Idiots Write About Sports

Thumbs up to Murry Chass of the Gray Lady for likening the steroid hearings to McCarthyism not once but twice. (via OBM).

Rob Manfred, the chief labor executive for baseball’s owners, said the players were in the committee members’ minds when they scheduled the hearing. At a March 2 meeting with committee members, Manfred said, he was told that the hearing would “give players a chance to clear their names.”

The remark raised painful echoes from more than 50 years ago, when a fellow named Joe McCarthy, not the manager, held Congressional hearings into another matter and gave people a chance to clear their names (implicating others at the same time).

“Mr. Sosa, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Com … I mean, a steroids user?”

Just goes to show that the times can change, but the games played by people in positions of power don’t. (And to think people complain about any portrayal of Hitler as anything less than an inhuman monster. Uh, guys? If Hitler were Ming the Merciless, it would be easy to write off what he did. What’s truly chilling — and what we must never forget — is that Hitler was just a man, a man in a position of power. And he used his power to kill millions. If you lose the man, you lose the lesson — and then it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.)

Chass again:

What’s a player to do? If he appears before the House Committee on Government Reform on Thursday, takes an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and has used steroids, does he admit it and forever brand himself a cheater? Or does he deny it and perjure himself?…

The Fifth Amendment was once a popular tool for Congressional hearings. The Kefauver committee investigation into organized crime in 1950 and ‘51 produced numerous Fifth Amendment responses to senators’ questions. But what self-respecting baseball player would want to hide behind such a suspicious reply?

Once again I will recommend David Schoenfield’s bit of brilliance from last year, in which he proves (using the logic of the day) that the undisputed single-season home run record is 54, held by Ted Kluszewski, Harmon Killebrew, and Frank Robinson.

What bothers me in some way -- since you brought up Hitler -- is that some form of Godwin's Law is likely to be invoked or created WRT McCarthyism when noting that the current drug law raving is remarkably similar thereto. "Why, you must be one of them," the glowering will go, and off to the hoosegow with you. That Westside congressman Harvey Waxman -- a putative liberal! -- is behind this only serves to underscore how little credibility that title actually bears these days.

Godwin's Law? Thereto? Hoosegow? Putative? That's some fancy book-learnin' they got down there in L.A., Rob. :-)

I agree, though, that it's as easy to bring up McCarthy as it is to bring up Hitler. (I only bring up Hitler because "Downfall" came out...) And yet, when you've got the chairman of a senate committee asking people to come in and "prove their innocence," how can you not bring up McCarthy? It makes you wonder if the esteemed senators have even the slightest grasp of history.

You didn't mention Murry Chass' Estes Kefauver reference, though. Does Mike Godwin have a law against Kefauver references?

Posted by Jason at March 14, 2005 10:41 PM

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