Every baseball fan has a different moment when the steroid controversy really hit home for them.  That moment where they went from assuming the best of their heroes to suspecting everyone of wrongdoing.  For most fans it was probably around the turn of the century, when allegations of steroid use surrounding Barry Bonds expanded the national consciousness about the issue and deepened feelings of skepticism from an already cynical generation of fans.

I was unlike most fans.  While I suspected everyone and believed pretty much any wild allegations, be it hard test results or wild Canseco allegations, I still felt that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t everyone.  Maybe it was just a few bad apples, or a lot of bad apples.  But I never just assumed everyone did it.  My example of that was Sammy Sosa.  How foolish of me, right?  Well there was never any hard evidence of steroid use by Sosa beyond a few douchebag Sox and Cardinal fans claiming his head looked bigger.  As opposed to the allegations of some bigger stars, no steroid finger-pointing at Sosa seemed to stick, until now that is.

Ok I know you’re all thinking that I am naive, and you know what?  You’re right.  I think I just wanted to believe so bad that my personal hero from the juiced era of my childhood was somehow above the rest.  In fact, I was so willing to pull a blindfold over my eyes, that this piece is actually a replacement for a piece I had drafted up about how the Cubs should retire Sosa’s number.

So while the rest of America has accepted that their heroes were nothing but phonies for the last 20 years, and has perhaps come to grips with it, I am just now feeling it hit home.  This is the first big steroid scandal in Chicago, since no other notable players on either team have been implicated up to this point.  How do we as Chicago baseball fans deal with the steroid controversy, now that it is a part of our personal baseball history as well?

I guess I’m arriving to the discussion late, but what does this mean for the Hall of Fame?  The record books?  Will Sosa be remembered as the greatest baseball player in Chicago history, or just another cheat from the steroid era?  Only time will tell, but on a personal level the betrayal cuts deep and we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist any longer.

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Tags: Innocence, Juiced, Sammy Sosa, Steroids