by Matt Barr

More steroids (?)

In a fine piece in the Washington Times (link via Hit & Run), Patrick Hruby makes several very important (and currently blasphemous) points.

"Testing doesn't work":

"If you have an IQ above room temperature, you shouldn't be very confident in the ability of drug testing to catch anybody," said Dr. Charles Yesalis, a Penn State University epidemiologist and an expert on drugs in sports. "The Tour de France riders are tested up the wazoo, and guess who caught them [using EPO in 1998]? French border police. Chemists had nothing to do with it."

"Integrity is relative": "Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs without facing a single black pitcher. No asterisk for him."

"Safety first?" We don't know enough about the long-term health effects of steroid use in a man's prime sports-playing years, Lyle Alzado notwithstanding; and anyway, isn't a viable solution to that to have steroids administered under the care of a doctor?

"Fans don't care": "Drug rumors didn't dull the excitement surrounding Bonds' 73-home run season. Nor did they prevent Marion Jones from becoming the darling of the Sydney Games."

But he glosses over the most potent (IMO) point, which is that there is a substantial number of MLB players who do not want to dope up to play. Sixteen of the Chicago White Sox once voted to decline to take their mandatory steroid test, because declining to take the test would result in their tests falling into the "positive" column for purposes of a five percent threshold in the collective bargaining agreement that would mean stricter testing leaguewide. They wanted to root out the cheaters.

Hruby says "In theory, nonusers should be furious with their juiced-up peers. The cheaters are getting over. Yet track athletes aren't banding together to out their dirty counterparts; given a chance to institute steroid testing, baseball players chose a lax, toothless system." That's a bit disingenuous; the baseball players' union chose a "lax, toothless system." That's because it caters to its highest-paid members, who are likely to be among the highest paid because they juice up.

Baseball players should not be forced to use steroids to play on a level playing field with those that do (and possibly to keep their jobs), as long as, as Hruby concedes, we don't know what the long-term health effects of steroid use are.

Hruby concludes:

This is a performance-enhanced age, an era of Viagra-popping, Botox-shooting bliss. Wellness is the standard; better than well is the goal. Genetic therapy promises a brave new world of medical breakthroughs. New doping techniques, too.

Drugs are easily banned. Human nature? Not so much.

It's a false conclusion; the fact that people will always cheat does not mean they shouldn't be punished, or that rules shouldn't be made and enforced. (People will always kill other people, too. It's human nature. Should that be made legal?)

In the end, it shouldn't be fans, owners, the commentariat, or certainly sportswriters who decide steroids' place in baseball, it should be the players. If a substantial number choose to compete without their aid, they should be allowed to do so against others who do, too.

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