Giambi on steroids?
Don't be shocked

Jason Giambi took steroids. And he lied to everyone but a federal grand jury about it. This is supposed to be a big deal.

It’s not.

Nobody has the right to be shocked or offended by the revelations in leaked federal grand jury testimony that surfaced early Thursday morning. This isn’t a revelation, it’s a confirmation. It’s not as if it’s something no one suspected. To find out he wasn’t taking steroids would have been the shock.

Nor is it a blot on baseball. Football players scarfed steroids down like candy back in the ’80s and early ’90s and the sport recovered — if it was ever affected. The reality is that athletes take whatever they can to get an edge. And if there is no testing, it’s impossible to blame them for doing what the unwritten rules allow.

Even now I’m being asked if Giambi was taking drugs, does that mean Barry Bonds was, too? And I can tell that the questioners expect me to say, “No,” even though every shred and thread of evidence points to Bonds and drugs.

It’s as if Giambi was great up until the minute the evidence hit the newspapers. That’s preposterous. The game of baseball didn’t test for steroids until last year. To an athlete, knowing you won’t be tested is like a driver knowing that there are no cops on the local Interstate. The athlete is going to cheat. You’re going to speed.

This is what so few seem to accept — or understand. Forget that steroids are illegal. They weren’t illegal by baseball rules. And if there are no tests and no penalties for doing something wrong, an awful lot of people are going to do it. If a player used a substance that wasn’t banned by his game, regardless of whether it was illegal, how can he be blamed? He was doing what the rules allowed.

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And baseball’s rules have always allowed a lot more than most games. It was illegal to throw a scuffed or cut ball for decades, yet Hall-of-Fame pitchers did just that during careers that are considered legendary. Whitey Ford let Yogi Berra cut the ball for him. Don Sutton was the king of the scuff ball. Gaylord Perry openly threw illegal spitters.

Norm Cash said he used a corked bat in 1961 when he won the batting title with a .361 average. No one suggested he give his batting title back. Even today, if you are caught with a corked bat, you’re suspended for a few games, not half a season.

Baseball has always tolerated cheating. And in tolerating cheaters, it has encouraged them. Cheating is, in fact, deeply imbedded in the game. So don’t blame Giambi. By the rules, he didn’t even cheat; baseball had no rules prohibiting the use of steroids.

And don’t get sanctimonious about Giambi lying to the public while telling the truth to a grand jury. The rules of the game are that he is supposed to lie until caught red-handed. Giambi saying he never took steroids is like President Clinton saying he never had sex with that woman. It’s what he’s supposed to say.

Our problem is that we want our heroes to lie to us. We want everybody to lie. Something like half the country refuses to hear that evolution is a fact and that the biblical story of creation — whichever of the two versions in Genesis you want to believe — is a nice story, but nothing more. No kid is happy to learn that there is no Santa Claus, even if he or she has suspected it.

We don’t just expect people to lie, we want them to lie. We love lies of all types, starting with the greatest lie of all, told by nearly every man to the question asked him by a woman he loves: “Does this outfit make me look fat?”

I’ve known very honest people who tried to sell real estate and cars. They were abject failures because they told prospective buyers what the problems were with the product being sold. One would think an honest salesperson would make out like a blind man in a blackout. Honesty is the best policy, right?

But the reality is that we don’t want the truth. As the line in the movie goes, we can’t handle the truth. When we’re shopping for a home, we want the salesperson to convince us that if King Arthur had known about this bungalow, he’d have abandoned Camelot. If we admire an athlete who’s suspected of using drugs, we want that person to tell us he or she is as pure as the driven snow.

So we blithely believe whatever our heroes tell us and curse those who suggest that we are as gullible as rubes at a three-card monte game. We love what Barry Bonds does and what mark McGuire did, and we don’t want to hear that their muscles might be enhanced by chemistry. If they say they took nothing, that’s good enough for their fans.

Many of us have been saying for years that these drugs are out there and they are used by the top athletes. The rumors around Giambi predate all the BALCO investigations. The rumors around Bonds and Sammy Sosa go back as far.

But if we suggest a great athlete is taking something, we, the messengers are blamed. Florence Griffith-Joyner set track records in 1988 that still haven’t been broken. When she set them, I and others repeated what we heard — that she wasn’t clean. And we were vilified for saying it, just as some of us were beaten up for years for saying that Pete Rose wasn’t an upstanding human being who never bet on baseball.

Just because somebody tests clean doesn’t mean they are clean, especially in baseball, which, until last year, didn’t even test athletes. But drugs are so sophisticated these days and testing so random, that it’s relatively easy to beat the testers. Baseball tells you when the tests are coming; if you can’t beat an announced test, you aren’t trying.

The rewards for being great are enormous in our society. Giambi is making $120 million over seven years. That’s not chump change. He’s making it because he was an incredible baseball player. Fans didn’t care what he was taking any more than they care what Barry Bonds is or isn’t taking.

If they care now that Giambi’s testimony is public, they are hypocrites. Because the same people who will flog Giambi for doing what the rules of his game allowed will still say that no one can say anything about Bonds because he hasn’t tested positive.

No one who applauded the great hitting feats of the past decade have any right to criticize anyone. No one has the right to be surprised or offended or to suggest that this tarnishes the game of baseball.

If you didn’t know players were taking something — or refused to consider it — you were lying to yourself. Just put yourself in their places. If you could inject or apply or swallow something that would allow you to make $15 million or $20 million a year, don’t say you wouldn’t do it.

And don’t blame Giambi if he did. Or Bonds, if it turns out that he, too, has taken steroids. Or anyone else. The system allowed it. It encouraged it. And the fans chimed in with their approval. They bought the tickets, bid for the historic bats and balls, ran to the mall to buy the latest signature apparel.

If it turned out to be a lie, so what? Lies are what we ask for, what we expect, what we demand. We’ve got one now, and it’s a doozy.

But it’s not a surprise.

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