COLUMBUS, Ohio.  Twelve year-old Robbie Bennett has been a star for every baseball team he's ever been on, from T-ball to "Dad Pitch" to Little League.  A pitcher, Robbie's walls are plastered with posters of Roger Clemens in the uniforms of the four major league clubs the seven-time Cy Young Award winner has played for.  "He was my hero," Robbie sniffles.  "Now I think he's a stupid Froot Loop," he says as he throws himself on his bed and sobs into his pillow.



Roger Clemens

The reason for Robbie's tears is the revelation by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell that Clemens received shots of anabolic steroids in the buttocks to maintain his overpowering physique and become perhaps the greatest starting pitcher in baseball history. 

 

"I thought I could stay fat like Clemens just by eating Twinkies and French fries," Robbie says when he is asked why he's crying.  "Now I find out I have to get shots in the butt."



Eric Gagne

For young Timmy Merlino, the announcement that his idol Eric Gagne had signed with the Milwaukee Brewers was the best news he'd heard in a long time.  "He was the first autograph I ever got," Timmy says as he looks down at a plastic-wrapped baseball card of Gagne while with the Dodgers that bears the fireballing right-hander's signature.



But that trophy is tarnished now that it has been revealed Gagne took human growth hormone.  "It appears," said Mitchell at yesterday's press conference, "that Eric Gagne's record-breaking string of blown saves in the summer of 2007 was fueled by illegal drugs."



George Mitchell

Young fans are baseball's future, and major league executives expressed fear that yesterday's revelations could depress attendance for years to come.  "Once kids hear about the drugs, they'll want to stay home and smoke dope instead of coming out to the games," predicted Bob Hohler, Director of Baseball Operations for the Houston Astros.  "Unless they're Cubs fans, in which case they'll come out to the park and get high."



Greater than any economic effect is the loss of innocence, as children begin to see players such as Josias Manzanillo, Kent Mercker and Steve Woodward, all former members of the Boston Red Sox, as something less than the immortals they were considered in their playing days.  "You mean to tell me," says Bobby Hammond of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, "that I could take performance-enhancing drugs for years and still suck?"

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman