The Sammy Sosa bat-corking scandal really makes you feel for
Roger Maris, who was saddled with an asterisk for breaking Babe
Ruth’s home run record honestly, but over a few more games. No
doubt in today’s athletic culture of entitlement, the suggestion of
an asterisk for Sammy would be met with outrage; already, the idea
of suspending him for the mere offense of cheating has met with
cries of racism. Sosa’s explanation is that he only used corked
bats for batting practice so that he could hit more home runs to
entertain the fans. He didn’t use them for games, he claims, until
last week, when he picked up his “show bat” by accident.
While the inspection of Sosa’s 76 bats seemed to support his
claim, one central question remains unanswered: Why would a man who
has managed to hit 500 home runs off the likes of Greg Maddux and
Randy Johnson need extra help to hit home runs off old pitching
coaches who are lobbing the ball over the plate? Sosa says it’s
because this way he could hit the ball even farther for the fan’s
delight. As his old teammate Mark Grace scoffed, “I guess he wanted
to hit the ball 550 feet instead of 500.”
Sosa’s 76 clean bats, and his clean bats in the Hall of Fame,
hardly exonerate him. Only an exceptionally dimwitted player would
have cork in more than one or two of his bats at a time. No one
will ever know how many of his home runs were hit with a doctored
instrument. Likewise, no one will ever know how many home runs
would have been hit in baseball over the last 10 years if the game
hadn’t become a diamond version of Muscle Beach. But that is what
the game has become, and one need look no further than Sosa’s alibi
to find an explanation for how we got here.
Sosa wanted to “put on a show for the fans,” which sounds
harmless enough. But when sports puts show over competition, it
becomes suspect. In the early part of the 20th century, when
professional sports were just getting started, moralists opposed
commercialization on several grounds. One of their criticisms was
that allowing spectators to watch an event demeaned and compromised
honest athletic competition. This point of view sounds quaint and
outdated to our ears. The moralists were solely concerned with the
competition, and didn’t give a hoot about entertainment. But less
than 100 years later, we’ve gone to the other extreme: we are much
more concerned with entertainment than competition. Sosa’s manager
in Chicago, the usually admirable Dusty Baker, expressed the new
viewpoint well last weekend, when the New York Yankees came into
Chicago for a high-profile series against Sosa’s Cubs.
“I think the world would be disappointed if he couldn’t play
this weekend,” Baker said of Sosa. “Go talk to ESPN and Fox and ask
if they want Sammy to play.” Sosa did not miss the series.
Over the last few decades, as popular culture’s taste for
spectacle increased, professional sports has worked to provide a
limitless supply of stimulation and adrenaline for its audience.
Baseball lagged behind its more kinetic rivals, football and
basketball, which offered more fast-paced action as well as the
emotional context for egomaniacal posturing. Baseball struggled to
follow along, with its measured (some would say slow) pace and its
inability to accommodate emotion into the rhythm of its action. How
could the old game compete with slam dunk contests, ferocious hits,
sack dances over fallen quarterbacks, and Michael Jordan’s tongue?
How to remain relevant in the sports world that Muhammad Ali
created —one in which the sideshow is every bit as important as
the main event?
The natural solution was the home run, which had saved the game
before with the arrival of Babe Ruth. The home run is the best
weapon baseball has to stave off irrelevance in the new sports
climate of constant sensation. Sure, people might get excited by a
great catch in the outfield or a slam-bang play at home, but these
moments depend on the right circumstances in a game, and who can be
bothered to wait? The home run can happen at any time. In the
1990s, the home run began to happen all the time.
With the home run explosion, baseball’s popularity revived after
its suicidal players’ strike in 1994. Baseball players began to
more closely resemble football players. They did their best to add
what limited elements of narcissism their game could assimilate.
The home run hitter’s perp walk, for example, when he tosses his
bat aside in disdain and looks up at the heavens at the
disappearing ball, enraptured by the wonders of his own strength
and brilliance. Even relatively modest players walk and watch their
own home runs now. Not long before his death, Mickey Mantle was
heard to comment, “Makes me think they never hit one before.” How
quaint and outdated of him.
The home run walk has the added appeal of embarrassing the
pitcher, thereby bringing in the crucial element of mockery. It
also heightens the likelihood of a beanball or some other
retaliation, which might lead to a bench-clearing brawl, which is
desirable because that will be covered on Sports Center, and the
increasingly illiterate hosts who view themselves as equal parts
comedians and sportscasters can play it over and over, injecting
their numbing witticisms over the footage. What a show!
The fans don’t pay to watch bunts. So increasingly, the players
don’t bunt. Or slide feet first. Or run the bases with anything
resembling coherence. Who needs to? Sammy or some other Creatine
Creation will bring them home.
The game is increasingly obscured by the show. Whatever happens
to Sammy Sosa — is an asterisk so much to ask? — that is the real
story.
