Widespread steroid use in baseball is something that has been suspected, no, known for a long time. Furthermore, this isn’t the beginning, and it damn sure isn’t the end. There is more dirt to be dug up. But if this is only the beginning, who else from this corner of the baseball universe is going to be called out?

After the jump, Michael Fichman examines the three types of steroid-using souls.

Last week, the Mitchell Report dropped — implicating dozens of players from the last decade and a half in a number of steroid rings. Major names were named, but the report was shallow and relied on a small handful of cooperating players and trainers and a couple of Federal drug investigations. Some Phillies were named, including Lenny Dykstra, but no other players of real consequence. Collectively, the baseball world shrugged — none of this stuff is surprising. The individual names were shocking, sure, but widespread ‘roid use is something that has been suspected, no, known for a long time. Furthermore, this isn’t the beginning, and it damn sure isn’t the end. There is more dirt to be dug up. But if this is only the beginning, who else from this corner of the baseball universe is going to be called out?

Frankly, it’s hard to know which Phillies players were ‘roiding over the last fifteen or twenty years. If the report told us anything, it’s that there is no stereotype for a steroid user.

Steroid user Type A

Dykstra came as little surprise — the guy was a pimplenecked bastard with a temper, and as we’ve seen with Bonds and now Clemens, an insatiable will to win or an inferiority complex seems to be the Type A steroid personality. This was a “star ‘roider” — a guy who was so used to being number one he couldn’t risk being number two. Dykstra, Bonds and Clemens are all maniacs, more or less, but this group generically includes the Stars. (It’s a stretch to put Dykstra with those other two, but remember, he was one of the most charismatic stars of the late 80s and early 90s.) These guys, if they’re implicated, grab sensational headlines, muddy the baseball record book and throw starry-eyed six year olds into existential crisis. As basketball well knows, as go the stars, so goes the game.

Steroid user Type B

When the stars put up fantastic numbers, it’s not hard to point to their statistical abberations as a circumstantial case for steroid suspicions, but the David Bells, the Paul Byrds… these are a little tougher to figure out. These are the Type B’s: Guys who either shot for star status and fell short, or ascended from the mediocre ranks to the status of “veteran.” This group is hard to identify due to its better-than-averageness. They don’t jump off the curve at you. But these guys, remember, are making salaries that qualify their families for dynastic wealth if they just put half of the damn thing in a mutual fund — five, seven million dollars a year for a half-dozen years. Life-changing money. Would I let a smarmy clubhouse assistant shoot steroids in my asscheek for a shot at going from good money to a long-term major league contract? If I’ve got half a brain, I can lay my family’s finances out so nobody has to work for 20 years. I’m not going to rule out the needle in the ass option without standing in their shoes.

Steroid user Type C

Lastly, there are the bottom-rung steroid users: The Ryan Franklins and the Todd Pratts. These guys are good enough to be major leaguers, but they move from team to team, and often move in and out of the starting lineup. These are the Type C steroid users — the guys who saw steroids as the thing that might keep them on the chartered flights and in the luxury hotels of the bigs, and out of the roach motels and dank buses of the rough minor league circuit. The stakes for these guys are just as high as for the Type B’s: The financial stakes are huge, and plenty of other ballplayers could have their seat at the table. To get to the majors, or to hang on one more year, these guys need all the edge they can get. If it seems like everybody else is juicing, why the fuck not? I mean, poor Todd Pratt, when you search for a picture of him, half the pictures that come up are those of other, more famous players who were implicated in the Mitchell Report (there are also many photos captioned “pinch hitting for Todd Pratt” which is even worse).

I don’t mean to paint myself as an apologist for a lot of these ballplayers, but I understand why they were taking steroids. Frankly, the league wasn’t preventing systematic cheating and the union wasn’t encouraging the league to do so on behalf of the health of its members. This was a general system failure, and the worst might be still to come. The Mitchell Report relied on just a handful of sources and cooperators, and it set a precedent where single, uncorroborated tattlers are the primary source for extremely consequential accusations. There are surely many more juicers than the report indicated, and the question remains: Who are they?

What if a player seen as unassailable and clean was implicated, truthfully or untruthfully, it doesn’t matter? What would it do to baseball in Philadelphia if Ryan Howard was implicated, or Chase Utley? What would it do to baseball nationwide if Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez were implicated? Honestly, I don’t know. The new season will be an interesting adventure. Things have changed and they will never be the same.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 1:40 pm.