Only fans can do something about steroid issue — and they won't
Cubs manager Dusty Baker sits in the dugout before a Cactus League game, talking about the clouds of suspicion that are enveloping the major leagues entering the 2004 season.
"I know about clouds," says Baker, who was ordered by then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth to undergo mandatory drug testing after his name surfaced in testimony during the Pittsburgh drug trials involving big-leaguers in 1985.
"Whenever there's a cloud, some people look at you and you don't know what they're thinking. Sometimes the rain is more relieving than the cloud itself. Acid rain is better than the cloud."
Major League Baseball will get no such relief. Nor will any of its players.
The cloud is here to stay.
It's doubtful that any player will be implicated in the federal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Players linked to the scandal will resort to plausible denials, saying they never "knowingly" took steroids. And even the adoption of more stringent steroid testing by MLB hardly will ensure that the game is clean.
Many fans won't be quite sure what to think when Barry Bonds hits his first three homers of the season to reach 661 and surpass his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the all-time list. The same skepticism likely will surround Bonds' pursuits of Babe Ruth's 714 homers and Hank Aaron's 755, as well as future achievements by other sluggers.
From the U.S. government to commissioner Bud Selig to self-styled media vigilantes, many want a definitive resolution, a swift cleansing, a good, hard rain. Proof that a major star or two uses steroids would be the first step, providing necessary scapegoats. A solemn placing of asterisks would follow. The sport, in theory, would be saved.
Keep dreaming.
A black-and-white outcome is unlikely for an issue that contains more than its share of gray. Take Bonds, for example. The essence of his greatness is his ability to identify pitches he can hit -- he doesn't get many -- and crush them. Performance-enhancing drugs would increase his bat speed, but they wouldn't account for his superior hand-eye coordination or the sheer baseball intellect he displays in consistently outguessing pitchers.
In the end, fans will need to decide for themselves how they view the players of this generation, both hitters and pitchers alike. As I've written before, I have mental asterisks next to every slugging accomplishment of the past 10 years. Those asterisks will remain no matter how the BALCO scandal is resolved, no matter how MLB alters its steroid-testing program, if it does at all.
I don't know which players are clean and which ones aren't. Chances are, I'll never know. And I'm tired of making generational comparisons that were flawed to begin with and have become grotesquely distorted by the effects of performance-enhancing drugs. But even now, with the furor at its peak, I wonder if fans truly care.
Baker says, "it's a tough time now for baseball, it really is," noting that Cactus League crowds lacked their normal buzz. There is little evidence, however, that fans are turned off. Between 5 and 7 percent of the steroid tests conducted last season came back positive, but both the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues had booming attendance this spring. The next phase of testing is almost comically lenient, but Selig says most teams are reporting excellent regular-season ticket sales.
Aside from the misguided zealots running the players union, few would dispute that the sport needs to do a better job setting an example for youth and protecting the long-term health of its players. But even if MLB conducted year-round random testing with stricter penalties, it wouldn't be enough. Drug testing is largely a facade, and even the most vigorous programs are inadequate. Barring a high-tech breakthrough in testing, the cheaters will stay ahead of the testers, just as they have in every other sport.
"There's a learning curve," says Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor who is a leading authority on performance-enhancing drugs. "(Major leaguers) are going to get to the point where the track and field and NFL athletes are: What can I do and not get caught? How do I do that? Who do I have to employ?"
Personal chemists can recommend masking agents, altered dosing strategies and designer drugs that go undetected in tests. The top sluggers this season no doubt will point to their feats as proof that they were drug-free, reasoning that they wouldn't have risked using steroids when they could have been identified and penalized by MLB. But they should not necessarily be believed.
Short of more reliable testing, Yesalis says the only way to curb steroid use in sports is for the government to conduct a sustained crackdown, complete with involvement from various federal agencies. Those agencies, of course, have better things to do. And as Yesalis and colleague Michael Bahrke wrote recently in The New York Times, "If we do not have the willpower to turn off our television sets in protest of doping, will we have the stomach to tolerate federal arrests, prosecutions and convictions of our sports icons?"
Not a chance.
The cloud won't be removed unless fans demand it be removed, and no one should expect them to bother. Intelligent fans grasp that sports no longer reflect American ideals. Those fans just want to be entertained.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4626569/
Cubs manager Dusty Baker sits in the dugout before a Cactus League game, talking about the clouds of suspicion that are enveloping the major leagues entering the 2004 season.
"I know about clouds," says Baker, who was ordered by then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth to undergo mandatory drug testing after his name surfaced in testimony during the Pittsburgh drug trials involving big-leaguers in 1985.
"Whenever there's a cloud, some people look at you and you don't know what they're thinking. Sometimes the rain is more relieving than the cloud itself. Acid rain is better than the cloud."
Major League Baseball will get no such relief. Nor will any of its players.
The cloud is here to stay.
It's doubtful that any player will be implicated in the federal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Players linked to the scandal will resort to plausible denials, saying they never "knowingly" took steroids. And even the adoption of more stringent steroid testing by MLB hardly will ensure that the game is clean.
Many fans won't be quite sure what to think when Barry Bonds hits his first three homers of the season to reach 661 and surpass his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the all-time list. The same skepticism likely will surround Bonds' pursuits of Babe Ruth's 714 homers and Hank Aaron's 755, as well as future achievements by other sluggers.
From the U.S. government to commissioner Bud Selig to self-styled media vigilantes, many want a definitive resolution, a swift cleansing, a good, hard rain. Proof that a major star or two uses steroids would be the first step, providing necessary scapegoats. A solemn placing of asterisks would follow. The sport, in theory, would be saved.
Keep dreaming.
A black-and-white outcome is unlikely for an issue that contains more than its share of gray. Take Bonds, for example. The essence of his greatness is his ability to identify pitches he can hit -- he doesn't get many -- and crush them. Performance-enhancing drugs would increase his bat speed, but they wouldn't account for his superior hand-eye coordination or the sheer baseball intellect he displays in consistently outguessing pitchers.
In the end, fans will need to decide for themselves how they view the players of this generation, both hitters and pitchers alike. As I've written before, I have mental asterisks next to every slugging accomplishment of the past 10 years. Those asterisks will remain no matter how the BALCO scandal is resolved, no matter how MLB alters its steroid-testing program, if it does at all.
I don't know which players are clean and which ones aren't. Chances are, I'll never know. And I'm tired of making generational comparisons that were flawed to begin with and have become grotesquely distorted by the effects of performance-enhancing drugs. But even now, with the furor at its peak, I wonder if fans truly care.
Baker says, "it's a tough time now for baseball, it really is," noting that Cactus League crowds lacked their normal buzz. There is little evidence, however, that fans are turned off. Between 5 and 7 percent of the steroid tests conducted last season came back positive, but both the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues had booming attendance this spring. The next phase of testing is almost comically lenient, but Selig says most teams are reporting excellent regular-season ticket sales.
Aside from the misguided zealots running the players union, few would dispute that the sport needs to do a better job setting an example for youth and protecting the long-term health of its players. But even if MLB conducted year-round random testing with stricter penalties, it wouldn't be enough. Drug testing is largely a facade, and even the most vigorous programs are inadequate. Barring a high-tech breakthrough in testing, the cheaters will stay ahead of the testers, just as they have in every other sport.
"There's a learning curve," says Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor who is a leading authority on performance-enhancing drugs. "(Major leaguers) are going to get to the point where the track and field and NFL athletes are: What can I do and not get caught? How do I do that? Who do I have to employ?"
Personal chemists can recommend masking agents, altered dosing strategies and designer drugs that go undetected in tests. The top sluggers this season no doubt will point to their feats as proof that they were drug-free, reasoning that they wouldn't have risked using steroids when they could have been identified and penalized by MLB. But they should not necessarily be believed.
Short of more reliable testing, Yesalis says the only way to curb steroid use in sports is for the government to conduct a sustained crackdown, complete with involvement from various federal agencies. Those agencies, of course, have better things to do. And as Yesalis and colleague Michael Bahrke wrote recently in The New York Times, "If we do not have the willpower to turn off our television sets in protest of doping, will we have the stomach to tolerate federal arrests, prosecutions and convictions of our sports icons?"
Not a chance.
The cloud won't be removed unless fans demand it be removed, and no one should expect them to bother. Intelligent fans grasp that sports no longer reflect American ideals. Those fans just want to be entertained.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4626569/
