Starling Marte this week described his idiotic intake of Nandrolone as simply "a mistake I made," like he'd gone to the store and brought home the wrong kind of light bulbs.
Oops.
But those close to the disgraced Pirates outfielder, including the journalists who spoke with him as he prepared to rejoin the Pirates on July 18, indicate Marte's contrition is real, which I guess puts him comfortably in Group D on the standard spray chart of steroid cheats Major League Baseball has managed to nail.
To review.
Group A: Steroid cheats who feel their gamble was well worth taking, given the ocean of cash crashing ceaselessly against the game's golden shores.
Group B: Steroid cheats who feel that getting caught was an embarrassment far worse than the transgression itself.
Group C: Steroid cheats who say they simply didn't know what they were taking.
Group D: Steroid cheats who are genuinely heartbroken, admit their mistake and resolve to reinvent themselves.
If your evaluation is that Marte fits the profile of a steroid cheat who dabbled in Group C but settled in Group D and deserves full absolution aboard the happy Pirates ship, that's certainly your prerogative, but I'm afraid I'm a little slow to reconcile with that version.
The oft-overrated outfielder whose actions got him suspended for 80 games and helped poison the baseball season around here first blamed "neglect" and "lack of knowledge," when the news hit in April, and reiterated this week that his use of performance enhancing drugs was a one-time event last offseason, when he was "just thinking there's always something that can help."
If Marte wants something that can help boost the career of a supposed five-tool player who averages 16 homers and 64 RBIs per summer, he can always try not swinging at pitches a foot-and-a-half outside. Marte insisted this week his career stats are legitimate. Is that the good news or the bad news? Listed among similar players to Marte through age 27 at baseball-reference.com, statistically speaking, you'll find another notorious Pirate, one Derek Bell.
So we're to believe that a player in the middle of a $31 million contract that could balloon with club options to $55 million just started taking steroids, and just started taking Nandrolone, a hardcore old-school anabolic fashionable among drug cheats in the Barry Bonds 73-homer era.
Right.
To paraphrase Richard Dreyfuss in another summer fish tale, "This was not a dope accident."
Still, Marte will likely come out of this OK, particularly on a franchise that under Bob Nutting never had any difficulty welcoming PED suspendees including Marlon Byrd, Francisco Cervelli, Antonio Bastardo, Edinson Volquez and Michael Morse.
The people most betrayed by Marte this summer are the scores of Pirates employees who dedicate their entire professional existence to putting an appealing face on an organization that might not always deserve it, all the good people in community relations, public affairs and Pirates Charities, as well as dozens more ballpark operatives, and don't forget the talented people at Root Sports, who, counting pregame and postgame programming, essentially produce a slick, five-hour Pirates infomercial five or six nights a week six months out of the year.
To say nothing of Marte's non-cheating teammates and the non-cheating players throughout the Pirates' system.
And, oh my God, what about Chuck in Uniontown?
Yeah, that's right. I'm talking about the legendary postgame show caller who has for years defined the die-hard fan in full bloom. With Chuck, however, it is an acute disservice to call him a die-hard Pirates fan, even if he calls himself that very thing. Chuck in Uniontown is Die Hard With A Vengeance, no, he's Live Free Or Die Hard, he's ... all right, that's enough of that.
I simply had to call him.
"Chuck," I said, "Long-time listener, first-time caller."
Always itching to talk Buccos, storm or sunshine, Chuck dived right in on Marte.
"I don't buy the argument that it was an accident," he said. "You mean to tell me you don't know what you're putting in your body? C'mon. C'mon. You know what you're putting in your body, and if you don't, go see a doctor and make sure _ I don't buy that.
"Pittsburgh is the kind of town that I don't think would be as forgiving as some other towns about a situation like this, because when somebody does that, they're putting their own interests ahead of the team, and that's no good."
You can't help but worry for Chuck. He's generally down when the Pirates lose, up when they don't, but lately he's sounded like he's coming from new depths. He even brought the postgame show the French term "ennui," the other night, likely an etymological first in the long tortured history of that radio genre.
I asked as to the source of this feeling of utter weariness and discontent.
"I'm always going to listen because it's born in me," he said. "I started being a fan when I was 5 years old, and that's 60 years ago, 1957. But this is the longest stretch in Pirate history without a world championship, and 25 years since a divisional championship. Pittsburgh is a city that prides itself on world championships. Do I think they're going to win a world championship every year, or every three years or five years? No. But you can at least give us one in a generation maybe, please?"
It's probably beyond the capacity of the Pirates, even as they'd reached a midseason low point, to sentence Chuck in Uniontown to perpetual ennui. Being confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy didn't keep him from living on his own for the past 30 years despite dire predictions, and just one more sub-.500 summer probably won't make much difference. Besides, he doesn't even want a championship for himself, necessarily.
"A player like Andrew McCutchen deserves a world championship," Chuck said. "Sidney Crosby has a world championship. Ben Roethlisberger has a world championship. Can you imagine Clemente or Stargell or Maz without a world championship? Pittsburgh is the City of Champions."
So as Pirates management warily regards the approach of the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, and as the faithful audience concerns itself with the can they/will they/should they of deals that might include McCutchen and Gerrit Cole most conspicuously, here's another gambit that should merit consideration:
Trade Marte.
If you haven't noticed, there are plenty of clubs who've demonstrated a willingness to give asylum to drug-stained players. The St. Louis Cardinals welcomed Jhonny Peralta, and both the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners were only too happy to get Nelson Cruz after both served 50-game suspensions. Sadly, most of baseball's general managers would jump at adding a player like Marte, a Gold Glover outfielder who is still young and has a controllable contract. His baseball value has barely diminished because of this suspension, if at all. He'd bring value in return.
As it happens, there are plenty of mitigating factors in this story. Including Marte, five of the seven Major League players suspended for PED's this season are from the Dominican Republic, where grinding poverty and scant educational opportunity can make the risk of breaking a few rules almost laughable. According to the Borgen Project, a Seattle-based non-profit focused on global poverty, more than one third of native Dominicans live on less than $1.25 a day and only 30 percent of the children finish elementary school.
The poor Latinos who've been suspended are different in that way from the guys born with a Silver Slugger in the hands. Think Bonds, Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez.
Other than Pete Rose, the only player ever banned for life from baseball is Jenrry Mejia, a three-time steroid offender who never even played baseball until he was 15, when he began to take a dim view of his future as a Dominican shoe shine boy making a couple hundred pesos a day.
So there is all of that, and all of that is compelling. But there are a couple of hundred Latino players who have dozens of impoverished friends and relatives counting on them who have not cheated their clubs, cheated their teammates, cheated the game that saved them or cheated the work-a-day baseball people who try to keep a great game great.
For all of those people, the Pirates should trade Marte.
