Law sees very little order in baseball

It's a dang shame what's happened to Major League Baseball, Vern Law will tell you. The steroids. The obscene contracts. The tell-all books. Jose Canseco. Barry Bonds. The cheating. The team-hopping by free agents.

This is all troubling for a man like Law, who was the antithesis of all the above in his day.

He wouldn't even take aspirin during his 16-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1950-66). He didn't even use ice on his pitching arm after a game. And this was a pitcher who pitched every fourth day and threw in the bullpen on off days. This was before they had specialty pitchers. He was the starter, middle reliever and closer all in one. He threw 18 complete games in one season.

Law didn't take steroids and lift weights in the offseason; instead, he hefted 100-pound milk cans on the family dairy farm as an offseason job.

Players had to work in the offseason in those days. He made only $5,000 annually the first few years of his career. Then he got a raise to $15,000. Law once figured that Randy Johnson makes more money in three innings than he did in his entire career. Unlike Johnson and others in today's game, Law didn't sell himself to the highest bidder. He played for the same team for 16 years.

"I played during the golden age of baseball," he says.

It's painful for him and his old teammates to watch what's happened to baseball. When they reunite at card shows or fantasy camps, it's a favorite topic of conversation, especially the drug problem. It was bad enough when .240 hitters started receiving multi

million-dollar contracts; now players are taking human growth hormone and steroids with relative impunity.

Law has written e-mails and made face-to-face pleas to Commissioner Bud Selig to face the drug problem. The old-timers have watched the next generation make a shambles of baseball's sacred record book. They feel wronged when records set by players of their generation are broken by steroid freaks. It's cheating.

"It's a dang shame," says Law, who won the Cy Young Award in 1960 after posting a 20-9 record and winning two games in the Pirates' victorious World Series run.

"Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were just great athletes," he continues. "They didn't take steroids to enhance their ability. Those people they know have taken them and set records, they should put asterisks by their records. You can't compare Bonds' record against Aaron's. All former players are upset that these players have done these things. Baseball has not faced up to the facts (about drug use)."