I should not have to remind a journalist, whose ply in trade is words, that words have meanings. The postmodernists might remind us that the meanings of words are not and cannot be fixed, and while this is true, words nonetheless have meanings that if not fixed are at least recognizable. By any standard, a cheater must have broken some sort of rule, violated some sort of law within the realm in which the cheating is alleged to have occurred.
It is stunning that some people have to continue to be reminded that however we might lament the fact, steroids were not banned in baseball until very recently. Should they have been? Absolutely. But they were not. So all of those people who are calling for heads to roll should answer this question: Do you really believe in the establishment of post-facto rules? The Constitution doesn't. Now it is debatable whether or not we are dealing with a Constitutional issue if baseball decides to punish folks after the fact, but remember that pesky special status that baseball has always had in Congress, status that always kept owners from scrutiny for their business tactics? Well, now that status suddenly makes baseball's ability to subvert the Constitution problematic to say the least. Furthermore, even if we find that baseball is not beholden to Constitutional mandates, it is my firm belief that anything laid out in the Constitution as one of those pesky inalienable rights is there for a reason. I'm not sure that baseball ought to decide that it can make rules and then punish people for violating those rules before such a rule existed.
Some have begun to argue that while steroids were not banned in baseball, they were illegal. This is true. But such arguments do not carry much weight. If someone breaks the law and baseball finds out later and decides to punish that person, that is acceptable. If the legal system establishes that Barry Bonds is guilty of something, anything, then Bud Selig can surely suspend Bonds. But to retroactively use a decision from one realm -- the leagal arena -- and apply it to another -- records in baseball -- is silly and unjustifiable. The legal system in such a case would be determining if Bonds broke the law, not if he was cheating in baseball. If we are going to start culling the record books of lawbreakers, we are going to have to go back to the founding of the game and pretty much close the books and start anew. Scofflaws have been as much a part of the game as extra base hits, and to start picking and choosing between which violators warrants having their records erased and which we do not is a fool's gambit. The 1986 New York Mets broke more laws than the Soprano family. If simple illegality has become our standard for transforming the facts of the game's past, I look forward to celebrating, post facto, the 1986 Boston Red Sox World Series championship.
Shaughnessy's article, and countless others like it are a sign of a tendency in journalism, and not just on the sports pages. A writer picks a topic about which most people are outraged and then tries to be more outraged, to show that he is on the side of justice and righteousness. It grows tedious in every realm, but in this case especially so when people refuse to acknowledge that within the confines of the game, which is the only foundation for any discussion or argument, Barry Bonds and innumerable others did not even violate any rule within the sport. This is a sad fact of history. Trying to rewrite that history will do no one any good.
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