By From the Archives

Published: February 19, 2008

As a culture, both sporting and otherwise, we like to discuss controversial topics long after the actual controversy has died. Listen to any talk radio show for five minutes and you’ll figure that out. There’s only so long you can talk about the X’s and O’s of athletics until strategy and tedium become one and the same.
Hence the need for the airing of dirty laundry. There are often times when the sporting media figuratively prefers to sniff an old garment just a bit longer that might otherwise be cleaned, just for the sake of debate.
Fans, on the other hand, partially because they have better things to do than talk sports 24 hours a day, have a shorter tolerance for talk of trash before they prefer to just focus on the game. Sportswriters, bloggers and radio hosts have no concept of this, which is why so many have marveled at the way baseball enthusiasts have looked forward to the start of spring training this year more than any in recent memory.
I’ve heard talk radio hosts marvel that in the aftermath of the George Mitchell steroids manifesto, in which more than 75 players - some of whom were very big names - were linked to performance-enhancing drugs, many baseball fans just want to focus on the games.
Why are baseball fans so forgiving? The gurus have pondered this. Despite the fact that the integrity of the game is in question, that starts like Bonds, Clemens, Pettitte, Sosa, McGwire and others more than likely achieved the improbable through improper means, a lot of fans prefer to talk about things like the Mets getting Johan Santana, how loaded the Tigers are and whether the Braves’ aging rotation can stay healthy.
Sure, many are angry over the Mitchell controversy. There are some who will say they won’t follow baseball anymore because their trust has been shattered. If Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez cracks 75 homers this year, the first question will be “was he on the juice?” rather than “can somebody hit 80?”
But check back with those estranged baseball fans you know in August when pennant races are raging. Ask your neighbor who swore he’d never watch those cheaters again who’s leading the NL Wild Card standings. It may take some time, but eventually, those who bitterly promised to ignore the game will tell you not only who’s leading every division, but how many games separate the leaders from second place and who is leading each league in home runs.
This, above all else, is what will forever separate baseball from every other sport. No, the national pastime is no longer the national passion - not even close. Nothing can displace the NFL, not as long as it has multiple multi-billion dollar TV contracts and coverage so ridiculously in depth it makes most news executives jealous.
Baseball doesn’t get the fantasy numbers of the NFL. It gets regional broadcast rights rather than wars over network contracts. And no matter what dirty laundry is aired in public or has yet to be exposed, it has the benefit of patience by Americn sports fan like nothing else.
We can forgive baseball, so it survives.
The game has been interwoven with the culture of this nation for so long it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. In eight years, when the NFL pulls out all the stops imaginable to celebrate the 50th Super Bowl, Major League Baseball will have just finished 110th World Series.
Baseball is the relative that annoys us, betrays us and is constantly apologizing and trying to regain our trust, yet we still invite it back for Thanksgiving dinner every year. You can ignore it, but not forever.
Ask someone you know about baseball who says they quit watching it after the 1994 strike. Despite their claims that the “quit paying attention after the strike,” they probably can tell you where they were when McGwire hit his 70th home run in 1998, or when Bonds hit No. 756 last year, HGH or no HGH. They can probably also tell you who won every World Series since ‘94 because they watched every one.
We forgive baseball because scandal’s blackened thread is as woven into the fabric of the game as it is as woven into the Stars and Stripes. Yes, the fact that dozens of players probably took illegal supplements to produce gaudy stats over a period of a decade or more is a serious black mark. Yes, MLB should have had a decent testing system in place long before 2005 and Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro have no business being mentioned on the all-time home run list so long as the legitimacy of their hits can be questioned. And no, we will never know for certain who is clean and who isn’t or whether George Mitchell had things right or not - at least not for a long time.
But we will get over it. We’ll seethe at Bonds when he enters the Hall of Fame on the first ballot because, before he ever allegedly injected, rubbed or swallowed any banned supplement, he was a hall of famer. We may grumble about it, but we’ll accept it, and that’s what the baseball establishment has always counted on.
Bud Selig may be the most ineffective baseball commissioner who ever lived, but as long as people are talking about the game, he can lay his head on the pillow at night knowing the nation’s pastime is on their minds and sleep soundly, especially because he knows the precedent for the game overcome scandal has been chiseled in marble.
It’s the 1880s, when players from the Louisville Grays were caught throwing games for gamblers. It’s New York Giants manager John McGraw refusing to play in the World Series in 1904 over a grudge with American League founder Ban Johnson. It’s Ty Cobb intentionally spiking opponents, attacking fans and generally putting a black eye on the sport.
It is, quintessentially, the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which eight players conspired to throw the World Series. Think SpyGate was overblown by the media? Imagine the hubbub if players fixed the Super Bowl. The stink caused by an NBA ref who bet on games? Gambling has been linked to baseball time and again for 100 years, from Jim Devlin to Joe Jackson to Pete Rose.
Toss in 70 years of segregation, franchise movement, collusion, numerous labor issues, and of course the 1994 strike, and baseball has gotten itself into numerous fixes for which there should have been no forgiveness.
But we do forgive. Maybe it’s because baseball means sunshine, warm weather and summer breezes. Maybe it’s because of the fond memories we have of playing little league. Or maybe it’s just because the average American loves the game too much for any scandal to kill it.
Whether we admit it or not, baseball is part of us. We get mad at the game, we get jilted by it, we may even ignore it for a while, but we can’t separate ourselves from it for too long.
Spring training has begun. Steroids or no steroids, that’s good news for us.