Fans
By Herb Smith
Staff Reporter
hjsl3s@psu.edu
It's almost spring and hopefully
the worst of winter is now behind
us. The nation's past time is set
to kick off in about a month, but
this year a dark cloud hangs over
baseball. Jose Canseco, our
juiced-up former bash brother,
has come forward naming names
of players who use steroids,
some of the names being very
high profile home run hitters like
Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire.
Bonds' situation is particularly
interesting because he is within
striking distance of the sport's
most fabled award. He sits
just twelve homers away from
passing Babe Ruth and 52 away
from eclipsing the all-time mark
of Hank Aaron. Bonds, in the
past, has always shrugged off
accusations, but this scandal
has certainly tainted his quest at
baseball history.
McGwire's situation is a little
different. He has been out of
baseball for a few years and isn't
in the spotlight anymore. Fans
cannot just turn on televisions and
see "Big Mac" trying to explain
himself. What makes this even
harder is that this now darkens
his glorious 1998 season that is
credited with bringing fans back
let down as
to baseball
That joy we felt as fans watching
McGwire and Sammy Sosa now
isn't so pure. We all know Sosa
was caught with a corked bat and
for a moment. we all felt a sense
of sadness thinking that his
numbers were not real. However,
tests on his bats proved that they
weren't corked and baseball all
breathed a sigh of relief. However,
this news about McGwire is like a
corked bat that won't go away; a
bat that we can't test. Even if "Big
Mac" came forward and claimed
the allegations are false, there is
no way that can be proven. We
can't go back six years and test
McGwire. It's his word against
Canseco's. and it comes down
to which bash brother you trust
more.
That summer of 1998 brought
the kid back in all of us, and to
those fans that are still kids, it
was a thrill to watch history being
made in front of our eyes. Roger
Maris, a name we hardly knew,
who owned a record we all knew,
was suddenly in the spotlight. The
record had barely been sniffed
since Mans hit his 61 home runs
in 1961. We all watched with
curious eyes as McGwire started
the season fast and was ahead
of Mans' pace.
Suddenly in June, a relatively
unknown slugger from Chicago,
Sammy Sosa, joined the race.
Through the dog days of summer,
Sosa and McGwire fired back
and forth until that one glorious
day in early September when
"Big Mac" hit number 62. If I
close my eyes, I can still hear
Joe Buck make the call and I
see "Big Mac" jumping around
the bases like a 12-year-old with
joy in his eyes, as the fireworks
went off at Busch Stadium and
the Maris family looked on. With
tears in their eyes watching the
record their father gave at least
a decade of the end of his life to
attain, the Maris family embraced
and accepted McGwire as a
worthy successor.
All that drama, but was it fiction?
Was the Hollywood ending
too good to be true? McGwire
captured our hearts. He was king
of the mountain and sitting on top
of the world. He was Paul Bunyan
with super-human strength,
hitting balls to the moon. He
captured the imagination of every
baseball fan. Should we ask for
our money back? Should we
send letters to "Big Mac" saying
that we want compensation for
him lying to us? Each individual
fan must make that decision.
As we all know, McGwire's
record was broken a few years
later by Bonds, a far less likeable
character. Cocky to the media,
Sports
players juiced-up
ignorant to fans, Bonds had
no support and half the media
coverage that "Big Mac" did. We
almost want Bonds' record to be
false. We want him to be proven
a liar so we can laugh in his
face. But the record book will still
belong to him. And does he care
Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single season home run record of 61 with 70 in 1998. McGwire retired
in November 2001 from Major League Baseball. Since then, he has endured a spotlight in a steroid-use con
troversy with fellow high-hitters Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco..
NCAA report card
By Michael Marot
Associated Press Sports
Writer
At least one team at half the
nation's Division I schools
could lose scholarships next
year because of poor academic
performance, according to a
preliminary report released
Monday by the NCAA.
Of the 5,720 teams at 328
Division I schools, about 410
teams risk penalties.
"We hope the behavior changes
and the number of teams will
actually go down over time,"
NCAA president Myles Brand
said in a conference call.
Most of the scholarship losses,
which would be for one year, are
expected to come in football,
baseball and men's basketball.
Those were the only sports with
averages below a 925-point
cutline at which penalties would
be assessed. Baseball teams
averaged 922, while football and
men's basketball were at 923.
The most prominent programs
below 700 were the men's
basketball teams at Fresno
State and Baylor. Fresno State
received a 611, while Baylor.
scored 647 - a figure affected by
the transfer of several players
The Capital Times, March 21, 2005
what the fans think? Absolutely
not.
So, as more of this story surfaces,
we are left with Canseco. He is
also not a likeable guy and is
now the reason that joy in 1998
is gone. But he is not a liar simply
because he is disliked. He has
after the 2003 shooting death of
Patrick Dennehy.
But there immediately were
concerns with the scores.
The Houston women's cross
country team and the Eastern
Michigan men's indoor track
team both scored zero, which
NCAA officials said might have
been because there was only
one athlete represented.
Maryland-Baltimore County
athletic director Charles Brown
said the NCAA miscalculated the
score for its men's track team,
which scored 600. Brown said
he contacted the NCAA to point
out the calculation only included
three indoor track athletes - not
the 27 that participate in both
indoor and outdoor track.
"It's very embarrassing and it
hurts our recruiting," Brown said.
"It's extremely upsetting that the
NCAA released something to the
public when they know there are
some flaws."
The new calculation gives
athletes one point each semester
for remaining eligible and another
point each semester for staying in
school. The points for each team
then are divided by the highest
possible total of points a team
could score. That percentage is
assessed a point total, with 1,000
exposed some truths about this
game. And we as the fans need
to take a harder look at whom
we put our support behind. We
will all be taking a closer look
at who's hitting the ball over the
fences this summer.
Photo courtesy of www.agreatlink.com
being the highest. Schools scoring
below 925, or 92.5 percent, could
face penalties.
The NCAA will use a statistical
adjustment, similar to the margin
of error used in presidential polls,
to prevent statistical anomalies
for teams with few athletes.
Corrections to the scores are
expected to be announced in
April. The NCAA also will institute
a yet-to-be determined waiver
process to avoid penalties.
Schools are expected to be
notified by December of the final
results, which also include figures
from the 2004-05 school year.
Programs must take the penalties
as early as possible and those
that are far below the cutline now
could take the scholarship loss
next fall.
The 2003-04 data only gives
schools an indication of how they
are doing.
Under the new format, NCAA
officials hope to improve both
academic eligibility and retention
of athletes. Stronger penalties,
including postseason bans for
consistently poor academic
performance, are expected to be
enforced by the fall of 2008.