Sheffield, other roids users should pay
By Staff
Will Bardwell / staff writer
October 7, 2004
Remember how your mom and dad used to warn you about who you hung out with after school? They always said the wrong kind of crowd would get you in trouble.
Sometimes you listened. Sometimes you didn't.
Gary Sheffield never heard a word about it.
The New York Yankees outfielder and probable American League MVP told Sports Illustrated for its Oct. 11 issue that his friendship with Barry Bonds led to him unknowingly taking steroids himself. Bonds has long been suspected of taking steroids, and his revealed association with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative a group under investigation for steroid trafficking hasn't done much to quell the rumors.
Sheffield got hooked up with BALCO, he told the magazine, when he lived with Bonds before the 2002 season the first of two years he spent with the Atlanta Braves. Sheffield was sporting a surgically-repaired knee, and he began using what he thought was a cortizone cream on the knee after Bonds' trainers gave it to him.
The only problem was that it wasn't a cortizone cream. It was "the cream" a designer steroid.
Sheffield insists he didn't know he was using a steroid, and was so ill-informed about what it was that he kept the stuff in his locker.
Whether or not Sheffield knew he was taking steroids isn't the issue, and I'm reluctant to believe Sheffield. As a Braves fan, I was a loyal Sheffield follower in 2002 and 2003, but even I suspected he was using steroids. Even if Sheff was completely oblivious, when he started blowing up like a blimp, he had to suspect the same thing.
Even if Major League Baseball were to come down on Sheffield with the full brunt of the rulebook, not a lot would happen. Any potential steroids violation would be Sheffield's first, which wouldn't result in any sort of suspension.
That's not the way it ought to be, of course. As soon as Bud Selig reads Sheffield's interview in SI, he should immediately suspend Sheff for the postseason and open a full investigation into whether Bonds got steroids from the same place Sheffield did.
But that's neither here nor there, I'm afraid. Baseball's steroids policy is what it is, and as it stands today, it doesn't allow Selig or anyone else to punish Sheffield.
Anyone, that is, except the fans. Knowingly or unknowingly, Sheffield broke the rules. He played on an unlevel playing field. He put himself above the game, and for that, fans should never forgive him.
Sheffield has discussed retiring after this season, and even if he does, his 415 career homers and .298 lifetime batting average almost surely make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
He'll be joining a group of legends, not all of whom were nice guys, but none of whom were acknowledged biological cheaters. Sure, there are plenty of spitball pitchers and corked-bat hitters in Cooperstown. But with Sheffield, you're talking about a guy who artificially altered his body's chemistry with an illegal substance not with a cork, not with a strip of sandpaper, but with an illegal drug.
Sheffield's inclusion at the Hall of Fame would tarnish the game's legends in a way that spitballs never would.
Maybe Sheffield's induction is unavoidable, but it shouldn't grant him immediate absolution. Sheffield and anyone else found to use steroids (most of all Bonds, considering his place among the game's all-time greats) should be remembered for the cheaters they are.
And whether or not Sheffield knowingly or unknowingly used steroids, his accomplishments are now tainted and rightly so. He cheated, and I hope no one forgets it anytime soon.
Bud Selig and Major League Baseball may not have the power or the fortitude to make steroids users pay, but fans do and they should use it.
