Media coverage of steroids in baseball is old and familiar.
Player A injects a needle into his arm and suddenly he hits the ball farther
than ever before. In the newspapers the same statistics are repeated, and the
same faces on the screen go on about how players from the steroid era should
have an asterisk next to their stats. Their distaste surfaced in the case of
Jeff Bagwell, who was never implicated in any steroid scandal, but received fewer
than expected hall of fame votes— some voters didn’t like the way he bulked up
over his career.
In the most recent offseason the media’s sharp eye turned on
Ryan Braun, the freshly made National League MVP. The media reduced his
incredible season to one more piece of evidence of the destructive nature of
steroids in baseball. “He would never be
that good without the steroids,” was the common groupthink.