Captain America Is to Blame for the Steroid Era in Baseball

Captain America: American hero or American cheater?

Over the last few years, many Americans have gone on record in the print and video media decrying, bemoaning, expressing dismay and general think-of-the-children!-distraughtoisity (totally a real word) over the unholy fact of steroid use in baseball. More ink than could fill the ink sacs of a thousand krakens has been spilt on the pulped, bleached, and flattened remains of millions of oxygen-exhaling trees on the subject of Barry Bonds’s colossal head, Mark McGwire’s Virginia Ham forearms, and, to a lesser extent, whatever exactly it was that steroids allowed Alex Sánchez to accomplish.

But who is to blame for all the outrage, for the shattered dreams, for every angel that died every time José Canseco put one in the stands? Was it evil Canadian sprinting criminal mastermind and Elizabethan playwright name-stealer Ben Johnson? Was it Major League Baseball Commissioner’s Office that looked the other way while each moonshot brought back more fans alienated by the fact that there was no World Series in 1994, which directly led to a Republican-dominated Congress that inflicted Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay on America? Was it the evil Communist hippie San Francisco liberal chemists at BALCO Labs that are to blame for all of this?

I say no, for I have found the original juicer, and he does not have a twin brother named Ozzie.

That is, unless CAPTAIN AMERICA has a twin brother named Ozzie! Captain America, j’accuse!

Most people look at Captain America and see a symbol of democracy and freedom, a fighter for truth, justice, and the American way, sort of like Superman, but not an illegal alien. And yet what do we know about Captain America? All we know is that one day the Nazis were kicking our asses, and the next there was the strappin’ Cap’n, boomerangin’ shield strapped to one arm, kicking the ass of the Red Skull, which, considering the condition of said villain’s face, must have been one raw, red, inflamed ass indeed.

But where did Captain America come from? What minor Nazi ass did he kick before going toe to toe with the Red Skull in the bigs? Do we even know of him kicking any Spanish or Italian fascist ass? No indeed. Who is this masked man, and where did he come from, and how is he still jumping out of planes and kicking Nazi ass while nearing the age of 90?

Steroids, true believers.

Recently declassified documents reveal that Captain America started life as scrawny Steve Rogers, a scrawny lad who couldn’t even pass an Army physical and wanted to be an artist. Yet a few short weeks later, Steve Rogers stood tall, muscular, and square-jawed, and all of a sudden there he is punching Hitler in his stupid face. It turns out that Rogers was juicing the entire time, although he denies that he knew what was going on.

Above: A scrawny Steve Rogers juices for the first time. Right: Anabolically-enhanced Captain America.

“I mean, it was the government doctors that ran the program,” said Rogers in a recent interview. “They kept on giving me these shots, and I kept asking, you know, ‘Hey, what’s in this so-called ‘Super-Soldier Serum?’ And they would always say that it was all natural, that it was mostly vitamin B-12 and flaxseed oil. Honestly, I just thought that that, combined with my new diet and exercise regimen, were what made all the difference.”

“But I’m not here to talk about the past,” added Rogers, tears streaming down his 90 year old yet firm and muscular cheeks.

Though America was only too happy to turn a blind eye to any improprieties given Rogers’s role in helping to turn around the war effort, the warning signs were there for all to see.

Captain America’s sidekick, Bucky Barnes, remembers being shocked when Roger’s would shed the uniform.

“He had all this acne on his back. And you couldn’t even see his balls,” recalls Barnes.

Also raising eyebrows was the fact that sometime at the end of World War II, Rogers’s plane was shot down over the northern Atlantic Ocean. He survived the fiery crash and was frozen in a block of ice for well over a decade, after which he was thawed out and resumed all his normal activities.

“Yeah, you’re not supposed to be able to do that,” said every scientist ever.

With cheaters like Captain America held forth as positive role models, it is no wonder baseball is in its current predicament, and when confronted with the truth, baseball’s abusers of performance-enhancing substances admit to being duped.

“I know I said that I started using HGH [human growth hormone] because my dentist told me I had a pituitary gland disorder, but deep down inside I always knew that was just an excuse,” said recently-outed HGH user Paul Byrd, a soft-tossing journeyman pitcher, late of the Cleveland Indians. “I guess that what I really wanted to do was to strike out Hitler. Strike him out right on his stupid Nazi face.”

Moreover, Captain America's vanquished enemies are now crying foul.

"It really cheapens all that we went through at the time," said the Red Skull, now a retired Bavarian florist. "I mean, me and Hitler just assumed that we were all playing on a level playing field, and now to find this out. I say Captain America's records be erased. Also we won World War II. DEUTSCHLAND!"

Update: Apparently Captain America has been killed. Major League Baseball has not indicated whether it will be following that game plan for its own substance abusers.