Jan 18 2008 09:40 AM
It's time for players to speak up about steroids
Perhaps it is time in the baseball steroid morass that one steps back to see the forest from the trees.
 Gary Fuckin' Thorne! |
There is a forest in which these trees exist, however.
Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs were used for one reason: Money.
The better the numbers the players could post, the more money they could demand. The longer a career could be extended, the more cash went into the bank account.
Money, and only money, created the steroid era.
That means the decision to use or not was entirely a decision made by players, nobody else. MLB and owners may have buried their collective heads in the sand for as long as possible because they were making money off the steroid home run bombs, but only the players could decide to use or not use.
That means players have the power to end the issue right now. They have clearly decided not to.
Check the transaction notes in the paper daily. The suspension of minor league players for drug use continues.
Think about that. With the entire world watching, with all the coverage of baseball's crackdown on usage, with Congress holding hearings on the matter; still steroid/performance enhancing drug use goes on.
Where are the non-users? Why have so few come forward and taken a public leadership position by saying they will at least report anyone they see using drugs, if not relate what they know about the history of usage? Where are they?
Don't we all believe that there are hundreds of players out there who could add to the evidence of use and help put a stop to it? Where are they?
The players have taken to acting more like the Mafia then responsible citizens. They worry more about being called a "rat" by the miscreants who took the drugs then they worry about doing the right thing and caring about the game.
Or have we all been really off the mark? Have there been so many who have used that there are few or none left to be honest players?
Don't laugh. The question by Rep. John Tierney, a Democrat from Massachusetts, at this week's hearings regarding "therapeutic use exemption" rocked an already rocking boat.
Tierney asked commissioner Bud Selig and players union head Donald Fehr about the increase from 28 to 103 in one year in the number of MLB players who received medical exemptions from doctors to take otherwise baseball prohibited medications by claiming to have attention deficit disorder.
Those medications, like Ritalin, just happen to be stimulants that some players probably believe can improve their game.
Apparently, despite all that has transpired on the steroid front, MLB players have just moved to another avenue to obtain performance-enhancing drugs.
Psychiatrist Alan Lans, who was the Mets team psychiatrist from 1985 to 2003, was quoted in The New York Times this week as saying of the exemption issue, "The number one drug use of sports is really amphetamines."
Why would doctors issue prescriptions? Said Lans, "The doctors are easily conned."
The exemption numbers were given to Congress as requested, but were not in the Mitchell report. Baseball's president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said MLB was willing to release the numbers to Mitchell, but the MLBPA said no.
The MLBPA responded that they did not prevent the release of the numbers to the Mitchell investigation, both sides had agreed not to.
The games outside the lines go on. From the players who play by the rules and have some of the answers comes nary a murmur.
Regrettably, even the latest inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame did not help the cause.
Goose Gossage met with the press in New York the day after his election and said that those who have used drugs should tell the truth and pay the consequences.
However, he also said in an honest manner, "I'm not going to sit here and say I would never have done that (used steroids). Had I been in that situation in trying to prolong my career with the money that was out there to be made at this time in baseball, I can't sit here and say I would not have done it."
Well, baseball and all sports need the Goose Gossages and every other player who thinks the game should be played by the rules to say just that.
The silence by those who could help is deafening.