Midsummer Nightmare at Bad Time

The cartoon in the New Yorker shows a giant baseball-headed player, seeking “the competitive edge,” shooting up on steroids down in the bullpen.

The cartoon in Sports Illustrated shows a slobbering, cross-eyed Bud Selig in oversized baseball flannels, the sport’s commissioner made up as a sideshow buffoon, stumbling as he tries to dodge the baseballs and invective hurled at him from the angry fans in the stands.

Baseball came to Milwaukee for the All-Star break, put on its annual feel-good exhibition game--and this year’s supposed shelter from the storm--and promptly got with the program, morphing into a not-all-that-funny caricature of itself.

In a summer clouded by talk of a baseball strike, the 73rd All-Star game, thoughtfully enough, came equipped with its own work stoppage. Game halted after 11 innings, all the best players in the game left standing idly by, no final resolution in sight--kind of like what happened to the 1994 season, the last time an All-Star game proceeded amid talk of a baseball strike.

The game was halted, with the score tied, 7-7, because both teams had run out of pitchers. Of course. Isn’t that the trouble with big league baseball in the year 2002--not enough pitching?

With that, the superstars of the sport, many of them richer than Third World countries, many of them rumored to be addled on steroids or amphetamines, were left in suspended animation, much like the game’s great legend who recently passed on and was sent to the ultimate retirement home in Arizona.

And then Selig, the man who brought baseball back to Milwaukee after the Braves bailed for Atlanta, the man who orchestrated the construction of the beautiful new stadium that brought the All-Star game back to Milwaukee, huddled inside the National League dugout to avoid being struck by trash and seat cushions flung long distances by angry fans who evidently are emulating their heroes and bulking up on the body-building supplements.

It’s enough to send Ted Williams spinning in his grave, except Williams has been frozen.

Yes, it is now official: Nothing in baseball is sacred anymore. The heirs to Teddy Ballgame’s estate saw to that by taking the legacy of the game’s last .400 hitter, one of the proudest men to have ever swung a bat, and submerged it in liquid nitrogen, turning it into some unfathomable “They Saved Hitler’s Brain” sci-fi B-movie parody that has served up countless freeze-play punch lines for the late-night comics of America.

Officials at Scottsdale’s Alcor Life Extension Foundation facility, where Williams’ remains are now chilling, say their long-term objective is to preserve a “patient” until a cure for whatever caused his demise is discovered, with that new science then applied to restore the subject to a state of vibrant health.

Hmmm.

Is there room in Alcor’s neighborhood for another client? Named: Major League Baseball.

One way or another, the big freeze is coming, most likely when players union head Donald Fehr tells his constituents he has heard enough sky-is-falling, help-save-ourselves-from-ourselves rhetoric from the owners and sets a formal strike date.

There will be much gnashing of teeth. There will be much screaming on talk shows. But if and when baseball takes its time out, maybe even blowing out another World Series along the way, it eventually will come back, just as it has after each of its eight previous work stoppages since 1972.

Last time, baseball cured itself by transforming into a kid-friendly 162-episode version of “Home Run Derby”--a quick fix that lured back many fed-up fans who swore they had sworn off the game after the strike of ’94.

The Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase of ’98 was hard to resist. Barry Bonds’ grim-faced march of 2001 was less so. Now, many are wondering if the cure was worse than the disease--if the players, in order to pump new life into their self-destructive pastime, have simply pumped up artificially on steroids and other muscle enhancers, damaging their health along with the sport’s integrity.

Two former MVPs, Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco, place the number of active steroid users in the majors today between 50% (Caminiti’s claim) and 85% (Canseco’s). Neither charge can be proven, not until baseball adopts some sort of drug-testing policy, another snag contributing to the current standoff between the players and the owners. But the damage has been done.

In the wake of the allegations by Caminiti and Canseco, who doesn’t look at Bonds’ remarkable 2001 performance--73 home runs at age 38--in a different light? Or McGwire’s record-breaking 1998? We already know the muscle-builder androstenedione was on McGwire’s training table en route to those 70 home runs. But was that all?

Sosa already had to resist the urge to go deep on the skull of a grandstanding magazine columnist who challenged the Chicago Cub slugger to have himself drug tested. Sensing this cheap stunt had more to do with enhancing the columnist’s reputation than his own, Sosa refused. More impressively, he permitted the columnist to leave the Cubs’ locker room under his own powers, upright and still ambulatory.

There is another performance enhancer out there, perfectly legal and permissible, and if you listen to Selig for more than 10 seconds, he will assure you it’s just as dangerous. It is called money. The New York Yankees have it in scads, they make no pretense about it, they flaunt it and exploit it and have come close to making this baseball season a moot point, with or without any work stoppage.

Last fall, the Yankees lost the World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks, in seven thrilling games, in a series that reversed a long trend of sagging TV numbers and was branded an instant classic. Selig took one look at this potential public-relations bonanza and rolled out the wet blanket--within two days of the final out, Selig was talking about eliminating two franchises, probably the Minnesota Twins and the Montreal Expos, who were eventually allowed to play on and are now contending for the playoffs. Despite that, Selig continues to yammer on about six to eight teams going bankrupt or out of business, essentially eliminating themselves.

The Yankees, meanwhile, decided to expand. Using their World Series defeat as inspiration to not let it happen again, the Yankees added Jason Giambi, Robin Ventura, Rondell White and Steve Karsay--and arrived at the All-Star break with the best record in the major leagues. Not satisfied, the Yankees prepared for the break by super-sizing even more--bringing in outfielder Raul Mondesi from Toronto and pitcher Jeff Weaver from Detroit and, presumably, mapping out the route for the 2002 World Series victory parade.

Everything about the game, with the notable exception of attendance, which is down nearly 6% from last season, creaks of bloat. Salaries are bloated. Players are bloated. Baseball itself is threatening to burst at the seams, filled to the breaking point by Selig’s hot air and the steam emanating from the owners’ cooked books.

Even the All-Star game was bloated. What else can you call it when 11 innings are not enough to decide an outcome, when seven runs are not enough to declare a winner, when 60 players are not enough to finish the job?

On the bright side, the Yankees came to Milwaukee with six All-Stars, and did not leave with any more.