PSR Showdown
Will The Steroids Scandal Cast A Shadow Over The Game?

The Shadow Is Cast
By Joe Rutter
Pittsburgh Tribune Review

It took 34 years for Roger Maris to eclipse Babe Ruth's single-season home run record.

It took 37 years for Mark McGwire to swat his way past Maris.

It took a few days before McGwire was passed by Sammy Sosa, and the two jostled back and forth before McGwire finished with 70 homers and Sosa 66 in their memorable 1998 duel.

And, of course, it took only three years before Barry Bonds put both men in his wake by hitting 73 homers.

The events of the past decade should be proof enough that some of baseball's most cherished records are being tainted because of performance-enhancing drug suspicions.

Nobody has been able to prove that McGwire, Sosa or even Bonds used steroids while putting up unheard-of homer totals. But the whispers remain and that is enough to raise an eyebrow at what baseball's behemoths have recently accomplished.

It was viewed as a monumental feat in 1990 when Cecil Fielder surpassed 50 homers, becoming the first player to do so since George Foster in 1977. The number no longer remains special now that everyone from Brady Anderson to Luis Gonzalez to Greg Vaughn has done it.

Neither does inclusion in the 400-homer club. Of the 38 members on this list, 10 remain active. Four more players should gain entrance this year.

Yes, the ballparks are band boxes, pitching is watered down by expansion, and players in general are more nutrition-conscious.

Still, maybe it was the players --not the ball--that were juiced when baseball tried to repair its image following the 1994 strike.

Records suffered and the standards for a good season changed. It wasn't satisfactory for a slugger to hit 30 homers anymore. It had to be 40. Or 50. Bigger became better and, yes, size did matter. Whispers and suspicions are everywhere. If normalcy returns to baseball's statistics in this new era of beefed-up drug testing, the whispers and suspicions will become louder.

And the surreal home run numbers achieved in the past decade will be scarred for good.

Joe Rutter covers the Pirates for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Not So Fast
By John Perroto
Beaver County Times

Scott Sauerbeck, one of the more erudite players to come through the Pirates' clubhouse in recent seasons, was musing about the increase in home runs in the majors a few years back.

"When people look back 100 years from now, they'll consider this the Steroid Era,'" said Sauerbeck, now a relief pitcher with Cleveland. "Eventually, they'll clean up the steroids and this will be a blip on the historical radar."

Sauerbeck will be proven right.

The home run surge of the late 1990s and early 2000s has leveled off. There have been no 50-homer seasons the past two years after players reached that mark 15 times in the previous six years.

The union agreed to the unprecedented move of reworking part of an existing collective bargaining agreement in January when it gave approval to a tougher drug-testing policy.

They made the move after an off-season in which the San Francisco Chronicle reported that sluggers Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield admitted to using steroids in testimony to a federal grand jury investigating the now-infamous BALCO labs in Burlingame, Calif.

That has led many people to say the home run totals produced in recent years will forever be tainted. To that, I say don't be so sure.

When retired basher Mark McGwire was on his way to 70 homers and breaking Roger Maris' single-season record in 1998, a writer found a bottle of androstenedione in the St. Louis first baseman's locker.

While andro was then legal under federal law and baseball's drug policy, it had been banned by the other major professional sports and in Olympic competition and is now illegal. Yet the revelation barely caused a ripple.

Pete Rose greatly compromised the game's integrity when he admitted to betting on his team while managing the Reds. However, fans continue to support Rose and believe Major League Baseball should lift its lifetime ban and allow him into the Hall of Fame.

Few people are quicker to forgive than baseball fans, which is why the steroids transgressions will eventually be forgotten.

John Perrotto covers the Pirates for the Beaver County Times.