Fabricating A-Rod's Fall

For some really good points about this past week's report that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, see Michael Butterworth's comments about it here. For an overexaggerated jeremiad about the same thing, see Jayson Stark's column about it here. For a much better account than Stark's (i.e., an account that keeps a good measure of perspective), see Rob Neyer's column about it here. I assume that, based on my descriptions, you have a fair idea where I stand on this. Two things that I think bear mentioning:

1. Don't accounts like Stark's really reinforce the mistreatment that Manny Ramirez gets? With Rodriguez now tied to performance-enhacing drugs, shouldn't Manny Ramirez be mentioned alongside Ken Griffey, Jr., in discussion of who has put up big numbers and not been connected to steroids, etc.? And isn't it incredible how quickly the media turn to the "all is lost" narrative despite Manny, simply because Manny is seen as a problem child? I think ignoring Manny because of what he is purported to signify illustrates how much the discourse on performance-enhancing drugs is predicated on mythologies of baseball's innocence and purity that are fabrications in order to promote the game to begin with. So the jeremiads about how baseball has been spoiled are part of that fabrication, trying to reclaim the lost past that never really existed to begin with ...

2. Anyone who is younger than the Baby Boom generation should be outraged by accounts like Stark's and the dominant trends in the media coverage to paint this "all is lost" picture. If what Stark says he thinks will happen actually happens, then a whole generation of baseball players is going to be nearly excluded from the Hall of Fame. And, in the annals of history, it will be as if our generations didn't contribute and our experiences are illegitimate. Of course, this feeds right into those narratives of the lost past as well, while also reinforcing the fabricated cultural authority of the Baby Boomers and the generations that came immediately before them. Neyer's last couple of sentences hint at this when he acknowledges that these players aren't unlike the generations that preceded them.

I don't have a completely "so what" attitude toward the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, but I tire of this overblown reactionary nonsense that dominates discourse on the subject. Thank you to folks like Butterworth and Neyer for helping to counter those dominant perspectives.