We want less politics in our sports but treat our elections like athletic competitions.
We want less politics in our sports but treat our elections like athletic competitions.
O n January 21 of 2012, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun accepted the National League Most Valuable Player award at a black-tie dinner in New York. But there was a hitch: A month earlier, ESPN had reported that Braun tested positive for having five times more testosterone in his system than allowable by Major League Baseball rules.
Braun vehemently denied he had used any performance-enhancing drugs. At spring training, he held a press conference in which he said, “I truly believe in my heart and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.” As part of his strategy to prove his innocence, Braun smeared the name of the urine test collector, accusing him both of being an antisemite (Braun is Jewish) and, heaven forfend, a Cubs fan.
But Braun’s denials were a lie. After initially having a 50-game suspension overturned by an arbitrator, he eventually copped to using human growth hormone, administered through both a lozenge and a deodorant-style application. He later negotiated a 65-game suspension that would take place during the 2013 season.
But the damage had been done. Braun never again reached the herculean numbers he achieved during his first six seasons in the league. In April 2011, he signed a contract guaranteeing him $145 million in salary through the year 2020, but after his suspension, he swung the bat like a light-hitting middle infielder. From 2007 to 2012, Braun averaged 34 home runs and 107 runs batted in. For the rest of his career, those numbers dropped to 19 and 63, respectively.
So not only was Braun a liar and a fraud, but he was also a thief. He signed a lucrative contract based on phony numbers he had obtained while cheating. Instead of using a gun to rob the Brewers, he used HGH-laced cough drops. Because the team had to pay Braun based on numbers he posted while on the sauce, Milwaukee, a small-market team, was limited in players it could sign as free agents, damaging the team for the next seven years.
But if the fans have any resentment toward Braun for lying to them and hamstringing their team, they haven’t shown it. Earlier this year, the Brewers announced plans to honor Braun by adding him to their team’s “Walk of Fame.” He had previously been added to the team’s “Wall of Honor.” In announcing the most recent award, the team cited Braun’s 2011 NL MVP award, which, given his drug use, is almost certainly fraudulent.
Of course, Braun isn’t even the most glaring example of fans backing an obvious liar as long as he plays for the right team. San Francisco Giants fans happily stood and cheered for drug cheat Barry Bonds even as his head virtually doubled in size due to his human-growth-hormone use. As Bonds lied and conned his way to every conceivable home-run record, Giants fans gobbled up all of his falsehoods — for instance, he claimed he had never used performance-enhancing drugs, and even if he did, those drugs don’t help hand-eye coordination. (If you believe that, then you likely believe you can kill sharks by electrocuting them with boat batteries.)
Even if he did use some kind of steroid, Bonds’s backers argued, lots of people were doing so — just look at Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who were setting home-run records every year. Bonds himself adopted this brand of “whataboutism” when Congress began sniffing around the issue of PEDs in baseball. “I think we have other issues in this country to worry about that are a lot more serious,” he said in 2005. “I think you guys should direct your efforts into taking care of that,” he counseled the government.
As this all went on, politicians were undoubtedly looking at sports fans and noting how many of them would completely sacrifice their critical-thinking skills to justify the success of their favorite player or team. A good many sports enthusiasts have groused about how sports has become too political, but the converse is now true: Politics has now become our sport.
(This comparison became even more acute this week when Trump actually accused Biden of taking performance-enhancing substances to remain alert, even demanding that the president take a drug test before this week’s debate. Presumably, Biden responded to this insult by lifting the desk in the Oval Office over his head and throwing it out of the window.)
It is adorable how some political pundits still believe elections are won or lost based on one issue or another. Instead, America has simply become two teams, with fans of each willing to defend dishonorable behavior in order to see their favored side win. “Issues” are now simply set by random musings of presidential candidates, forcing their acolytes to adopt a new set of principles to fit those of their leader.
If you are hoping one particular side wins in 2024, for instance, you must believe Americans don’t actually pay the full cost of expensive new tariffs, a position taken that contradicts decades of evidence that proves otherwise. (Or if you work for the Republican National Committee, you suggest that concerns over high tariffs are being pushed by the “Chinese Communist Party,” which, famously, is always looking out for American taxpayers.)
To be on the right team, you have to cheer on a degenerate who brags that he once suggested setting up a mixed-martial-arts league in which migrants fight each other for the entertainment of native-born Americans. If you are vying for the party’s vice presidency, you have to pretend you never suggested the presidential candidate might be “America’s Hitler,” instead reconfiguring your whole public persona and ideological beliefs to support his candidacy.
Oh, and there is also the small matter that your candidate is running to stay out of prison and once attempted to overthrow the results of an American presidential election.
Of course, there is just as much fanaticism on behalf of the other candidate, who may have actually died two years ago and is now an AI-powered hologram. Anyone on this team suggesting something the public can clearly see — that their candidate has lost well over a step — will be excommunicated from the movement.
But we are all now San Francisco Giants fans circa August of 2007, cheering as our favorite player desecrates the record books of a sport we hold dear. (A post at MLB.com celebrating the eleventh anniversary of Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s career home-run record notes Bonds’s 762-homer mark is “one of the most unattainable records in baseball, if not professional sports as a whole,” without suggesting any reasons . . . why this might be the case.)
As for Braun, the memory-holing of his controversial era continues apace, as he is now the “managing director” of an investment firm. It is unclear whether he counsels his clients to earn wealth by stealing $145 million from a baseball team, but it seems to be an effective way to financial independence for a select few.
The difference between baseball and politics, of course, is that baseball’s administration holds its cheats accountable. Oddly, we demand higher standards in baseball, which keeps the biggest liars, frauds, and cheats out of the Hall of Fame. In politics, we elect them to the presidency.