Baseball owners scapegoat players on steroid issue
By Mike Gimbel
Sports is supposedly the one place where two individuals or
two teams can compete on a "level playing field."
This contrived misperception is now being utilized by the
big business media to attack individual sports performers,
including top Black performers like Barry Bonds, who either
have used or are char ged with using "performance-enhancing"
drugs.
Victor Conte Jr., owner of BALCO and a steroid drug dealer
facing a criminal indictment, went on ABC-TV's "20/20" on Dec.
3 to "confess" his sins. He is attempting to "cop a plea" and
get a lesser sentence by becoming a government witness against
players he claims he entrapped into taking drugs BALCO was
dispensing, undoubtedly at a very good profit. ABC was willing
to give Conte the airtime to name names and boost the network's
ratings.
Sen. John McCain has threatened to yank the antitrust
exemption of major league baseball (MLB) over the issue of
steroid use. This threat is completely hollow. McCain, a
Republican, and Demo cra tic Sen. Joe Lieberman co-chaired the
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq to build support within
Congress for the invasion of Iraq.
With tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians and thousands
of U.S. soldiers dead or maimed in a war and occupation based
on lies that McCain helped to promote, can anyone believe his
"outrage" over this truly minor issue of steroid use?
George W. Bush is former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball
team and one of McCain's strongest supporters. The owners of
the MLB teams are some of the world's wealthiest people and
Bush's staun chest supporters. McCain isn't about to attack his
wealthy buddies by removing the antitrust exemption. This was
simply a threat to the baseball players' union that this
rightwing-dominated Congress would take measures to try to
weaken or even bust the union by fully backing the owners,
utilizing the steroid issue as their battering ram.
Sports under capitalism = profits
Sports, "amateur" or professional, is just as much an
industry as auto, steel or Hollywood films. The players are
used as commodities to increase the bottom line--profits.
Good sportsmanship is supposedly taught in college. But the
colleges compete furiously to recruit--bribe--the best high
school sports talent available. The competition for television
money and for "donations" from wealthy alumni among "amateur"
collegiate programs is as vicious as any in private sector
industries--but they pay not a penny in salary to these college
performers.
In order for many of these "amateur" performers to actually
make a living in a team sport, they must be more than good
enough to be signed to a contract by a professional team. The
pressures on the player to get an edge, so as to be "a star" or
just make the pro team, are enormous.
Even within the MLB owner cartel there is no "even playing
field." George Stein brenner, owner of the fabulously profit
able New York Yankees, has more money available to sign the
best players because the Yankees dominate the baseball
market.
Competition among baseball owners
Every year he virtually outbids his opponents--other wealthy
baseball owners of less marketable teams. Thus, when a player
becomes too "expensive" for the other teams, Steinbrenner can
offer a more lucrative contract, knowing that he'll more than
make up for this expense due to the Yankees' storied
reputation.
Baseball, perhaps more than any other professional sport,
has even celebrated those who have successfully cheated. Famed
baseball manager Leo Durocher bragged openly about how he and
his team cheated. Yet he is almost canonized for these
acts.
Long after the "spitball" was banned, it continues to be
used by desperate pitchers trying to "hang on" to their
declining careers, as well as many other methods to "scuff the
ball" to get an advantage.
Even in college softball, every team seeks an advantage by
using scientifically tested and produced bats that can drive
the ball further.
The same is true in golf, a sport mainly for business people
and the upper middle class. New, scientifically created golf
clubs are just too expensive for many middle class golfers'
pocketbooks. These golf clubs can drive the ball further and
with more accuracy, placing the less wealthy golfers at an
immediate disadvantage.
Socialism and sports
The real problem in U.S. sports is capitalism, not steroids.
As long as sports are big business, cheating will not only be
present, it will be encouraged by team owners, who want success
on the field to make profits. If a player is exposed for
cheating, it will be the player who "takes the fall," not the
wealthy team owner.
Only socialism can create the possibility of a "level
playing field" by taking away the profit motive. Professional
sports, like all other entertainment industries, will still
exist. Sports performers, after all, are wor kers in a valuable
entertainment industry.
Under socialism there will be no private owners skimming the
profits produced by workers or dangling huge contracts to "star
players" in order to improve their business' competitive edge
vs. their rivals' owners.
Under socialism you won't have corporate interests coercing
entire city governments into building stadiums instead of
building schools or hospitals, under the threat of taking their
teams elsewhere.
Under socialism there won't be parasitic businesses like
BALCO that make profits by offering "magic bullets" to make
athletes run faster, jump higher or get bigger and
stronger.
Let's put sports on a "level playing field" in the only way
it can be done--by making a socialist revolution!
Reprinted from the Dec. 23, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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