An Illusion of Constant Values

By Tom Callahan

Drugged athletes have lost some novelty in recent years, but far more successfully than their heroes, baseball fans have maintained an innocence less detectable in other sports. When player-witnesses like Kansas City Outfielder Lonnie Smith and New York First Baseman Keith Hernandez began lining up at the courthouse, the fans worried first about the standings. Since the Royals and Mets were nearly abreast of California and St. Louis in climaxing division races, couldn't the absence of one regular for even a game or two jumble all of the results? As if drugs had never decided a championship before.

In 1982 the Montreal Expos expected to repeat as division champions but instead lost themselves and any immediate hope of advancement in a pathetic white haze that both Club President John McHale and Star Player Tim Raines acknowledge now. Suspecting at least eight abusers among the Expos that season, McHale recalls instances when Raines vaguely held the ball without completing a play or momentarily forgot to run the bases. Comically and tragically, Raines has admitted packing a gram bottle of cocaine in the hip pocket of his uniform pants for short snorts between innings. Mostly he concentrated on sliding into bases headfirst, to protect his stash.

The following season, Pittsburgh might have won the division, at least Manager Chuck Tanner and a chorus of Pirate alumni think so, if not for drugs. Baseball has other dens of iniquity, but Pittsburgh is a suitable place for this trial. Just six years after hailing a world champion--that appealing Pirate "Family" headed by Pops Stargell--Three Rivers Stadium is the most depressed area in the sport. The largely ignored Pirates are bound for 100 losses and for sale. Pittsburgh's National League centennial is approaching, but the Pirates may not live to be 100. The gleam is off their very heritage, represented by the stadium sculpture of Honus Wagner, "The Flying Dutchman." In Pittsburgh these days, "Dutch treat" has become a colloquialism for a drug buy at the statue of the old shortstop.

Baseball has not felt so tarnished since 1919, the first time a federal judge was hustled into the game. Those same apologists who in 1983 swore there was no particular drug problem in baseball now are claiming it peaked about then. They are as unbelievable as ever. What Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and even Bowie Kuhn would do to the player-witnesses is easy to imagine. But Commissioner Peter Ueberroth has seemed more inclined to compassion than suspension, evidently still trusting that the players will eventually volunteer en masse for what is now just symbolic drug testing of minor leaguers and maintenance men. Judging from a few bolts of anger emanating from dugouts last week, some of the players may be coming around. How all of this will shake down with the fans is the most predictable matter, since lasting disillusionment in baseball is practically against the rules.

In sports measurable by clocks and rulers, no one ever questions the superiority of modern athletes. Baby girl swimmers have left Johnny | Weissmuller in their backwash. An old pivot man like George Mikan would stand up against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about as well as the Four Horsemen would pull their pony weight in a National Football League backfield. Because baseball players appear not to change so much, they present their fans a wonderful illusion of constant values, like .300 batting averages. By this week, the fans should resume arguing over Pete Rose and Ty Cobb, surer than ever that human beings have always been made of the same clay.