How Many Strikes Before You're Out: Baseball, Drugs And Illegal Immigration
By Robert Klein Engler (12/09/04)
Baseball has often been described as the all-American sport. Major league baseball may be just that. With so many foreign born players, and with a drug problem, it may truly represent the America of the 21st century. Sadly, major league baseball is not what it was 50 years ago. The same can be said for America, today.
Hal Bodley, a reporter for “USA Today” (Dec. 6, 2004) writes, "Major-league baseball players are under pressure from Sen. John McCain and others to adopt more-stringent testing for steroids as their union's executive board opens a week of meetings...in Phoenix."
Bodley adds, "If there is no resolution, Congress may provide one, McCain warned. His comments came after revelations from federal grand jury testimony reported last week in the “San Francisco Chronicle” that New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi and San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds used illegal steroids. McCain went on to warn, 'The important aspect of this issue is that high school kids all over America believe that this is the only way they can make it...'"
Of course, everyone knows that baseball players are not the only Americans who use illegal drugs. We also know that many of the illegal drugs used by Americans come to the U. S. from Mexico. Some estimates put the amount of money going south of the border for illegal drugs to be between 10 and 30 billion dollars a year. Writing for “Frontline,” Oriana Zill and Lowell Bergman claim that, "For Mexican traffickers along the Southwest border, the money is literally driven across the border in bulk amounts and then deposited into Mexican banks."
Drug use is only a part of major league baseball's problems. Major and minor league baseball also has an immigration problem. The book “Stealing Lives” by David P. Fidler and Arturo J. Marcano Guevara documents this. For example, during the 2002 season, about 26 percent of major league players were born outside the United States. At the beginning of the 2002 season, almost 50 percent of players signed to minor league contracts were born outside the U. S. These statistics have not changed much in 2004. The face of major and minor league baseball no longer looks like the face of traditional America.
Ron Rapoport, “Chicago Sun-Times” sports columnist and sports commentator for National Public Radio writes in his review: "Stealing Lives is the flip side of the Latin American Dream, a disturbing and eye-opening account of how major-league baseball exploits and degrades young players in other lands who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families."
Most baseball players from Latin countries come to the U. S. legally, but many other immigrants from south of our border do not. According to “Time” writers Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, in a single day, more than 4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful gateway into the U. S., the border between Arizona and Mexico.
Some estimate 3 million will take this walk in 2004. That's enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year (WorldNetDaily.com, September 12, 2004). Ironically, Arizona is the very state that Senator McCain represents. Maybe he is too busy watching baseball games to notice this flood of illegal immigrants.
World Net Daily.com goes on to report that, "After these illegals enter the U. S., many will obtain phony identification papers, including bogus Social Security numbers, to conceal their true identities and mask their unlawful presence. America fails to protect itself as millions of illegal aliens pour across the U. S.--Mexican border this year, many from countries hostile to America."
How more ironic it is that Senator McCain wants to pass legislation that prevents steroid use in baseball because it sets a bad example for our youth, while at the same time he does little to stop illegal immigrants and drugs coming to the U. S. Surely drug dealers and illegal immigrants break our laws and set a worse example for young people than do a few athletes on steroids.
With 4,000 illegal immigrants coming to the U. S. each day, and billions of dollars of drug money going out of the country to Mexico, we have to admit that our immigration and border problems are now also on steroids. Let's remind our Senators that they'd better fix the border before they fix baseball.
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