Juice Mending: Time to Reconstruct Baseball's Record Books?

Mike Greenwell, the former All-Star outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, is wondering why he shouldn't be awarded the 1988 American League Most Valuable Player award. After all, he did finish second in the balloting to, as he now tells the Fort Myers News Press, "an admitted steroids user" (a.k.a. Jose Canseco). Greenwell insists that he deserves the award over a cheater, and that his failure to receive it cost him millions of dollars in endorsements and contractual compensation. Essentially, he seems to be saying that if he can't get all that money back, then at least send him a trophy with his name on it.

Greenwell's not alone in this type of argument. What do Adrian Beltre, Albert Pujols, and (in theory) Sammy Sosa all have in common? From 2000-2004, each finished second to an admitted steroids user, Barry Bonds, for the National League MVP award (it happened to Pujols twice). Likewise, Mike Piazza was the runner up to admitted user Ken Caminiti for the 1996 National League MVP award, while Frank Thomas was the runner up to admitted user Jason Giambi for the 2000 American League MVP award.

Moreover, if we are to believe Canseco that Roger Clemens has used steroids in recent years, then maybe Randy Johnson--who was the runner up to Clemens for the 2004 National League Cy Young award--has a beef, as does Mark Mulder, who was the runner up to Clemens for the 2001 American League Cy Young award.

And presumably, all of those runner ups, just like Greenwell, suffered meaningful loss of financial opportunities, as well as public acclaim.

But even worse, what about guys like former Red Sox outfielder (and 1978 American League MVP) Jim Rice and former Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo, who have both been denied entrance into the Baseball Hall of Fame in part because their once impressive statistics now seem almost pedestrian when compared to the "bloated" stats of today's stars? And what about guys like Ken Griffery Jr. and Kirk Gibson, whose apparent and respective refusals to use steroids cost them not only home runs, but faster recovery from injuries?

And for a moment, let's take this list of aggrieved parties even further, at least for hypothetical purposes. If we really want to redress the wrongs inflicted to those players who stayed clean, then might we want broaden the concept of performance-enhancing drugs to include recreational drugs? After all, abusing players believed those drugs help them live life and thus, presumably, play better. Along those lines, did the 1986 Boston Red Sox get cheated out of a World Series to a, shall we say, happy-go-lucky New York Mets team? And is Bill Buckner now owed an apology? And what about Doc Ellis' no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in 1970, when he was allegedly on LSD?

It's hard to know how to respond to the injustices inflicted upon Greenwell and so many others, and how far to take their complaints. Then again, it's not without precedent that an athlete can be stripped of an award for use of performance-enhancing drugs. For instance, Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100 meter gold medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics after testing positive for an anabolic steroid.

And there's no question that Mike Greenwell was cheated out of personal recognition and a larger place in baseball history. He was the second best player in the American League in 1988, and the best player has admitted that without using steroids, he wouldn't been able to play in the Big Leagues, let alone excel. Of course, dozens of other players probably have similar narratives, and still dozens of others probably aren't even aware of how much they have been cheated out of acclaim and fortune.

And that is the real irony of the players' long-standing refusal to drug testing: they ultimately created their own class of victims, leaving the true greats, like Jim Rice and Ken Griffey Jr., undoubtedly wondering where it all went wrong.

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