Baseball’s “Era of Steroids,” America’s “Era of Guantánamo”

Baseball is our national pastime, evoking long summer nights, the crack of bat meeting ball, shrewd attention to strategy over a long season, and an abiding sense of fair play. Here in Cambridge, Fenway Park’s diffuse glow in the sky can often be seen from UUSC's offices on long summer nights. Playgrounds and diamonds all across the country are lit with the joys and sorrows of players matching wits and abilities in competitions guided by rules and roles which have evolved over many decades.

Last week, we learned that players from every major league team, players whose achievements have inspired and thrilled fans for years, have been using performance-enhancing drugs for decades. Those very achievements, even of paragons like “Rocket” Roger Clemens and home-run champ Barry Bonds, are now questioned, the sport tarnished. Demands for ever more rigorous – and intrusive – drug testing are inevitable.

By coincidence, as the Mitchell Report on baseball was issued, we learned that evidence of the torture of prisoners in American custody was destroyed in what can only be described as a cover-up. The institution of baseball willfully turned its eyes away from obvious signs of abuse; the Central Intelligence Agency knowingly destroyed evidence that interrogators violated federal and international law prohibiting torture.

Baseball’s appalling “era of steroids” seems to parallel our country’s disgraceful “era of Guantánamo.” While producing the appearance of short-term gains – artificial home run records, a seemingly-secure homeland – these self-defeating actions seem to me to be deeply destructive in the long term, masking failure with the illusion of success.

Steroids produce artificial boosts to performance, but we know that the long-term effects of these drugs are devastating to the health and spirit of those who abuse them. Shamefully, abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, engaging in illegal surveillance, sending people into an endless gulag of clandestine prisons, and invisible and unaccountable accusations also produce the appearance of short-term results.

But what will the long-term effects of these disgraceful acts be to the health and spirit of our country, to our moral standing in the world, to our culture and society? Are we truly securing our country by enraging and radicalizing millions of people who previously viewed America as the symbol of freedom, fairness, and the rule of law? How will future generations view the achievements of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds? How will the attitudes of tomorrow’s generation of major-league stars, today’s little leaguers, be forever changed?

The parallels only go so far, of course, because baseball and the security of our country are not really comparable: America was attacked, and the threat of terrorist attack is real. There is no doubt that resolving the crisis in baseball will be far easier than securing our homeland.

But just as true success in baseball cannot be won while violating its basic premises, true success in defeating terrorism cannot, and need not, come at the price of abandoning our nation’s core values of freedom, fairness, and the rule of law.

UUSC has no baseball program, though many of us are Red Sox fans. But we are doing everything we can to stand for civil liberties and to fight illegal and immoral practices like torture because, just as baseball must put its “era of steroids” behind it, so must our nation turn the page on our “era of Guantanámo.” We invite you to be a part of this movement.