Twenty years ago this week, Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal because of a positive drug test, thus dragging society (Canadian society, anyway) kicking and screaming into the era of steroids. Steroids had already been used in sports for years, if not decades, at that point, but society generally ignored it. It wasn’t until Johnson’s disgrace that it became a topic that people actually talked about.

Johnson became a national hero by (a) winning the gold medal and thereby being informally named “Fastest man alive”, and (b) beating the hated Carl Lewis on the biggest international stage possible. This was another one of those “I remember where I was when…” events — I was just starting second year at the University of Waterloo, and that particular Friday evening, I was at the student bar known as Fed Hall. When the race came on, they put it on the big screen and turned the dance music off, and everyone watched. 9.69 seconds later, we erupted into shouts of jubilation. The joy lasted three days.

The next Monday, we got the news. Johnson had tested positive for steroids and had been disqualified. The hated Carl Lewis was given the gold medal. Canada’s heartbreak was as strong as its joy had been only three days earlier. Some Canadians felt not only embarrassed but ashamed, as if the entire country had failed the drug test. It was then that people started to take drugs seriously in sports, talking about a “level playing field” and all that. It turned out that a level playing field wasn’t the problem — since everyone was on the juice anyway, you had to take the drugs in order for there to be a level playing field. Some even suggested that steroids in sports were no big deal for this reason. Never mind that the drugs made all the records artificial. Never mind that they were dangerous. Never mind that teenage athletes began taking steroids earlier than ever before, because they started to believe that without taking the drugs, they would never have a chance of success.

However, these discussions didn’t really start south of the border until until it was discovered that Mark McGwire was using andro and then José Canseco wrote his book. Not until it became obvious that their sacred game of baseball had been tainted did the Americans become interested. At this point, however, they went nuts, launching investigations and bringing players in front of Congress. MLB had buried its head in the sand for years, never admitting that there was any kind of problem and even now, they administer all the drug tests themselves, refusing to have an impartial third party do the testing (as the Mitchell Report recommended). And since they started “policing” themselves, guess what? No major positive tests. Sure, they nailed Rafael Palmeiro, but his career was over anyway. They do throw the odd minor leaguer under the bus now and again, but since there’s no accountability for the tests, you’re never going to see a significant player get caught, even if they walk around the clubhouse with needles hanging out of their ass. The NFL is just as bad — we all know that there are steroids all over the NFL, but their testing procedures are such that very few get caught and the ones that do are suspended for all of four games. Ridiculous.

These sports leagues say that they want to get rid of the steroids for good, but that it’s just not possible. Well, they’re probably right that it’s not possible to completely get rid of them, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t bother trying. If they really want to, here’s how it can be done:

1. Test each player at least once per season, but possibly more. Have no limit on the number of times a player can be tested in a season.
2. Players are chosen at random and given no advance notice of when they will be tested.
3. Tests will be administered by a company that’s not under the control of the league. The number of positive results should have no bearing on how much the company gets paid. The cost should be borne equally by the league and the players union.
4. Players that test positive for the first time are suspended for half a season. Players that test positive a second time are banned for life. All positive tests will be publicly announced.

The goals are (a) to make it impossible for a player to know when he will next be tested, and (b) to make the risk of getting caught far outweigh the potential gains from using the drugs. Once that’s done, will the game be completely clean? No, but only the stupid players will still be using. Stupid players, by definition, will not be smart enough to avoid getting caught, and so will be tossed from the game in short order. Hopefully, this will allow the game to return to the days where you could watch someone hit 50 home runs in a season and marvel at his athleticism rather than wondering if he’s on the juice.

The unthinkable happened yesterday.

Yankee Stadium, the baseball shrine that has been home to some of the best baseball players, teams, and moments for eighty-five years, is now closed. The Yankees and Orioles played the last-ever Major League Baseball game at The House that Ruth Built yesterday, and that’s the end for this building. The Yankees will play in the new Yankee Stadium next season, across the street from the old one, thus beginning a new era in Yankees baseball. Just thinking of all the great ball players who called that stadium home over the years is mind-boggling: everyone from Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, and DiMaggio to Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson, Don Mattingly, and Dave Winfield, and now the new order: A-Rod, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera.

I am a huge baseball fan. I have seen countless games at both Exhibition Stadium and SkyDome the Rogers Centre, and I’ve also seen games at Fenway Park in Boston, the now-destroyed Kingdome in Seattle, New Comiskey Park U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, and even one pre-season game in Fort Myers, Florida. But unfortunately I never made it to a game at Yankee Stadium, which I now regret immensely. I even looked into arranging a weekend away for me and Gail sometime this summer, but with our trip to France, we were so busy that it was hard to find time to do it. (It was also hard to find the money to do it, also because of our trip to France.)

I have the utmost respect for the Yankees as a franchise. The logo and pinstriped uniform is probably the most recognizable sports logo in North America, even among people who don’t watch baseball. They are to baseball what the Leafs are to hockey and what the Dallas Cowboys are to football, but to a much greater extent. Having said all that, I’ve grown up a Jays fan, and have even found myself a bit of a Red Sox fan in recent years, and so I’ve always hated the Yankees. Which is why the fact that I was actually rooting for the Yankees to win in their last game in Yankee Stadium is unthinkable.

So the Jays are out of the postseason again, for the umpteenth year in a row. After their 10-game win streak, they did have a small-but-legitimate shot at making the playoffs, so it could be argued that they played meaningful baseball in September for the first time since J.P. Ricciardi took the helm. I wrote back in August that Ricciardi should be fired, and now I’m not sure. It’s true that he’s ultimately responsible for putting together the team, but it really isn’t his fault that Marcum will miss next year, that McGowan missed half of this year, that Accardo and Janssen missed all of this year, that Ryan missed all of last year, and on and on. Ricciardi has put together one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, even with all the injuries. Injuries to Wells and Aaron Hill are also not Ricciardi’s fault. Also on the upside, this Travis Snider kid (drafted by Ricciardi) looks like the real deal as well. If he can keep it up, an outfield of Snider, Wells, and Rios might be the best Jays outfield since Bell, Moseby, and Barfield.

On the flipside, it is Ricciardi’s fault that Reed Johnson is a Chicago Cub (I still shake my head over that move). The Shannon Stewart experiment was a total failure. The David Eckstein experiment didn’t work out either. Is Scott Rolen really much of an improvement over Troy Glaus? The bottom line is that the Jays missed the playoffs again and despite the late-season winning streak, we knew that they never really had much of a chance. From that point of view, after seven seasons of not having a chance, Ricciardi should be fired. I heard the other day that of all the GMs that were in place when Ricciardi was hired, he’s the only one left who hasn’t made the post-season. Every other team that hasn’t made the playoffs in that time has fired their GM. But not the Jays.

But it’s not like the team sucks and has no chance next year — if they manage to resign Burnett (for a zillion dollars, since that’s what it will likely take) and McGowan returns OK and they pick up a big bat in the off season, then the Jays could seriously contend next year. Maybe we should give him one more year. Of course, that’s what I thought last year too.

My ass is getting sore from this fence-sitting.

My annual baseball tournament was this past weekend. We played three games on Saturday (won two and tied one), and then one more game Sunday morning, which we lost. The 2-1-1 record put us third in our group, and our first playoff game was Sunday at 11:30. It was a close game, but we didn’t get the bats going enough and we lost by a couple of runs, so we were done. I’m in some pain today, but I managed to get up on time and after my 50-minute commute, even managed to get out of the car without falling on the ground. And I took the stairs up to the third floor; I didn’t wimp out and go to the elevator. And I didn’t even take any Tylenol today (though I did a couple of times yesterday and Saturday). Go me.

Personally, I played OK in the tournament. I hit pretty decent in the first and second games, not so much in the third, and pretty crappy in the last two. Defensively, I did pretty well, except for one play which is still haunting me. (More on that later.) In the second game, I made a pretty awesome over-the-shoulder off-balance catch followed by a fall and roll, though the runner on second tagged and went to third because it took me a second to get up again. In the playoff game, I was part of two separate double plays. (I play right field and right rover, so I’m not involved in double plays all that often.) Early in the game, someone hit one way over my head, I went to get it and threw it in to Gerald who heaved a bullet home, beating the runner by a step. (Edit: Duh, this wasn’t a double play.) Later in the game, another fly came out to shallow right field, and I guess the runner on first didn’t expect me to get to it, but I did. He was halfway between first and second, and I fired it into first and doubled him off.

I caught at least one other fly ball in that game, but the play that is haunting me was a fly ball that I missed. The batter was left-handed, and had hit very deep to right field before, so I was playing pretty deep. He hit one a mile in the air, and I originally thought it was going deep again. I told myself “This ball is not going over my head”, so I backed up a couple of steps. Then I realized that it wasn’t going deep at all and I was way too far back. I sprinted in to get to it, but those first few steps backwards cost me and I missed it by a foot. I was fully outstretched when I reached for it, so I fell and rolled again, but immediately got up and went for the ball. Luckily, Matt the centre fielder (who has unbelievable range) was right there and backed me up. The batter got to either second or third, and when the next batter hit a single up the middle, he scored, so I put that run squarely on my own shoulders. That was the only run they scored that inning, and we lost by more than one run, so it’s not like that play singlehandedly cost us the game, but I am still angry at myself for blowing what should have been a completely routine pop fly.

So baseball is over for another year, and now I’m in full Mats Sundin mode about baseball next year. Do I continue playing ball next year, or do I “retire” from softball and do something else athletic once a week (eg. hit the driving range, or maybe even go to an actual golf course) or maybe dedicate one night a week to two hours of uninterrupted guitar playing? Or do I just stop playing ball and have some extra free time which will likely be eaten up by common household things like laundry? Lemme tell ya, the laundry thing is pretty tempting, but I think I’m gonna need some more time to decide.