Destroying Heroes

[question everything]

Destroying Heroes

Politicians use the steroid problem to distract voters.

By Chris Mears

We are a society that so values individual achievement that we place on pedestals those who achieve at the highest levels of their profession. Yet it is a rather brittle and unnatural perch that we construct for our heroes, and one that is inevitably latticed with the fissures of those human failings that even the worshiped can’t escape. While we may recognize, at least in the abstract, that our heroes share many of our most pedestrian flaws, pity the poor hero who publicly transgresses the rather vague precincts of probity which we nevertheless require of the exalted ­ who reveals himself to be, alas, a mere mortal after all. Enter Mark McGwire.

McGwire is yet the latest casualty of the ambivalent relationship we have with our heroes. Appearing before a congressional committee investigating steroid use by baseball players, McGwire’s equivocal and temporizing testimony about his own use of steroids as a player ­ although the substance had yet to be banned when McGwire was playing ­ was taken by many as a tacit admission that he had done so. His less-than-Oscar-winning performance was manna from heaven for a media bent on publicly vivisecting anyone it can, and by politicians slathering to convince their constituents that they are somehow guardians of public morality. The hue and cry for steroid reform that arose from the halls of Congress was surpassed only by the bellicose ferocity of the media and the political pundits, all of whom acted as if steroid use in baseball had just been discovered yesterday, rather than the open secret that it has been for decades. In truth, Congress found in the McGwire episode a welcome distraction-of-the-moment, running a misdirection play that afforded a brief respite from the public scrutiny of the real work of government ­ you know, like war and health care and Social Security ­ while giving the appearance that they were tending to the spiritual health of the national pastime.

Merely one aspect of the manifold injustice flowing from the furor over steroids is that the character of an inherently decent man ­ McGwire ­ is being sacrificed at the altar of public accountability. Our self-anointed moral arbiters have decided that the purgative for this poison that has infused baseball, if not all of sport, is the public humiliation of the most visible miscreants, the Mark McGwires of sport. Buried within the deeper recesses of the story is the much darker evil of the extent to which the owners and managers of our sports franchises have abdicated their responsibility to police their own sport, in favor of tacitly encouraging the chemically enhanced performance of players on the field that produces bigger box office, a dimension to the story which will eventually be told.

The demagogues of the moment now seek to sew a scarlet letter onto the bindings of otherwise storybook careers, thereby ensuring that the likes of Mark McGwire will be forced to bear their shame in public forever. By all reports, McGwire has led an otherwise exemplary and blameless life, and one characterized far more by hard work and charity than by bending the rules. None of that matters now; the witch hunt is underway, and the purifying flames of contrition must be stoked. What an absurd irony that the character of such a man should now fall prey to the posturing of elected officials who commit more acts of moral turpitude in a day than McGwire has committed in a lifetime.


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Chris Mears is a former Irvine City Council Member, and is chairman of the California State Athletic Commission. Letters to the editor go to: [e-mail].