Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
scott@scottlongonline.com
As most of you know, I'm preparing to publish my second book. "The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems." I'll be doing a lot of talking about it in coming months, keeping you updated on the timeline and following the issues it raises. Like you, steroids is becoming an issue that is overplayed, but it's too important to ignore. I hope you'll stick with me on this as I try to keep the focus of this issue on facts.
This has been the longest winter. From the last out of the Red Sox win, baseball quickly turned its head away and began to quickly be drawn once again away from the beauty and success of the game and towards the dark subject of steroids. Since the heights of the 1998 McGwire – Sosa lovefest that some credit with reviving interest in baseball, there is always a dark cloud of drug abuse hanging above the hangdog visage of Commissioner Bud Selig.
Selig is not just hounded by the media voices, pointing fingers without the benefit of fact and screeching with self-important ignorance. Selig’s anabolic nightmare comes from his newest team’s town, Washington. Congress is once again opening a pandora’s box of steroids and emotion on baseball, something it has done time and again. The recently signed drug policy came about in large part because of a Damoclean threat by Senator John McCain, a Diamondbacks season ticket holder.
The latest Congressional reality television program will star Jose Canseco. Fresh from his media tour to promote his book, “Juiced,” Canseco is perfectly willing to continue pointing the same fingers he says he used to inject himself and others. It remains a battle of hearsay, with denials of Canseco’s charges serving as publicity. Canseco has been heard and the sound that was loudest was the ringing of the cash register. Canseco hints that he has more evidence, but to date, he’s done nothing more than wink and smile at the truth.
The real ‘star’ of the upcoming hearings figures to be Donald Hooton, head of the Taylor Hooton Foundation. After Texas schoolboy Taylor Hooton committed suicide in July 2003, Hooton formed the foundation in his sons name to combat steroid abuse. Hooton claims that he has research that shows anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are a leading cause of teenage suicide. His foundation’s web site has successfully generated quite a bit of publicity, in forums as varied as “60 Minutes” and gyms across football-mad Texas.
Hooton will likely give his stump speech, tears in his eyes as he holds up a picture of his lost son. The tears are fresh and the emotion raw; Hooton’s son has only been gone less than nine months. How then has Hooton gone from a consumer electronics executive to a steroids expert? The answer is, he hasn’t. He stands on emotional appeals, using charts and graphs from sources as varied as steroid defense attorney Rick Collins’ Legal Muscle and the oft-quoted 1999 Mayo Clinic survey that said between five and eleven percent of high school boys had tried steroids.
The fact is that steroids are one of the most unresearched substances. Any attempt to do human trials recalls the worst of Mengele or his sports counterpart, Manfred Hoppner, the Dr. Frankenstein of the East German sports machine. There are ways of checking the effects, however, but logic seldom stands against the emotional appeal of a dead child.
I doubt that anyone will mention that Propecia, an anti-baldness drug, functions much the same as many popular steroids, sharing side effects and chemical function. Propecia is used by millions and declared safe in the FDA’s clinical trial process. No one will talk about the 1997 study that gives us the best model for the medically controlled use of steroids. Van Kesteren and Asscheman detailed the long-term administration of androgenic agents to 300 female-to-male transsexuals. This most extreme surgery and the concurrent hormone therapy surprisingly showed no serious morbidity in any of the cases. In fact, their opposite counterparts treated with estrogen showed a far higher incidence of problems.
The congressional committee will look for star power in Canseco, Mark McGwire, and Frank Thomas, as well as several general managers and executives. They will be joined at the microphone by drug abuse counselors, psychiatrists, and the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Gary Wadler. Wadler’s famous quote that baseball’s new drug policy ‘does not go far enough’ will certainly get a second airing. Wadler has charged that baseball’s policy was a ruse to remove Congressional pressure. It doesn’t appear that the ruse, if that is in fact the case, worked.
We’ll see sound bites of athletes denying their use of steroids, perhaps falling back on their Fifth Amendment rights. We’ll see the tears of the mothers of two children, blaming demon steroid for the loss of their great baseball hopes. We’ll see the now-tired posturing of Congress, treating baseball as something more than sport and seeking the obeisance of its Lords. We’ll see more pointing of fingers, more prepared statements, and more legalistic smokescreens, the typical fare of any televised hearing.
What we won’t see is fact. In a town that worships the fair and the balanced, we might just see a Washington first: the no-sided discussion.
For more detailed scientific information on this topic, I highly recommend reading John Williams' series, The Demonization of Anabolic Steroids
It then becomes incumbant upon those he claims he helped inject to clarify their position. Do it under oath.
As to propecia and the study you mentioned involving transexuals, those are red herrings. In both cases, those drugs are administered through consultation with a physician. With athletes, there's no such safeguards. No one is arguing that steroids should be illegal if used in connection with a legitimate medical purpose. We are arguing that they should not be used as a performance enhancer in sports and without safeguards.
It's funny how those who criticize Congress's investigation of baseball as overblown talk about baseball "as just sport." Well, sport is a multi-billion dollar industry. Baseball has deep roots in American culture, and indeed, American culture is obsessed with sport. Accordingly, Congress is doing more than merely "posturing" in doing its constitutional duty to regulate interstate commerce.
Canseco has monetary incentive to lie. Perjury? How is someone going to prove they didn't use? They can't so there's no risk to Canseco. If you want to get the facts, you have a grand jury do it, not make a public circus.
Maybe I missed your point about Propecia and the transexuals. I think you are trying to steal a base in your argument by implying that opponents of steroid use are denying that they have legitimate uses. If that wasn't your point in citing those examples, what was it?
Of course Canseco has an incentive to lie. But I believe he's telling the truth to a certain degree. I want McGwire and Sosa up there, sweating. If they lie and deny their use, then I predict we'll see records come to light that show they used.
You have articulated in the past the problem I have with steroids testing as imagined by baseball: "you wanted steroids testing, you got it, now the results are all that count." There's the BS. It's time for an accounting of the past, and the hearings are a useful first step.
The Fan With Subpoena Power, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25311-2005Mar10.html
(I could not figure out whether links post on this site)
That story describes Congress's motivation here -- grab some headlines and talk about this ostensible children's health issue, all while blowing off truly important public health issues!
One point I haven't seen discussed is why Davis's Governmental Reform Committee has jurisdiction over this matter. It is the successor to the Government Operations Committee, the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, and the Committee on the District of Columbia -- it's supposed to pay attention to the operations of the federal government and the District of Columbia, not on how outside entities like baseball handle their affairs.
Davis's letter to Stan Brand (counsel to MLB for the investigation and, incidentally, Vice President of Minor League Baseball) yesterday says that since the Davis committee oversees the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, it can investigate drug abuse in baseball. In other words, steroid use in baseball could make it more difficult for the Drug Czar to do his job.
What next? Will Davis subpoena Joan Rivers to testify about her Oscar night red carpet observations, because poor fashion taste will interfere with the operation of the Department of Commerce's Office of Textiles and Apparel? (yes, there is such a thing.)
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