For a game steeped in history, baseball more than ever wants to look to the future — and beyond today’s steroid-tainted headlines.

Last week the game’s best player, Alex Rodriguez, admitted steroid use and another top one, Miguel Tejada, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. In the month ahead, Barry Bonds is due to begin his perjury trial over steroids while an investigation of Roger Clemens for similar transgressions continues. Both players were arguably the best of their era — but now, the only way they may get into the Hall of Fame is if they buy a ticket.

As spring training starts, the baseball world waits for the next steroid needle to drop — 103 unidentified players tested positive from the same 2003 batch that fingered A-Rod. What shocks and revelations lie ahead?

Some UC Davis scholars are not too surprised, pointing out that baseball’s performance enhancement problem merely mirrors an overly ambitious, aggressive society.

Alan Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar of early American history and a fan of the national pastime, said, “Baseball reflects American society for better or worse.”

He dismisses romanticism for a game that had a color barrier until 1947.

“I can’t call any period a Golden Age,” he said. “There was no Field of Dreams era where owners and players were purely about the good of the game.”

These days, he prefers to watch minor league or college baseball because the scale of the crowds, the cost, and the stakes are low enough that the game takes priority.

Image of purity

Taylor sees an age-old cautionary tale in the steroid story. It is not only that steroids are bad, but how we as members of society build up sports stars (or anyone), only to later publicly destroy them when they prove fallible, he said.

“American culture favors competition by individuals and rewards them with celebrity — until the public becomes bored with the packaged image of purity and then delights in scandals attached to the former hero, as in the case of Alex Rodriguez,” he said.

He said this peculiar fascination with a “culture of celebrity” often implies that we should celebrate success as validating the means taken to get there.

“Then the public becomes shocked to discover that a prominent person cut corners to become wealthy and influential,” said Taylor, a fitting point in light of recent financial Ponzi schemes of mind-boggling proportions.

As a fan, how does Taylor feel about the game now?

“I wouldn’t entirely give up,” he said. “The game now seems to be cleaned up, thanks to more professional testing.”

Cultural contradictions

Carolyn de la Peña, an American studies scholar, says that steroids represent the “importance of the superhuman individual” and are ultimately about ambition, power and the individual — not the team.

“This is about the money you make for being ‘the best’ — rewards that are distinct from those that their teammates receive,” said de la Peña, author of The Body Electric (2003) in which she examines reasons Americans in the early 20th century embraced technology as a means to glorify the body.

With modern ballplayers, pressure exists to be the “body that can work at the absolute limits of capacity,” she said.

“When we as a culture celebrate individual heroes of sport, and when we reserve that status for people who break records and accomplish phenomenal things, we are encouraging the overreaching that we see in steroid abuse. If our focus were merely on our favorite teams winning games, then I don’t think we’d see these same sorts of cases.”

How should we view performance enhancers — as a good, an evil or indifferent reality of contemporary life?

De la Peña: “I think steroids are an extreme version of a kind of (Popeye’s) can of spinach. It is a substance that we ingest or wear that can make us stronger, faster, better than we are without it.”

Americans have a long history of looking to technology as a magical elixir, she noted.

“But there’s a huge difference,” she said, “between steroids and running shoes or supplements. Steroids are not good for you. They are not good for the body.”

The steroid problem shows that we have a contradiction in our culture in how we view the concept of winning, she added.

“We don’t have a steroid problem,” de la Peña said. “ We have a problem valuing sport and what individual bodies, flawed and all, can accomplish when working together. We have a problem valuing the game.”

‘Intoxicating as any drug’

Kim Elsbach, a management professor and the NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative for UC Davis, calls on Major League Baseball to seriously enforce steroid rules by enacting a 5-year ban for positive tests and spotlight the “clean” athletes and teams.

“MLB should focus on the future,” she said, “what they are going to do from this point on, rather than uncovering and prosecuting every case from the past 20 years. It means looking forward not backward.”

Baseball seems to get more coverage about its steroids than other sports like football. “It’s clear that the All-American mythology surrounding baseball contributes to fans’ desire to have the sport be clean” and to the myth that “everyone playing baseball is as pure of heart as Lou Gehrig.”

Elsbach, a former member of the varsity swim team at the University of Iowa, explained that some athletes want to be great at any costs.

“The opportunity to achieve greatness on the playing field is as intoxicating as any drug,” she said.

Risking their long-term health may seem like a small sacrifice, she said.

Also, athletes may feel that they are at a disadvantage if they do not take drugs. “If every other player is taking these drugs, a clean athlete is at a clear disadvantage. It may be seen as the price to pay for being at the pinnacle of their sport.”

Elsbach added, “I tell all my students that people will do what they are rewarded for. If they are rewarded for cheating, they will continue to do so.”

But if they are not rewarded with huge contracts and a chance to play, then players will have no incentive to cheat, she said.

To reduce steroid usage, Elsbach recommends that pro sport leagues make it a postseason requirement that teams, in order to compete, may not have any (or very few) positive steroid tests of players.

“Most of what we’ve done so far is punish drug use, rather than to reward clean athletes and teams,” she noted.

Not just a sports problem

Liz Applegate, a nationally renowned expert on fitness and faculty member in the nutrition department, says that MLB should have an independent steroid testing agency instead of handling it in-house. Otherwise, steroid chemists simply outpace league testing methods.

Regardless of whether NFL players use performance enhancers in large numbers, that league has — at least image-wise — a stronger testing program, said Applegate, who serves as a nutrition consultant to NFL players and teams and is currently the team nutritionist for the Oakland Raiders.

Beyond sports, steroids are a problem in other walks of life, she maintains. Awhile back Applegate gave a talk to U.S. military troops in Italy where she learned that some soldiers were big users of steroids. They found the drugs helped prepare them for the physical rigors of the soldier’s life.

“Steroids are but a reflection of society and how we glorify performance” in any walk of life, said Applegate, who advises her students against falling prey to the temptation.

As for baseball, it is now a different game, she believes, a bit less authentic perhaps.

“The days of Babe Ruth are over.”

ONE FAN'S PERSPECTIVE

Michael Singer, professor of soil science, is a San Francisco Giants fan and longtime follower of the national pastime. He offered Dateline a few thoughts on this topic:

What do you think about steroids and baseball?

Singer: I am ambivalent. On one hand, I find the use of drugs to set a horrific example for young kids who set their sports heroes on pedestals. On the other, I recognize that these folks are paid performers who are expected to give their owners and the fans a peak performance every time they appear on the field. I still enjoy watching the game.

How should we view the history of the game now?

Singer: I don't think the game has ever been "pure." My understanding of Babe Ruth's history makes that quite clear. In addition to drugs, the players have much tougher training now (weightlifting, diet, etc.) that has improved their performance and made the game better. Equipment has changed, and that has changed the game.

What do today's power numbers truly mean?

Singer: This is probably the most difficult question because I don't know if Bonds would have hit the same number of home runs if he had simply bulked up without the drugs. No one has ever said that steroids or other drugs enhance performance by 1 or 100 percent. I think one has to accept the performance and put a footnote in the record book.

What does one tell children?

Singer: This is the part that hurts the most. If we treat athletes or movie stars or rock singers or politicians differently because of their status, we will have a difficult time raising children to high standards of ethical behavior. If Bonds and others are disciplined in a meaningful way for breaking the rules, we can use those moments as teachable ones. If they are not, we will have problems.