One year ago, Rep. John Sweeney, a New York Republican, said that players "involved in illegal substances" should have an asterisk placed next to their names. Last week's Congressional hearing on major league baseball substance abuse has underscored the problem Sweeney was talking about.
My guess is that Sweeney is envisioning a lot of asterisks in the baseball history books. But I bet he'd be surprised to know that his logic would place one of those asterisks next to Babe Ruth's name.
Reason: Ruth, during his heyday, was an illegal substance abuser. His indulgences were pretty much common knowledge at the time. For example, here's an excerpt from an article in Modern Drunkard Magazine:
[Ruth] was a first-class rummy—built like a keg and twice as hard. The Bambino, still considered by many to be the best to ever have stepped onto a baseball field, drank like five backsliding Baptists. If his teammates are to be believed, he was capable of draining a bathtub full of beer and two bottles of rye in a single sitting.
And here's the kicker: Ruth's peak performance years happened while the Volstead Act was the law of the land.
Now I'm wondering how many others besides Babe Ruth are facing asterisks: Rogers Hornsby? Jimmie Foxx? Lefty Grove? Holy Toledo, that already-thick baseball statistics book is going to get a lot thicker if Mr. Sweeney has his way.
