I've now read a handful of articles wherein the authors, amazingly enough, tried to throw some of the blame for MLB's steroids mess on the fans. Of all the unmitigated gall!
How many of you showed up at a ballgame with a sign that read "We Want Refunds If No Homeruns"? I never saw one, or a sign with any similar sentiment. We just wanted to see a good game between (what we once believed to be) the best players to play the game. We didn't demand that the players ran faster, hit farther, or throw harder; their best was good enough.
How many of you ever expressed the sentiment that you didn't care about steroid use as long as your hero kept knocking 'em outa the park, or kept firing BBs in the high 90s? No one said that to me.
Did games in the past few years that featured Bonds or Clemens sell out more than others? Sure... everyone wanted to see history being made. Did we go to the games to show our support for steroids? No!!! We went to the games to show support for our teams and our heroes. Some of us still remember when players appreciated fans' support, and when the hometown team was ours.
I don't know of a single fan who wanted his "hero" to be anything but the genuine article. No one I know would have considered the McGwire/Sosa homerun race of much significance at all if we'd been told the two may have been juiced. But nothing was written that could detract from the race that saved baseball. That historic season is now little more than a disappointment to most fans these days. Mark and Sammy - Milli and Vanilli - like it or not.
You want to blame the Commissioner for not clamping down on steroids? Fine. You want to blame the Union? Fine. But blame the fans? Not hardly. Those writers trying to do that would be better served taking a long look in the mirror and seeing what he or his employer did to prevent the mess. Did your organization make any real demands to get steroids out of sports before Congress stepped in? No. Did you do any investigation into any steroid use allegations? No. With all of its investigative resources, all the sports media could provide us was some insight into who was hanging out at what nightclub with whom, and a bunch of other crap we had no business knowing.
Jose Canseco was the bad guy, they wrote. Innocent until proven guilty, they wrote. You idiots shouldn't have believed us, they seem to be writing now.
Julie Henderson
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