by CHRIS LYNCH , American Digest Sports Editor
THERE IS NO DENYING THAT STEROIDS are the hot topic in baseball. You have the Senate investigative committee subpoenaeing players, you have Jose Canseco's book and you have the twin bill of Barry Bonds chasing Hank Aaron's home run record while simultaneously trying to deflect fallout from the BALCO investigation.
Now comes stories of Mark McGwire using steroids. Stories of McGwire using steroids are nothing new, but now it seems the stories have moved beyond rumor and speculation to verifiable facts (according to the NY Daily News).
The stories are also conveniently meshing together. The guy at the center of "Operation Equine" which is supposedly providing the proof that McGwire used steroids also claims to have been Jose Canseco's steroids "guru":
"On a scale of one to 10, he [Canseco] was a four. When I left, he was an eight," [Curtis] Wenzlaff says. He adds that they haven't spoken in years. "That would square with what Wenzlaff told us," [FBI agent Greg] Stejskal told the News last month. "He was sort of Canseco's guru."The problem here is that the mesh is woven from a tangled web of denials, faulty memories and misdirection -- all overlaying the facts.
Jose Canseco 'doesn't recall' Wenzlaff even though Wenzlaff had his telephone numbers and pager number in his address book at the time of Wentzlaff's arrest (not to mention the FBI having a taped conversation between the two discussing steroids procurement). Of course this may have to do with the fact that in his book Jose portrays himself as a self-educated guru on steroids who was an 11 not an 8 on the scale of steroid use expertise. If Wenzlaff was his "guru" then that image falls apart.
Mark McGwire has no comment - on anything.
Barry Bonds wants to redirect questions on steroids to the fact that according to him people want to bring Bonds down because he's black (note to Barry - people don't like you because you are a jackass). Barry would have you believe that if he did use steroids it was by accident and the fact that Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield wanted to use Bonds' "training techniques" and are now also in the web of steroids users is purely coincidental.
If you look at the situation dispassionately you would find that everyone agrees that Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti and Jason Giambi all used steroids, all won Most Valuable Player awards and all were rewarded with multimillion dollar contracts.
Giambi will be getting $84 million from the Yankees over the next few years. Barry Bonds will make $18 million this year alone. Is it any wonder that players would take the risks involved to take steroids? The rewards seem to far outweigh the risks.
What are the risks? Besides having a scarlet letter "S" in the public mind are there any long term health risks for the players? That is a question that is still open to debate. Most of the "bad" stuff associated with steroid use such as depression, suicide and cancer have been mostly anecdotal to this point. There is no scientific study that answers the question conclusively.
In 2003 Outside Magazine featured an article about a "regular" guy who took steroids under a doctor's supervision for months and the changes the guy underwent were remarkable. [See Drug Test] The guy became stronger with more stamina, more sex drive and he even was able to stop wearing contacts. At the end of the article I wanted to start taking steroids.
Is it any wonder that players are willing to make a Faustian deal and use steroids (Faustian - after Gerry Faust who sold his soul to coach at Notre Dame).
Are steroids that much different from any of the other medical advances in sports? A player can have Tommy John surgery but they can't take steroids which may have allowed a muscle growth and recovery time, and that may have prevented the need for the surgery in the first place? Players can have laser surgery on their eyes to improve their vision (and a big part of baseball is seeing the ball), but they can't take a substance like steroids where one of the known side benefits is improved vision?
This brings me to the Senate committee and the subpoenas. I have read many times about the different players being subpoenaed but not once about any medical experts being subpoenaed. What will Curt Schilling be able to bring to the table besides a known friendship with Senator John McCain and a known rooting interest for George W. Bush? Will he testify on the differences between pitching to a juiced player vs. a non-juiced player? Does anyone expect a player to implicate himself? To name names? Are you now or have you ever been a member of the steroids using crowd? Are you a steroids fellow traveler?
This is all just theater and it is high time to put the theater away and bring out the science.
C'mon man, get real. All these steroid users need to be banned from baseball for life and all their records expunged. They cheated and encouraged millions of other athletes to cheat by their example. If baseball doesn't purge itself and restore some integrity to the game, it will be a joke.
Yes, it will still probably pay (sports fans are idiots), but in terms of national reverence, nostalgia, or affection it will mean nothing but a pile of crap.
Thanks MLB and Commissioner coward. Would that we had that guy from Yale who banned Rose. Or the guy who banned Shoeless Joe.
Posted by: mark butterworth at March 13, 2005 07:58 PMHow can you ban someone for doing something that wasn't against the rules or the law at the time? Also - why punish just the players when managers, GMs and owners all knew what was going on and turned a blind eye?
Giamatti probably wouldn't be able to attend games today because he was a nicotine addict who smoked like a chimney (all the parks are non-smoking today). Judge Landis was a racist and he'd probably try to ban all the black players just on principle.
Non sequiters, Chris, about the former commissioners.
Check the by laws and rule book. Steroids use is illegal as far as I know in most states, and cheating under any conditions in baseball is verboten. Go ahead and punish anyone you like, but those that stuck needles in their butts are cheaters and liars.
Parents raise their kids bad all the time and look the other way at their misbehavior, but its the kids who go to jail when they do the crime. That's life. Punish the players who did it. They destroyed the integrity of the game, not the people who looked the other way. Blame the criminal, not the complacent and enabling.
Posted by: mark butterworth at March 14, 2005 12:26 PMI'm with you, Chris, let's hear from doctors, scientists and researchers about these compounds. How do they work? What are the health risks (if any), long term and short term?
The fact of the matter is that modern players understand sports medicine and baseball physics better than their predecessors. For that they are being taken to the wood shed.
Let's address the physics part first. Back in the old days it was beleived that power hitters should use heavy bats in order to generate power. More mass (a bigger bat) meant more power. It is now widely known that faster bat speed is the key to generating power. This was an unknown concept to players until just the last 20-25 years or so. Today's players use bats much lighter than the sluggers of old in order to generate more bat speed. It makes one wonder how many more homeruns Ruth, Aaron, Mantle, Mays, etc. would have hit if they had used lighter bats like today's sluggers.
This change in understanding toward bat speed has led to players muscling up in order to generate more bat speed and hence more power. If players of old had known this, they would have likely been muscling up too. Ironically, just a few decades ago, having big muscles was considered bad because it supposedly hampered a player's swing. How many more homeruns would Ruth or Aaron have hit if they'd really focused on muscle conditioning like Bonds or McGwire?
Lastly, I think people have the wrong idea about how steroids work. We hear the term "juiced" when referring to steroid use. This gives the impression that steroid injections alone make big muscles. This isn't true. You still have to work the muscle to make it grow or the steroid injection is pretty much useless. Steroids repair the muscles afer a work out, making that work out and those that follow more efficient, building and growing the muscles more rapidly. Players can still get the same muscles without steroids, it just takes longer to get there and longer workouts to maintain. So is it really cheating to make your weight workouts more efficient? Not in my book.
Mark - at the time these things happened - distribution of steroids was illegal but using them was not. A distinction has to be made between getting an edge and cheating. Is laser eye surgery getting an edge or cheating in your book?
Rand - I believe people will use steroids in the future like we use Advil. That's one thing that I agree with Jose Canseco on.
Read the Outside article and tell me you wouldn't think twice about using steroids under a doctors supervision.
If anyone is interested, I'm running a survey about steroids in baseball.
You can take the survey at:
Steroids in Baseball Online Survey
And you can see real time results at:
Steroids in Baseball Online Survey Results
Thanks!
Posted by: Janet at April 7, 2005 02:04 PM