Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and the Post-Human

A recent article in Newsday by Wallace Matthews is typical of how the press is treating Barry Bonds. "Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, forever linked by a single word. Cheater."

This despite the fact that they are accused of using steroids were steroids were not banned by baseball. Ergo, though they may be liars, they were not cheaters. Why has there been such a rush to condemn?

Had he said "Bonehead," I might have agreed with him, since neither man has a reputation for being congenial.

I want to try for some perspective here. First, I take it as a fact of history that both men, and most of the great athletes of their times, used steroids. I also think it is pretty clear that if neither man had ever used them, they would have still been among the greatest players in the game, since they were both established greats at the time that they are accused of using steroids. What we have are athletes facing the downward tail of their peak years, trying to extend their peak productivity.

Is not that what a professional athlete is supposed to do? But never mind that, that's not really what I'm trying to get at. Let me circle around and come back...

When Tommy John, the pitcher for whom a certain kind of reconstructive surgery is now named, was facing the end of his career, he used to joke, "My arm is only three (five, seven) years old." My point is that he had access to developments in modern medicine, and took full use of them to extend his career. It is not seen as the same thing, because he faced coming back from an injury; but most accounts have it that Bonds (and Andy Petite) both used performance enhancers as a way of getting back after an injury. Where then the meaningful difference?

But I'm still not getting where I want to go. I need to dig back further. Much further.

The history of Baseball is the history of American Modernism. Some accounts have it beginning during the civil war (the war that introduced gas warfare and war dead photos), but it achieves its popularity in the 1880's. Despite the pastoral imagery that is always associated with it ("ducks on a pond" "elysian fields," etc.) it is eminently an urban game--witness the homes of the original franchises (Boston, Chicago, Cincinatti, New York, etc). My point is that from the start, it is about both urban growth and the pastoral, the way parks in general are. Let me push this a little further: baseball is game about ambivalence towards the future and manufactured dreams of the past.

What do I mean? This: When Babe Ruth revolutionized the game, he was widely chided. A Newspaper editorialized that by swinging for home runs, he would sacrifice his batting average. Ty Cobb, who well into the Ruth era was considered the best player in baseball, for two days in a row made a conscious effort to his for home runs--successfully--then went back to his high avwerage style, to prove that he could hit for power, but chose not to.

Ring Lardner, who wrote what some consider the best baseball novel every, "You know me, Al," thought that Ruth had ruined baseball, and that he, Lardner, had wasted his talents writing about it.

Of course, we don't remember the Ruth era today through the eyes of Lardner or Cobb. We remember one of the great men of baseball, who defined an era. The old archetypes that were defining to these men have lost meaning to us. Who wouldn't prefer a game with more give and take between offence and pitching?

To make a similar point: We hold onto the mythology of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier at the risk of forgetting that the color barrier he broke was only about 40 years old when he broke it. It was a creation of the twentieth century. Modernity didn't break down the barrier; it erected it.

Now we're finally getting close to my point. When Keith Hernandez, Willie Wilson, and a dozen others were punished for using cocaine back some 20 years ago, sports writers preached the high moral road. "I hope Hernandez can live with himself the next time some kid goes flying out the window on speed," Dick Young of the NY Daily News wrote.

Why? Did Dick Young think Keith Heranandez sold drugs to teenagers? Or that teenagers did not do drugs before Keith Hernandez?

Here then is my point: Baseball has always constructed for itself a humanism, BASED ON LIES, DISTORTIONS, AND FABRICATIONS, which it then PRETENDS to accept as the "truth." Even though, for the most part, everyone knows it is a fabrication.

Roger Maris supposedly had an asterisk next to his single season record because he played in something like four more games than Ruth when he set his record. Now fans (read: fatuous sports writers) supposedly want an asterisk next to Bonds' single season and all time record.

To imply that BUT for the introduction of steroids the game would have stayed the same from 61 to 2001? That training regimens, ball parks, strategy, culture changed nothing meaningful?

If you inject steroids into someone and supplement that with correct training, you will make him (usally him) stronger than his would otherwise be. That has huge advantages to a baseball player, and some disadvantages which can become huge if it leads to a career threatening injury (as it often has). So what. So does training a ball player to hit for power (instead of average), and to work the count (instead of swinging away), the big changes in baseball culture that Bonds took full advantage of before he ever took steroids.

Humanism is a trope which defines itself through exclusion; and exclusion specifically of the post human (power, color, drugs, in sequence, in baseball).