Baseball Theory

My buddy Brian brought up the current baseball woes in Congress regarding steroids. I keep thinking about it...

This may be crazy but hear me out. I bet there's a conspiracy. No, no grassy knoll or a 1969 soundlot set up to look like the moon, but a real blackhearted conspiracy. I bet that the bigwigs in baseball, I mean the people behind the real money aspect of the game, the "smoking men" of baseball to use an X-Files reference, I bet they put some people up to this steroids usage.

After the strike year, the year they cancelled baseball in the middle of the year, the same year I really think that the Chicago White Sox would have made a run for it, people lost interest in baseball. I know I did. The numbers did not come back after baseball came back. Many fans stayed away. Ask most sports people and they will say the number one reason baseball came back to the fans was the great home run chase between Sosa and McGwire.

So these guys behind the scenes probably picked a bunch of guys that would go along with it, guys that already had some numbers. They knew what steroids could do, and what's better to watch than not only one guy trying to break the holy grail of records but TWO guys fighting for it. Sosa and McGwire got lucky and reacted well with the steroids.

There are other instances. I really think Bret Boone of the Seattle Mariners was juiced during the phenomenal 2001 season when the team won 116 games. I think Bonds has to be, or he's some comic book mutant with the superpower of home run hitting. Plus, how can a record that stood since 1961, and before that 1927, be beaten five times in less than four years. And not just beaten by one like Maris did to Ruth's record (or like Manning did to Marino's touchdown record this year to show more than just baseball), but shattered. Sosa 66 and 63, McGwire 70 and 65, Bonds 73.

Granted, this is just my wacky theoretical conjecture. I have no evidence, just my gut. After Enron, I think upper management of any business is capable of anything. And I bet they thought that if there were no physical evidence, no test results, that it would never be proven. Win-win. Win for the players whose names have been indelibly impressed upon us and win for the baseball business managers and their full pocketbooks.

I betcha. You'll see...if these congressional committees really push the issue, if it's really looked into. But maybe the smoking men covered their tracks well enough...

I betcha.