Tainted

It didn't take Barry Bonds long to knock one out this year. A game into the season and he sits at 659, just one homer shy of his Godfather, Willie Mays. If he had passed this milestone a year ago, there would have been great celebration, mixed with a little sadness because his father could not share the event with him. Oh how the worm has turned. Given the BALCO investigation during the off-season, even the most ardent Bonds supporters are stepping back and asking themselves questions about the legitimacy of Barry's late-career power surge. How much of it has been due to talent and hard work, and how much has come out of a bottle? The sad thing is no matter what number Barry ends up at, in some people's minds it will have an asterisk next to it. People will see mark and not give it credit. This is kind of interesting, because we do honor 4256.

Something smells rotten in San Francisco

Even if you think that Pete Rose is scum, you have to give him credit for what he did in between the lines. Did he bet on the Pastime? After years of denial, even he admits to it now. When asked why he should be in the Hall of Fame, there is a hard core group of Rose supporters who will respond with a very simple answer - 4256. Rose's record stands as an unquestioned testimony to Charlie Hustle.

But let's jump into the wayback machine. Set the dial to July of 1980. This is before ESPN and the internet, when sports news didn't travel at the speed of light. One of the stories at the time was the investigation of Dr. Patrick Mazza. Mazza was the team doctor for the Reading Phillies, and according to some, was writing prescriptions for amphetamines for certain players on the Phillies roster.

Amphetamines, better known in the post-Ball Four baseball world as greenies, are uppers. Many players in the 60s and 70s took them as a performance-enhancing drug. The following is a transcript of a Playboy interview found in James Reston Jr.'s Collision at Home Plate:

"But would you use them for anything other than dieting" [Rose] was asked.

"There might be some day when you played a doubleheader the night before, and you go to the ballpark for a Sunday game, and you just want to take a diet pill, just to mentally think you are up. You won't be up, but mentally you might think you are up."

"Does it help your game?"

"It won't help your game, but it will help you mentally. When you help yourself mentally, it might help your game."

"You keep saying you might take a greenie. Would you? Have you?"

"Yeah, I'd do it. I've done it."

They way I decipher Rose's double-talk is that he didn't believe that greenies would help the physical part of the game, but would help the mental aspect. In any case, he believed that they worked, observe the next paragraph from Reston:

He did not say, however, that he was doing it nearly every day, and that he was teaching younger players how to do it. But when federal narcotics agents came calling at Veteran Stadium, that was the understanding of [GM] Bill Giles.

The trial of Mazza eventually blew over. He was found innocent in court. However, one of his statements was that "[The prescriptions] were made at the request of the ball players and were done in good faith. Pete Rose was having trouble with his weight and he needed some help with his thirty-eight year old body." So without a doubt, Pete had a bottle of greenies in his medicine cabinet. He admitted in Playboy to prior use. It was the belief of people in the Phillies organization that he wasn't just using, he was also getting younger players involved.

So Charlie Hustle spent at least some of his career with some extra hustle coming out of a bottle. It's not too hard to believe that steroids are to power hitters what greenies are to single hitters. The evidence we have against Rose is much strong than that against Bonds. Yet somehow there isn't a huge asterisk next to 4256 in the books. It doesn't have the same taint that is being attached to Barry's accomplishments. If we discount baseball records due to chemistry, one of the first we have to roll back is Rose's.