Last week, Manny Ramirez became another player filed into the Falsus (Latin for “liar”) phylum of the Baseball Kingdom. Once a part of a rare group, for being known as one of baseball’s “purest” hitters, Ramirez can join the other species of cheaters.
The controversy injected into baseball is typical of much wildlife folklore. The nutria is affectionately viewed as an oversized rat. Imported in the 1930s, nutria were released, either intentionally or accidentally, in the Louisiana marshes and bred rapidly. The state needed to control the population of crop-eating critters. Officials encouraged using nutria as a natural resource and soon the fur market was flooded with rodent pelt. In 2002, they placed a $4 bounty for each nutria captured and killed.
Whereas the nutria caused a stir for multiplying, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is known for its disappearance. A search for the bird began more than 60 years ago and in 2005, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology claimed it captured footage of the woodpecker in Arkansas. However, because of the camera’s low quality, evidence of the bird’s resurrection has not yet been supported.
Baseball is currently dealing with its own curious animal: Albert Pujols. In an era of unprecedented power and widespread steroid use, Pujols lingers as possibly the last player of his kind.
Unlike many predecessors and contemporaries, Pujols has produced with power and remained unlinked to steroids. Yet while Pujols continues to swing a strong stick, the power bats that have been whittled to ash by accusations of steroid use are affecting him. People are doubting his legitimacy because everyone else was juicing.
Sluggers since the late 90s have resembled the nutria – at one time rare but then rampant. From 1988 through 1997 Major League Baseball averaged 3,702 home runs per year.
The league topped the 5,000 mark for the first time in 1998. From that season, through the 2007 season, players launched an average of 5,282 home runs per year.
The birth of Pujols’ career was in 2001, right in the middle of the hit parade, when he batted .329 with 130 RBIs and 37 home runs. If you think Pujols is innocent because he has been raking since his inception, recently defamed superstar, Alex Rodriguez, put up similar numbers during his first full-season – .358 batting average, 36 home runs and 123 RBIs.
If you think Pujols is innocent because he has always had a large build, excelling only from 210 lbs. to 230 lbs. since he began, Ken Caminiti, who admitted to using steroids, was listed at 200 lbs. his entire career.
If you think Pujols is innocent because he has never been caught after nearly a decade of service, Palmeiro denied in front of Congress that he ever used steroids during his 20-year career, only to test positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol a few months later.
The shame of all these comparisons is that they may not even matter. What if Pujols is a product of Mother Nature? What if he is in a class of his own, reaching heights that no one would have, had they only been eating Wheaties and doing sit-ups? We are being robbed of seeing our once-in-a-lifetime player.
Pujols has gotten lost in a fray of artificial talent. In this sense, he is like the Ivory-billed woodpecker. With our blurred perspective, we simply do not have enough evidence to verify that what we are seeing is real. Apparently, the baseball greats died out years ago. Pujols is just a part of the glut of a mutated species.
There is only one way he can prove to us that what he did in his career was genuine. Fail.
Not to a dramatic degree, but a natural one. None of this Botox baseball that helped Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens put up numbers like they were 20-somethings as they surged into retirement. We need to see some signs of aging. Maybe he cannot leg out that double he used to. Maybe he cannot catch up to the 95 mph flammer he used to drive the other way. Being a superstar is one thing, but being supernatural will bury him.
There are signs that the steroid infestation is being weeded out. Players like Ryan Braun, Justin Morneau and Ryan Howard are giving fans hope that the pure class of elite sluggers is being repopulated. Let’s just hope their common ancestors trace back a few decades.
Guest columnist Hunter Atkins is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].
