Can any of us remember when steroids were not the major topic of any baseball conversation? It has been a while since the grand jury testimonies of Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi were leaked to the public, and even longer since I first wrote a column about the steroid scandal. These testimonies clearly tied some of baseball's greatest stars to BALCO, the San Francisco-based laboratory that is infamous for developing the most technologically-advanced steroids. Sadly, because the confessions were supposed to be kept private in a closed courtroom, the illegal leaking essentially provided immunity to the guilty athletes. Baseball was prohibited from taking any action and the players refused to make a public confession -- citing their pending legal issues as their reason for maintaining silence. Thus, we were left in a situation in which everyone knows the truth, but no one wants to talk about it.
In the wake of this information leakage, baseball had no choice but to take action in order to satisfy its fans and frenzied legislators. As I had hoped, the government delivered an ultimatum -- clean up the game or we'll do it for you. Before this season, commissioner Bud Selig and the head of the players union got together and created baseball's first official steroid policy. All players could be subjected to random drug testing throughout the season. A first positive test results in a 10-day suspension, a second earns a 30-day punishment, 60 days for a third test, and a year-long suspension for a fourth positive. By establishing this supposedly strict policy, baseball believed it had done its part and was making quick progress towards eliminating steroids from the game.
Unfortunately, this was far from true. In the first round of testing, over 40 minor-leaguers and a few major league players tested positive. Alex Sanchez, the first major leaguer to be suspended under the new policy had a ten-day vacation and came back to cheers from the home crowd. Baseball officials had believed that testing positive for steroids would vilify a player to the point that he would no longer be able to step to the plate without suffering from deafening boos. No egotistical athlete would be able to stand the humiliation of being associated with steroids and the publicity would be a more powerful deterrent than the suspension itself. Alex Sanchez showed that this assumption was completely unfounded. An educated fan would perhaps ridicule a proven steroid user, but the general public would not.
Moreover, the player's union refused to place amphetamines on the list of banned substances in the steroid policy. I suppose that the fact that there have been multiple deaths in sports, including baseball, directly related to the abuse of amphetamines wasn't deemed important by baseball's administrators. Amphetamines are generally considered to be as dangerous as steroids and are banned in many international sports leagues as well as the Olympics. Until baseball creates an all-inclusive steroid ban, clever athletes and their even cleverer doctors will continue to find loop holes that allow the players to continue to take performance enhancing drugs. Just this past week, the commission proposed a revision to the steroid policy. A first offense would be rewarded with a 50-day suspension, a second with a 100-day suspension, and a third positive would merit a lifetime ban. Acknowledging that the court of public opinion could not police the athletes, Bud Selig proposed a much stiffer penalty that could have the potential to serve as a major deterrent. In a league with an average salary of $2.6 million, testing positive even for a first offense could mean a million-dollar mistake. If the players union accepted this proposal, baseball would actually be taking a step in the right direction, not just pretending to.
Sadly, however, I fear that Donald Fehr and the player's union will reject Selig's revised policy. The fact of the matter is that as much as baseball players like to rant and rave about how they want the game to be clean, they really don't. Exciting games, 450-foot homeruns and gaudy statistics generate revenue and allow players to continue to demand even more enormous salaries. Most players could care less about what they put into their bodies -- they plan to retire at 40 with tens of millions of dollars and deal with the consequences later in life. More importantly, younger players see the spectacular bodies and success that the major leaguers have obtained through steroids and decide to test them out themselves.
I applaud Bud Selig for proposing a significantly more strict steroid policy, but no real progress will ever be made until the athletes decide for themselves that they actually want steroids out of the game.
