By Ray Balogh
InkFreeNews

Former U.S. Representative and longtime baseball historian Mark Souder played a key role in the Congressional hearings on the use of steroids in baseball. Photo provided.

Editor’s Note: For the next few days, sports fans will be treated to the annual Fall Classic, this year between the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of some baseball lovers, the Astros are still playing under the cloud of notoriety they acquired from their 2019 sign-stealing scandal.

Former U.S. Representative Mark Souder filled a pivotal role in investigating the use of steroids in Major League Baseball during the 2015 Congressional hearings. Souder is also an avid student of the national pastime and has given several presentations at Cooperstown and other SABR-sponsored gatherings.

FORT WAYNE — Mark Souder knows how to cheat at baseball.

More accurately, he knows how others cheat at baseball.

Plying his tandem lifelong hobbies of “politics and sports, especially baseball,” he joined the Society of American Baseball Researchers “many years” ago and played a pivotal role in the 2005 Congressional steroid hearings during his tenure as a U.S. Representative from 1995 to 2010.

An avid devotee of baseball history, Souder has published several books and numerous articles on the subject, has presented to the 19th Century SABR baseball symposium in Cooperstown “multiple times” and has given a George Mather Lecture Series presentation at the History Center in Fort Wayne about the game’s professional origins.

According to Souder, the Grand Old Game and big city politics have always been joined at the hip. “Basically organized baseball was created by politicians in Washington and New York, as well as Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago and all the earliest cities way back in the 19th century.”

Also an inseparable element of the national pastime: cheating. “Cheating began when baseball began. It is that simple,” he said. “Betting was an original part of the game. And when there is a motive to win, people try to cut corners.”

Professional baseball began in 1871 and on-field play was conducted in accordance with a consensus of gentlemanly and upright conduct. At least, it was supposed to. “An honor code didn’t work at all,” said Souder. So umpires were brought in to ensure the game was conducted according to Hoyle. Umpires, however, “are also susceptible to bribes.”

Souder recounted the shady but profitable antics of the Troy Haymakers, so called because “they’d visit a town chewing some hay in their mouths, pretending not to be very good. They’d lose, and then place even bigger bets with locals for the second game. They would make out like bandits, which they were.”

Drug issues were relative latecomers in vitiating America’s national pastime. “Steroids were not the problem, but everything else was,” said Souder.

“They doctored the baseballs; changed baselines; tripped runners; skipped bases when umpires weren’t looking; spiked opponents, trying to force them to leave the game with injuries; and did every other illegal thing they could think of.”

The signal disgrace of early 20th century baseball was the Black Sox Scandal, when eight players from the Chicago White Sox were banned from baseball for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series for an anticipated payoff by gamblers.

The players’ iniquitous behavior subsided somewhat when women won the right to vote in 1920 and became more involved in political life, which included attending baseball games.

Souder said, “It is not absolutely clear when steroids first began to be used. Ken Caminiti was the first prominent player to raise warning flags on steroid abuse after he won the 1996 MVP award.” Others issued warnings “but almost no one listened.”

Hence the need for the Congressional hearings, which captured national attention. “We began with some parents who lost their sons to steroid and drug abuse.”

“Steroids is likely largely a thing of the past,” said Souder, but new technologically-enabled challenges are on the horizon, such as “athletes trying to modify genes to gain advantages.”

“Baseball, like everything else, must be internally regulated and if they do not they are subject to potential regulation. Hopefully, the need to intervene will be rare,” Souder concluded.

Souder was born in Fort Wayne and grew up in Grabill, helping with the namesake family business that operated from 1907 until it was sold this year.

He was an undergraduate at Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and spent two years in grad school at Notre Dame. In December 1984 he became Republican staff director for the House select committee on children, youth & families, and served as Senator Dan Coats’s deputy chief of staff from 1989 to early 1993.

Souder won his bid for Congress, defeating incumbent Jill Long in 1994. He currently spends much of his time on continuing SABR research. He has played fantasy baseball since 1985 and has collected both political and baseball memorabilia since childhood.

He and Diane (nee Zimmer) were married in Bremen in 1974. Diane earned a degree in occupational therapy from the Indiana University medical school and headed the OT program at the Logan School across from Notre Dame while Souder was attending grad school at Notre Dame.

The Souders have three grown children: daughter Brooke, an elementary school teacher for Southwest Allen schools; elder son Nathan, a National Park Service employee and superintendent of the Colorado National Monument in Grand Junction; and younger son Zach, a graduate of Hillsdale College and Trine University who serves as a federal investigations agent for Homeland Security.