Isn't Guilt Just Assumed Now?

In this day and age, success comes with a certain level of scrutiny.  You can never be "that good" at something that it defies logic.  We used to just turn a blind eye toward what we thought was great success, even though there was part of us that figured it had to have come at a price.

Once again, we have accusations being thrown out that Lance Armstrong, the greatest cycling champion in history, had taken a performance-enhancing substance to win his seven Tour de France titles.  This isn't anything new, as we've been hearing these claims for the past several years, since performance-enhancing drugs became so prevalent in the professional sports world.  The unfortunate nature of the claims, however, is that now, we're skeptical of everything.  There isn't a record or performance in sports that we celebrate where the question doesn't cross our minds: Was he/she on something?

Back in 2002, when San Diego Padres third baseman Ken Caminiti first admit to using steroids during his career, including during the season which he had won the National League MVP, it was thought that the use of steroids was the rare exception.  During an interview with Jim Rome on his radio show, Caminiti actually threw out a number when asked how many Major League Baseball players were using steroids.  That number was 75%.  At the time, most people hearing this shrugged it off as a disgruntled former player making insane accusations to make a name for himself and make his "sports infidelity" look like it wasn't so bad.  What that did, however, was open the flood gates to the sports world.

In 2002, there was no idea of "performance-enhancing drugs."  It was just "steroids".  One blanket term that everyone used to explain cheaters.  If you were using something, it was steroids.  HGH (human growth hormone) was a term that hadn't hit the mainstream yet.  We all believed that what we were witnessing, wether it be the shattering of the single-season home run record by Mark McGuire in 1998, to Armstrong winning three consecutive Tour de France races between 1999 and 2001, was a clean performance, because we really had no grounds to think otherwise.  Sure, there had been other cyclists in history that had "doped", and that seemed to be the most common sport in which that term was used, but we usually reserved the steroids discussion for the Olympics, which had seen many different athletes lose a medal for that level of cheating.

Now, many people will credit Jose Canseco for bringing steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to the forefront of everyone's minds with his first book, "Juiced", but you can't discount Caminiti's initial claim that so many professional baseball players were using a form of steroids to get ahead.  What seemed insane to think back then, has now turned into common place to think now.  We look at everything differently now.  The fact that Armstrong has won seven Tour de France races after coming back from cancer was a great story about six years ago, but now, he had to have had help, right?  The idea that baseball popularity soared as a result of the great home run chase between McGuire and Sammy Sosa during the summer of 1998 was one of the great stories in sports, but now, neither "great" player will probably end up in baseball's Hall of Fame.  The thought that Tiger Woods would become the greatest golfer in the history of the game by eclipsing Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major championships just by hard work, practice, and a dedication to his game was thought to be the surest thing in sports.  Now, many people doubt that his recent decline came from the marital issues he had in 2009 as a result of his infidelities, but more of a possibility that maybe, he stopped using something to train.  And the fact that anything good since that time, whether it be Tiger Woods' pursuit of golf immortality, or any Major League Baseball player reaching the 50 home run plateau again, is called into question, shows how much of a game changer that first accusation of steroid use became.

In a country where innocence was to always be proven before guilt, the sports world has unfortunately fallen into a place where the reverse is the accepted practice.  If you've done something good, you obviously had help.  It's up to you, the player or athlete, to prove to us, the public, that what you've accomplished was of your own accord, and that nothing along the path of your success included the words, steroids, doping, or performance-enhancement.  Unfortunately, that notion has taken a lot of fun out of being a fan.  We just never know what to believe anymore.