Take your PEDs: Fans no longer care about steroid usage in MLB

Did you enjoy the All-Star Game last night? Of course, it would've been just a whole lot better if Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriquez were there. Hey, we wanna see the real All-Stars -- right? -- and what's a little thing like cheating and breaking the law to cut into our fun?

Really, that appears the way most fans feel about the drug issue now.

Alex Wolff wrote a fascinating piece last week for Sports Illustrated, discussing how the European cycling culture is such that the Continental fans pretty much accept the fact that the riders simply need drugs to compete. Likewise, by now many baseball fans seem just to have been worn out by the drumroll of drug scandals. Why, we've even reached a point where performance-enhancing drugs are so common they have a space-saving acronym now. Steroids and their like are just P-E-Ds -- PEDs. Sort of a cute little name, isn't it? Pets, pats, putt-putts, paws, peeps. PEDs.

Almost sounds like a product: PEDs, PEDs Lite, Diet PEDs: "Hi, I'm Alex Rodriguez for PEDs. Did you have yours for breakfast this morning? Some of us players like our PEDs with strawberries or bananas. Others, like my good friend, Manny Ramirez, likes his PEDs with female hormones."

Or maybe, in that wonderful phrase by the late Daniel Moynihan, the growing acceptance of PEDs is just the baseball version of "defining deviancy down." It's the fashion now to defend the druggies by saying, 'Hey, what's the big deal? Pitchers scuffed up balls. Teams stole signs. Boys will be boys. What's a few PEDs amongst friends when you want to give a hundred and ten per cent?'

When Ramirez returned to the Dodger line-up, he didn't even deign to talk about steroids. But, anyway, by then it was as if poor Manny'd been away on bereavement leave. ESPN covered his return to the minor leagues as a celebration. And yes, whereas WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) mandates two years if you're caught on drugs the first time, in baseball it's only 50 games, and, for your comfort and safety, you can come back early to the minors and get in shape for your grand resurrection back into the majors. Of course, that's chain-gang punishment as compared to the NFL, where a guilty PED consumer, like Calvin Pace of the Jets, only gets a four-game suspension and he can keep practicing with the team and play in exhibition games.

Oh, a few old spoilsports still dare scold. Chris Young, the Padres pitcher and player representative, was there when Ramirez made his smirking return in San Diego, where cheering fans in the crowd wore replica Manny dreadlocks. "It's shameful," Young said. And when, not to be outdone by ESPN, Fox cut into its regularly scheduled game to breathlessly show Manny's first return at-bat, the analyst, Tim McCarver, had the courage to fume: "Why all the adulation for a guy who's served a 50-game suspension?"

Why, Tim? Because we fans don't seem to care anymore, and the clean players cravenly accept their place as patsies. See you at the All-PED Game next July.

Published Jul 15, 2009 | Modified Jul 15, 2009

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.

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