Commentary : Use of Drugs Mar an Otherwise Outstanding Baseball Season

This is what they’ve done to baseball. Between the lines, it’s been a thoroughly captivating and immensely entertaining season. Yet, such is the fallout from the disclosure of off-field activities that the expression no longer can be applied to the sport without an outbreak of snickers.

It’s also true of some other terms long associated with the game. How about linescore? Henceforth, you have to think twice about referring even to a hit. The spectre of drug use has intruded upon the language of baseball. Was that a double or a double entendre?

Consider that in a season of uplifting milestones, of remarkable performances, one of the newer outgrowths of the national pastime has been the formulation of an all-star team of admitted or accused cocaine users. Any club that starts with Keith Hernandez at first base and Dave Parker in right field has to be formidable. Unfortunately, there are more than enough outstanding players to fill each position and form a deep and effective pitching staff.

Only this past weekend, while the federal courtroom in Pittsburgh was empty and the testimony of players was temporarily silenced, Steve Howe pulled a disappearing act, his first since joining the Minnesota Twins but his second of this season.

He had been suspended by former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn for all of 1984 because of repeated drug violations. Upon returning to the Twins Monday, Howe reportedly confessed to club officials that he had fallen back into cocaine use during his unauthorized absence.

At the same time, the Yankees were purchasing the contract of Rod Scurry, another left-handed relief pitcher who has undergone drug rehabilitation, who has missed games without permission this season and whose name has been mentioned in the testimony of other players during the trial of Curtis Strong in Pittsburgh.

The Yankees, in the midst of a pennant chase, said that Scurry had agreed to be tested, as often as three times a week, if necessary. He saw his first action last Sunday in the same game, ironically, in which Dale Berra was used as a pinch-hitter and delivered his first base hit since July 23. Berra, an admitted cocaine user, had testified in Pittsburgh last week and spoken of sharing cocaine with Scurry while they were teammates on the Pirates.

Both men were greeted by a smattering of boos upon introduction, but by then the 8-5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays was a fait accompli and the majority of the sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium had departed the premises.

It might be laughable if it weren’t so sad, this juxtaposition of values. Charles Dickens, no baseball fan, expressed it best in the introductory words to “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

Baseball has never been so successful in terms of popularity, yet it hasn’t appeared so bankrupt since the Black Sox Scandal erupted 65 years ago. And that regrettable incident involved only one team. What the sport is experiencing now is a poverty of spirit in a time of plenty.

Attendance has never been better. Three of the four divisions boast intriguing, if not gripping, races. And lifetime achievement awards have dominated the sports headlines all summer, from Tom Seaver’s 300th victory to Rod Carew’s 3,000th hit to the granddaddy of all personal accomplishments, Pete Rose’s drive to surpass the all-time hit record established more than half a century ago by Ty Cobb.

The records speak not only of talent but of persistence, durability and an enduring love of baseball. These are characteristics whose presence among the succeeding generation is open to question. Some of the best and the brightest of that group have confessed their reliance on external and illegal stimulants in order to make it through the season. Then again, baseball has furnished them with the opportunity and the money to indulge themselves in what has been called a rich man’s disease.

In this regard, they are different from their predecessors. It’s only in the last decade, since the advent of free agency, that the average player has been placed in such a position. A gap, perhaps even a chasm, has been opened between the professional athlete and the real world.

If once they appeared bigger than life to many, it was because they did what so many of us could not do and wished we could: Play center field in Yankee Stadium, strike out Willie Mays, rob Henry Aaron of a base hit. The game was the thing. For the majority, the use of the term career was a misnomer. They played a few years if they were lucky and maybe saved up enough money to open a restaurant or their own business. In the off-season, they sold cars or insurance.

In the case of many, wealth was measured in memories. But that has changed markedly. Now there is a considerable number who expect never to work again after their playing days are finished. They have fallen into a lifestyle foreign to most Americans their age. It isn’t necessary to be a great player to be paid like one. Arbitration doesn’t differentiate between a .280 hitter who helps his team win a pennant and another at the same position who comfortably amasses similar statistics for a fifth-place club.

With 26 teams, there are more major leaguers than ever before. The average salary is $360,000. It wasn’t so long ago that the Yankees called a news conference during spring training to announce they had signed Bobby Murcer to a $100,000 contract. It was a point of pride both for the player and the team. Yes, there has been considerable inflation in the meantime but not that much.

This is a new era, entirely. Don’t blame the players for that, either. But it has changed the outlook and the attitudes of many. Is there anyone starting today who will play 20 years? Is there anyone who will want to? No longer is gratification a long-term goal. Now it’s an immediate expectation.

Thus do we have the surreal season of ’85. It began with the anticipation of Rose. It was interrupted briefly by a strike (strike three for those scoring at home).

Yet, it has run its course under a giant shadow, a litany of drug abuse that mocks the achievements of many. There’s never been a season like it. All things considered, it’s probably just as well.