Steroids: A Look Beyond the Crucible

For most, the implications of steroids in professional sports are a simple issue. They’re bad, those who use them are bad, those who produce them are bad, and it’s just that simple. They don’t know of any complications and, more importantly, they don’t want to; they’d rather just assume the worst. Unfortunately, in the world of sports (and incidentally, the world of drugs) there are no clear-cut issues. Inside the seemingly innocent existence of playing a game for a living is an inner culture of deceit, inequity and corruption that goes unnoticed by the Pollyanna façade of the players, owners and fans. Vince Lombardi summed up the business of sports in saying, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” And inside the constrictions of this mode of thought, there is no longer any room for the arcane ideals of right and wrong.

For most, the implications of steroids in professional sports are a simple issue. They’re bad, those who use them are bad, those who produce them are bad, and it’s just that simple. They don’t know of any complications and, more importantly, they don’t want to; they’d rather just assume the worst. Unfortunately, in the world of sports (and incidentally, the world of drugs) there are no clear-cut issues. Inside the seemingly innocent existence of playing a game for a living is an inner culture of deceit, inequity and corruption that goes unnoticed by the Pollyanna façade of the players, owners and fans. Vince Lombardi summed up the business of sports in saying, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” And inside the constrictions of this mode of thought, there is no longer any room for the arcane ideals of right and wrong.

Steroids are viewed as the forbidden fruit, the X-factor that can make any contest unfair and one-sided. But, to be honest, the game is unfair long before the player even steps onto the field, let alone when he decides to get “dirty”. By the time the first pitch is thrown, small-market baseball teams already know that they’re fighting an uphill battle against billion-dollar large-market juggernauts that, revenue sharing and luxury taxes be damned, are still spending at least $30 million more than they are. The injustice continues between the small-time players, who are bought and sold like cattle, and the owners, who demand peak performance at all times or don’t think you won’t be in Pawtucket with the has-beens and never-will-be’s.  A guy’s got a family to feed? Who cares, I want to win. Bills to pay? Who cares, I want to win. He’s the only family member who can pay for his grandmother’s chemo, eh? Who cares, I want to win. And when he’s pushed himself to your physical limits, when he can’t give anymore and it’s still not enough, and some guy walks up to the locker room and promises him that this bottle of pills will make him an All-Star, well, what would you say?

I’d like all of us to remember the 1988 World Series, when Dodger Kirk Gibson hit a game-winning home run and then hobbled the base paths. It was seen as a great act of courage, which it was–but it was also the work of cortisone, which Gibson took before the game to quiet the searing pain of a knee injury. Cortisone has some of the same side effects as steroids and is basically the same procees (cheating your body to produce results it alone cannot), and yet no one said a word, even now. Now, let’s move ten years forward, when a bottle of androstenedione fell from Cardinal Mark McGwire’s duffel. The Big Mac was forgiven, and the stories of his usage were swept under the rug as he belted 70 homers that season. At last, to this season, when Giant Barry Bonds says he was given steroids and told they were a cream for arthritis, a more likely claim than one would expect (athletes are more apt to develop arthritis early as they are constantly putting stress on their joints). Now this is cheating. This will ruin the game. Here’s the kind of guy who needs to be banned from baseball and never, ever allowed to return. The hypocrisy of the steroid scandal reaches far back.

Beyond the shaky moral stances on steroids is the witch-hunt atmosphere of sports. Roger Maris never hit anywhere near 61 before or after his record season, so why can’t Bonds be free of suspicion? The cutting suspicion, however, pales in comparison to the actual acts. Last summer the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the foremost authority on performance-enhancing drugs, changed its definition of guilt from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “reasonable suspicion”. Am I the only one whom this reminds of the “round up the usual suspects” days of law enforcement?

I intend to stop well short of condoning performance-enhancing drugs. Cheating your body for performance is wrong, and it’s leaving a stain on the game as well as sending the wrong message to kids. But doesn’t anyone else think it’s wrong that, in a world full of plastic surgery, bodily enhancement and prep courses for inborn intelligence, that we’re haranguing these athletes for simply wanting what we want: to be bigger, stronger, faster, better? The truth is, the world is a crazy place. We cannot expect our games to stay replete with purity if we do not uphold the same ideal.