Fallout from Shane Monahan’s revelations

Almost immediately after last week’s revelations by Shane Monahan, a former Mariner minor leaguer, that the “clubhouse culture” of the Seattle Mariners in the late 1990s introduced him to steroids, his contentions were refuted. Both Raul Ibanez and Jaimie Moyer, who spent much more time in the M’s clubhouse than Monahan’s 78 big-league games, denied seeing steroid use in the M’s clubhouse. Both players said that in their ten years’ experience with the club, nothing that fit Monahan’s description of rampant steroid use occurred.

However, considering the fact that admitted steroid users David Segui, Glenallen Hill, Ryan Franklin, and Todd Williams were playing on Mariners clubs that overlapped with Monahan’s short stint with the club, to state that there was absolutely no steroid use going on in the M’s clubhouse would be disingenuous at best. Even if it was simply a sub-culture of the era’s “clubhouse culture” in Seattle, were the users simply that proficient at keeping their activities out of the sight of Ibanez, Moyer, and other Seattle stars?

In 1999, Jay Buhner dragged his 34-year old body onto the field and feebly hit .224, just two years removed from his third consecutive 40-home run season. Did the dramatic collapse of his career mirror a deteriorating physical collapse brought about by negative influences of the M’s “clubhouse culture?” Are we to just assume that the incredible numbers during that period put up by Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., and Randy Johnson were absolutely untainted? (Let’s not forget Griffey’s fragile physical condition ever since he was traded by the M’s to the Reds, exchanging clubhouse cultures for two different franchises.) And just how much did Lou Pinella know?

Larry Larue’s latest column for the News Tribune touches on the air of suspicion and skepticism that we now have to view the recent history of our beloved Mariners. Larue’s column denotes an underlying theme of tragedy, both for Monahan as well as for the entire state of baseball as it deals with it’s steroid-saturated past. Larue points out that Monahan may have come forward with his revelations from a place of rage, angry that he was marginalized as a player and never given a fair chance, thus being forced to ‘performance enhancing’ substances which, it should be pointed out, never really enhanced his performance. Larue describes the following scene:

When the Mariners sent him back to the minor leagues, another writer and I found Monahan in the dugout alone, cursing Lou Piniella and a few teammates. He was, he said, better than some of the players still on the roster.

But rather than this anger discrediting Monahan, Larue claims that Monahan’s anger gives credence to his allegations. He did what he felt was implicitly expected of him, yet still wasn’t able to make more than $170,000 in a game that makes multi-millionaires out of part-time infielders. And he did this at the same time that Larue describes Segui walking around the M’s clubhouse toting his own personal black medical bag, with nobody really knowing for sure what the contents were.

Monahan’s case is just one of thousands that occurred in an around baseball clubhouses over the past couple decades. (Let’s not forget that this upcoming season marks the 20th anniversary of Jose Canseco’s 40-40 season. As memorable as that feat was, now Canseco is perhaps best known as the epitome as well as whistle-blower of steroid use in major league baseball.) Monahan presents a microcosm of what was occurring under the festering scab of steroid use in baseball, a scab that the Mitchell Report tore right off for the world to see. As much hoopla should be made over Roger Clemens “did he or didn’t he” saga, the fact reamins that steroid use was probably more proliferated by the marginal players like Monahan, loking for any extra edge to add another ‘0′ to that $170,000 salary.