Power Outage in Minor League Baseball

Recently, I attended a triple A minor league game in Portland, OR. The stadium was beautiful. The price ($9 day of, $8 in advance) was right. Yet, something was amiss and I'm not talking about the fact that a beer cost more than an advance ticket ($8.75).

As each batter came up, the statistics were downright dismal. Batting averages constantly below 300, only two batters out of both teams had double digit home runs with their All-Star Game a little more than a week away. These players are supposedly the future of their respective ball clubs and they are not lighting it up? What gives?

Stay tuned, this will require some more research.

A Minor League Roid Perspective

In his very entertaining book, Odd Man Out, Yale graduate Matt McCarthy describes his year in the minor league system between 2002 and 2003. The intellectual wasteland, living in Provo, Utah and the shenanigans that occur in the clubhouse are explored fully as well as the pressure that some minor leaguers felt to make it to the big leagues.

The pressure to make it included roiding up. After all, he was in the minors during the height of the roid era. While McCarthy does recount a drug test, the players know that there are two tests per year and can roid out their minds once the unannounced test comes and goes.

In describing the ongoing dilemma with PED’s, McCarthy writes:

“His reaction reflected the dilemma that many players in baseball faced at the time, when the whiff of steroids was always in the air. What might have been nothing more than an innocent suggestion from a coach that a player needed something extra to make the big leagues could be misinterpreted as a coded message to look for chemical assistance.”

The players get into a debate as to whether or not one should juice. The argument to juice is simple: take this product, perform better on the field. The argument against: side effects are worse and unknown. The counter to that discussion is that I chew tobacco, smoke and drink; activities that are all bad for my health, but this product, also bad for my health, will help my game. To that line of thinking, it’s a no-brainer.

Perhaps it's his Yale background coming out or giving the baseball lifers a free pass when he implies that only players are hearing "coded messages" to seek out PED's.  Only players are to blame for the PED problem?  Management needs to share some of the blame during this period since they were more concerned with what kept the turnstiles moving than doing the right thing.