Barry Bonds and baseball's drug policy

At a reader's request (hi, Eric!), my thoughts on Barry Bonds and Major League Baseball's drug policy...

First, Barry Bonds. Let's get the obvious out of the way. Bonds almost certainly used steroids between 2000 and 2004. This page documents the change in his appearance throughout his career. You don't go from looking like this (1998) to this (2003) without chemical assistance, especially when you're in your late 30s. It's certainly possible that Bonds muscled up as much as he did through weightlifting and legal supplements. But given everything that's come out in the last few years (including Bonds's leaked grand jury testimony in which he admitted using the clear and the cream, there's little doubt that he used steroids.

That said, Bonds was already one of the best players in baseball history before he started using steroids. Throw out his seasons from 2000 to 2004 and these are his career stats (through August 15, 2007):

2,200 hits, 501 home runs, 1,443 RBIs, 468 stolen bases, 1,674 walks, .287 batting average, .415 on-base percentage, .560 slugging percentage, and .975 on-base-plus-slugging.

These stats would still put him at 23rd in career home runs, 9th in career walks, 25th in career on-base percentage, and 16th in career OPS. In other words, even if we throw out five of his seasons (some of the greatest offensive seasons in history), Bonds still comes out as one of the top 15-20 hitters ever. And that's if you ignore those years completely. Credit Bonds with even mediocre seasons (say, the typical performance of an aging left fielder) and he's easily back up among the top 10 hitters ever. Steroids did not make Barry Bonds great; he was already one of the best players ever.

What to do, then, about the steroids? Some have called for commissioner Bud Selig to append an asterisk to Bonds's career home run total. This would be both unnecessary and unfair. Unnecessary because no one will ever be able to think about Barry Bonds and his records without acknowledging (explicitly or implicitly) that those totals were enhanced by steroids. "Bonds" and "steroids" are so closely linked that literally adding an asterisk to his career statistics would be entirely superfluous.

Second, Bonds broke none of baseball's rules in taking steroids (breaking laws is another matter). Baseball did not prohibit the use of steroids until 2005, at which point Bonds likely stopped using them. Asterisking Bond's home run total would be punishing him for breaking a rule that didn't exist when he broke it. That doesn't fly in a court of law it shouldn't fly in baseball either.

Bonds's place in baseball history is clear. One of the greatest players ever, he will also be remembered forever as the sport's most famous steroid user. He is what he is, and no amount of hand-wringing by sportswriters or asterisking by Bud Selig will change his reputation.

Things would be very different, of course, if Major Leauge Baseball had a sensible steroid policy in place when Bonds started using steroids. It should have been clear in the mid-90s that steroid abuse was taking place in baseball. Both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the sluggers who helped revitalize baseball's popularity in the summer of 1998, are now strongly suspected of using steroids. Back in 1998, McGwire admitted using andro which the NFL and IOC had already banned. People should have been far more suspicious about how muscular players were getting. It's not as if steroid use was a new thing, or that it was difficult to test for steroids. That it took baseball so long to institute a ban on steroids is a disgrace to both Major League Baseball and the players union.

Even as it currently stands, baseball's drug policy lags far behind those of other sports. Professional cycling has had greater problems with doping than any other sport. Nearly every major cyclist of the past 20 years has been implicated in or accused of doping: Jan Ullrich, Bjarne Riis, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong, Richard Virenque, David Millar, Tyler Hamilton, Ivan Basso, Roberto Heras, Erik Zabel (some, like Riis, Millar, and Zabel, have admitted their drug use). Thanks to the widespread nature of doping in cycling, evidence of cheating almost always brings heavy punishment.

- In 2004, Tyler Hamilton, who had recently won the Olympic gold in the time trial, tested positive for the presence of a "foreign blood population." The U.S. Anti-Doping Agnecy suspended him for 2 years.
- In 2005, Roberto Heras, four-time winner of the Vuelta a España, was found to have used EPO. He was suspended for 2 years.
- After police found used syringes in his home, former world time trial champion David Millar admitted to using EPO in 2001 and 2003. British Cycling suspended him for 2 years.
- This spring, 2006 Giro d'Italia winner Ivan Basso admitted "attempted doping" (he had doping products, but maintained that he had not actually doped). The Italian Olympic Committee suspended him for 2 years.
- At this year's Tour de France, the Rabobank team fired its leader and likely race winner Michael Rasmussen when it became apparent that he had lied about his whereabouts earlier this year and missed several doping controls. The Danish cycling team also suspended him from riding in Danish colors.

Professional cyclists are punished when they cheat. All these cases were first offenses. The lesson is clear: dope and you'll be out of the sport for two years. The fact that riders continue to test positive for banned substances shows how ingrained doping is within professional cycling. The resolve of cycling's authorities is admirable: they want a clean sport, and they're entirely willing to kick out the biggest names in the sport to ensure that it stays clean.

The situation in baseball couldn't be more different. Neifi Perez, one of the worst everyday players of the last ten years, has tested positive for stimulants three times this year, and he'll still get to play baseball next season. The penalty for a first positive test is counseling. For his second failed test, he was suspended for 25 games. And for his third positive test, the third time that he had been found to be cheating, he was suspended for just 80 games.

To be fair, the penalties for steroid use are stiffer. One positive steroid test carries a suspension of 50 games. A second positive test will get you suspended for 100 games. Only on testing positive for steroids a third time will you receive a lifetime ban.

These are not the punishments meted out by an organization committed to stamping out drug abuse. A 50-game suspension isn't trivial, but it's not much more than a slap on the wrist. Losing a third of your annual salary doesn't threaten your livelihood when the average player's salary is over $2 million. The punishment is especially lenient given that there seem to be genuine incentives for taking steroids: if you hit more home runs, you'll get a bigger contract (one shudders to think just how bad Neifi Perez could be if he weren't taking drugs).

If Bud Selig Selig really wanted steroids out of baseball, he would have pushed for much more string penalties: at least a season for a first offense, with the possibility of a lifetime ban for a second failed test. Cycling has it right. Fans know that doping is rife in the sport, but they can also derive a small amount of satisfaction with the knowledge that dopers who get caught are severely punished.

All this brings us back to Bonds. One of the big stories accompanying his chase of Hank Aaron's career home run record was whether Bud Selig would choose to be present for Bonds's record-breaking home run. If Bonds did not have the "steroid-abuser" tag hanging around his neck, there's not question that Selig would have been there. But Bonds used steroids, so Selig struggled with the decision to explicitly validate Bonds's steroid-laden achievement.

Selig deserves no sympathy here. If he had pushed for steroid testing 10 years ago, or implemented a steroid policy with bite back in 2005, he might have some credibility when it comes to steroids. But in waiting so long to do anything and then doing so little, Selig ceded whatever moral high ground he might have held.

You can blame Barry Bonds for many things, but breaking the rules isn't one of them. If baseball had gotten its act together 10 years ago, we wouldn't be hearing about this now. Barry Bonds would either have gotten caught (and been punished) or chosen not to use steroids and continue his exemplary career drug-free. Instead, we're left with an all-time great whose true greatness we'll never really know. Bonds is mostly to blame for that, of course, but Major League Baseball gets a major assist.