court, what about those baseball players who are testifying their tongues off this week in Pittsburgh? Yes, sir; I did cocaine, said Lonnie Smith. Oh, absolutely; “massive amounts,” said Keith Hernandez. And so did he. And so did he. And so did he. And so did he.
If I get busted, can’t I just tell you who else was in the room, and can’t they just tell you that I was in the room, and can’t we all just point fingers and shake hands and go back to our jobs and wives and lives? Maybe we can help you nail the little creep who sold us the stuff. Yeah. Put that dude in the joint. That ought to teach him a lesson.
Beg your pardon, your honor, but I just don’t understand how all these baseball heroes can get away with this stuff. Can they do whatever they want and walk away from it, as long as they admit to it after they get caught? Once they snitch on someone else, can they be forgiven their own trespasses? What is this, anyway, “Prince of the City?”
How come it was all right for Dock Ellis to pitch a no-hitter with a head full of LSD, or for Tim Raines to slide head-first into bases so he wouldn’t leave skid marks on the coke stash in his back pocket, or for Steve Howe to use a teammate as a screen while he took a toot or two in the bullpen? I guess it was OK as long as they were never nabbed with the goods.
Frankly, your honor, I do not know what is going on with the grand old game. You could field an All-Star team with the men who have checked into rehabilitation centers. You could win a World Series with the guys who got subpoenaed to come to Pittsburgh. Come to think of it, St. Louis did win a World Series with the guys who got subpoenaed to come to Pittsburgh.
Hernandez took the stand Friday and said the early 1980s were the “love-affair years” with cocaine, that he played at least one game under the influence, that “it was like a demon in me,” that the Cardinal manager begged him and the other users to step forward, that he probably got traded to the New York Mets because his powder snorter was the straw that broke Whitey Herzog’s back.
Not until those four Kansas City culprits--Willie Wilson, Willie Aikens, Jerry Martin and Vida Blue--got sent to jail for three months apiece did the other athletes wise up, Hernandez said. That scared them. They found out they were plain old regular human beings, just like everybody else, and not entitled to get away with any transgression just by paying a lousy fine.
Lonnie Smith turned himself in for treatment before it was too late. When he testified Thursday, the Kansas City outfielder named names faster than a railroad conductor calls out destinations. Gary Matthews did this and Dickie Noles did that, Smith said. At one point, a lawyer asked Smith about some Philadelphia Phillies who used to use amphetamines, and co-operative Lonnie obliged by saying that “supposedly” Larry Bowa and Bake McBride and Greg Luzinski and Nino Espinosa and Randy Lerch and Pete Rose popped pills with the Phils.
Pete Rose? The same Pete Rose who got two hits here Friday and moved within two hits of tying Ty Cobb’s record?
“I can’t waste time worrying about something that has supposedly in it,” Rose said before the Reds-Cubs game at Wrigley Field. “Lonnie Smith has never seen me take drugs. Lonnie Smith has never gotten drugs for me.
“I can’t worry about it. I didn’t do anything. So the best thing to do is let a dying horse die. Lonnie Smith is a convicted drug user. Consider the source. It would be different if he had something on me, but he don’t.”
Dave Parker also was in the park, but had no comment. He still has to testify. Gary Matthews also was in the park, but had no comment. He may be called to testify. Lary Sorensen also was in the park, but had no comment. Hernandez had testified that he used cocaine with Smith, Joaquin Andujar and the retired Bernie Carbo, and that when he first tried cocaine, Sorensen was in the room.
As the testimony continues, as the feds round up more than just the usual suspects, the sport of baseball could find itself caught in the webbing of its biggest scandal since the Black Sox took a dive in the World Series here in 1919.
More than one athlete has done drugs before and more than one has done time before--three of Detroit’s most famous baseball figures, Ron LeFlore, Gates Brown and Denny McLain, have done time in prison, for example--but not for 65 years have so many baseball players been linked by the bunch to nefarious activity.
Once again, as with the gambling scandal, these were not crimes of passion, but crimes of fashion. In fast-paced, high-priced celebrity circles, coke is it. Nobody has accused these men of lingering near schoolyards, or jabbing junkies with dirty hypodermics, or sticking up liquor stores to finance their habits. Yet, in some minds, a crime is a crime is a crime, and the courts are being awfully damned generous with second chances.
All I know is that first offenders of the world must be feeling pretty safe these days. If they can swing the same deal these baseball players swung--fink on a few friends, play a little pepper with the blame--then maybe they, too, can walk away from drug-related offenses scot-free.
The white lines of baseball are stretching far beyond the outfield fences these days--a long, long way. From here to immunity.