Byline: Rick Shefchik
Look out. Congress is trying to protect the youth of America again.
This time, lawmakers are up in arms about the scourge of steroid use in sports.
When President Bush inserted a stern condemnation of steroids in his State of the Union address in January, there was reason to believe he simply needed another issue or two to fill up his allotted time, now that the weapons of mass destruction are a dead topic.
But it turns out Washington is serious. Why, they even held hearings last week, with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Biden, D-Del., lecturing baseball for allowing its players to become pumped-up cartoon characters.
"Baseball is the national pastime, but it's the repository of the values of this country," Biden said. "There's something simply un-American about this. This is about values, about culture, it's about who we define ourselves to be."
Never underestimate a politician's ability to craft angry sound bites about an issue your own children have been aware of for years _ especially if your kids collect baseball cards.
Was there a young baseball fan anywhere in the country who didn't suspect Jose Canseco, previously a nonprospect, was on something other than sunflower seeds when he immediately began blasting homers as a rookie?
And for all the excitement and joy generated by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during their home run race in 1998, I don't think they were hoodwinking any kids who owned their rookie cards _ which depicted McGwire and Sosa as normal-sized athletes, not the hulking behemoths they had become.
Which brings us to the new home run king, Barry Bonds. Thanks to the Internet, which any 8-year-old can navigate as easily as a pro ballplayer can get around the aisles of a "nutritional supplement" store, there can be little doubt in even the youngest fan's mind that Barry has grown in a way ballplayers didn't used to grow.
There are sites featuring photo montages of Bonds' physical development since he first came into the league in 1986. Click on the first picture, and he's a skinny whippet who looks like a good bet to challenge Rickey Henderson's career stolen base record. Keep clicking on succeeding years, and he seems to develop normally, until about 1997 or so. At that point, he begins morphing into an NFL linebacker, while his head inflates to the size of a basketball.
When I collected baseball cards, I could tell an occupational hazard of the game was eating too much. When you got Mickey Lolich's rookie card, he looked like most other kids who arrive in the big leagues grateful for the meal money. A few years later, you could see where the meal money went _ straight to the waistline.
That's no longer the case. All extra calories consumed by ballplayers now go straight to their biceps. And fortunately for the youth of America, politicians have finally gotten wind of it.
Which means it's just a matter of time before the cancer of steroids is wiped from the face of organized baseball.
And when that's accomplished, Congress can turn its attention to cleaning up college football recruiting visits.
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(Rick Shefchik writes for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Write to him at the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101. Send e-mail to him at: rshefchik@pioneerpress.com.)
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