Dear ESPN, Or, I Really Know Stuff About Baseball

Driving home from class tonight, I heard Bob Valvano (filling in for Brian Kenny) talking about steroids in baseball. He answered a listener's question about the public's apparent indifference to steroids in football. His response was fair enough, but it nevertheless prompted the following reply:


Dear Bob Valvano,

I caught the end of your show, filling in for Brian Kenny, late on Monday evening. Nice shout out for soccer, by the way. I love the game, but the U.S. is more than lucky to be in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup. I'm frankly worried about their impending match with Spain.

Anyway, just before the soccer segment, you answered some questions from listeners, one of which asked you to speculate about why the NFL receives far less scrutiny than MLB when it comes to steroids. Your reply--a combination of lack of big names and the NFL's quicker response to the issue when it emerged years ago--made sense. Yet, I think there's more to say on the matter and I'm hoping you might be willing to extend the conversation about this subject a bit.

First, you should know that I love baseball. Second, you should know that I'm a Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm a scholar of rhetoric, and I study the relationship between sports and politics. My book, Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity during the War on Terror, will be published next year by the University of Alabama Press. All of which is to say that my scholarship is specifically about baseball's relevance to American culture.

From my position, I'd argue that the public outcry about steroids in baseball is a product of the mythology we've collectively invested in the "national pastime"--a mythology that claims the game is about childhood and innocence and purity. Baseball depends on images of the countryside, of "pastoral sanctuaries," and boys becoming men. In other words, it symbolizes a kind of moral order that other sports do not. Football, in particular, depends on images of machines and warfare. Neither of those metaphors seek to preserve the purity of players' bodies; by contrast, they rely on quite the opposite. Football players must turn themselves into implements of destruction for our spectatorship; baseball players must maintain the sanctity of a history perceived to embody our noblest shared values.

I'm guessing you won't get this kind of interpretation from John Kruk or Steve Phillips. Hell, even Peter Gammons might think it's nuts. Nevertheless, given how frequently this question is raised in the sports media and among fans, it might be worth offering as a different kind of interpretation. My comments here really only scratch the surface. As a summary, consider that in 2005 during the congressional hearings that featured McGwire, Palmeiro, and Sosa, then-Senator Joe Biden said, "This is about who we are as a nation." Baseball may no longer be the nation's most popular sport, but it's the only sport that would be the subject of such a declaration.

At minimum, I hope you find these observations interesting. Of course, I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you, or anyone else at ESPN, should you choose. You can contact me at the address below. Thanks for reading.


I'll keep you posted should I hear anything...