Pass The Juice

In March 2005, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, along with Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro sat before noteworthy congressmen and congresswomen on Capitol Hill to discuss the steroid issue plaguing professional baseball. The purpose of the hearings was to eradicate the use of performance-enhancing drugs for posterity—not just in professional sports, but in the youth community across America as well. The use of performance-enhancing drugs by adult men and women is bad enough, but under no circumstances should still-developing young people put these substances in their body. Yet, they do.

At the college level, according to a TA graduate now playing Division 1 football, testing for illegal performance enhancers is taken seriously both internally and by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). He has been tested by his own team five times since he started playing in 2007, and he says that the tests are “extremely difficult, if not impossible to cheat.” He told me that he knows of two teammates who have tested positive in the team-administered tests. The same player told me that the NCAA tests are administered in a similar cheat-proof procedure, but that he has never been tested. This year, the NCAA will drug test 10,500 athletes. To get a sense of how small this number is, even if all these tests were concentrated on college football, which they are not, the 10,500 tests would not even account for ¼ of all football players. Nevertheless, at least at this particular institution, it seems that illegal performance-enhancers are rare. The Thayer grad says that the “staff does a very good job of making sure we go by the rules” and that “the system seems to work well”. But what about in high school, where there is no testing, and students tend to be more shortsighted?

The steroid issue in high school is a nonissue, TA’s own Athletic Director Matt McGuirk believes. After all, he told me, the ISL has never had any incident of steroid use. He offers three reasons for this: first, with the development of advanced workout routines, and ISL students’ easy access to personal trainers, students can reach even the greatest fitness goals without the use of illegal drugs. Second, Thayer’s education about steroid use, including guest speakers and Sophomore Fitness, is effective in deterring students from using performance-enhancing drugs. When I asked him whether widespread steroid use in professional sports sets a bad example for students, McGuirk told me that publicized steroid use is actually the third factor that keeps young athletes from using them. When they see juiced up players like Gary Sheffield or Mark McGwire “lose their respect, pride, and dignity,” student-athletes are dissuaded from reaching for illegal performance enhancers by the worry that the same thing could happen to them. I never thought I’d say this, but thank you, Barry Bonds.

Is Matt McGuirk’s notion the right one, or is it optimistically naïve? Playing D-1 sports is romanticized by varsity players and coaches alike, and with ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the like, high school athletes are hardly strangers to sports media: they know that stars are born in college, and at some point, all the work in the world just isn’t enough for many high school athletes. Everyone wants to succeed, so everyone works hard—but injecting oneself with illegal and potentially fatal drugs is something not everyone is willing to do. As I was told by the D-I football player, “sports are all some athletes have. They don’t have a great education or skills to fall back on…so they are willing to do whatever it takes to get as far as they can.”

Dangers of steroid abuse are never more pronounced than when they are used by inexperienced young adults. As teenagers mature, their bodies are already chock-full of hormones. When steroids enter the body, they are converted into hormones, of which adolescents have more than enough. Even full-grown adults should never take steroids until they have absorbed every last detail about what steroids are and how they work. Drugs like steroids are just too volatile to play around with. How long a steroid can be used continuously will also differ from one steroid to the next; how much, how many times a day, and into what part of the body a steroid can be administered will also vary. The fact of the matter is that there are just too many things that could go wrong in the process of taking steroids that makes them dangerous, and until one knows everything there is to know about steroids, they should not be used whatsoever.

In 2001 the Center for Disease Control reported that 5% of all high school students had taken steroids without a doctor’s prescription. Although this national data probably does not translate to the Thayer community, it does indicate the possibility that up to five students in every class might have used steroids by the time they graduate.

I asked another former Thayer student-athlete about his experience with steroids. The former Tiger, who will be named Fred to maintain his anonymity, confessed that he had dabbled in steroid use, and said that even as he was taking the drugs, he “didn’t know anything about them except the fact that they worked on my friend.” That’s really all Fred was concerned with: the results. In the minds of many steroid users, it doesn’t matter what the drugs may do to the body in the long run—most don’t even know—as long they are effective in the short run. The oral steroid that Fred was using, Dianabol, resulted in side effects like acne and mood swings, two things that don’t sound like they could precipitate long-term health risks. However, if any type of steroid is misused, it can cause very serious problems such as liver damage, high blood pressure, infertility, and stunted growth. Fortunately, Fred did not renew his steroid cycle after his first 16-day cycle had ended. This must have been a difficult decision, as the steroids that cost him only $50 for a two-week supply produced “great results in only three days.” These drugs work, there’s no doubt about that. The dangers manifest themselves when users turn into abusers, which can easily end up happening when, as Fred did, one obtains steroids from a friend, who gets them from a dealer, who probably doesn’t know all that much other than to tell his clients “Take x pills at y times”.

The potential risks Fred was exposing himself to are numerous. One technique that is common by steroid users is called “stacking”, which involves the use of multiple steroids at the same time. If being supplied by an experienced trainer or doctor who knows all there is to know about the drugs, stacking can be safe and can enhance the effectiveness of workouts. But chances are, if Fred had asked his supplier for some new steroids, the supplier would go out and acquire some new type of steroid that he heard was supposed to work differently, without considering the risks of using multiple steroids at once. Not a lot is known about the exact effects of every steroid, but think of stacking like this: if one was to take golf lessons from two instructors at the same time, they could give contradictory advice that could possibly make one’s game worse.

Just as dangerous as irresponsibly stacking one’s steroids is using the same steroid for too long. While some steroids can be used year-round, the body will not be able to cope with most steroids if they are used for too long. Fred’s Dianobol starts to become toxic after around eight months of daily use. But what does a dealer do when his client continues to purchase the same steroids for several consecutive months? Probably nothing. Fred told me that he would have “definitely” been able to keep purchasing Dianobol, as long as he had the money, and that the supplier “would not have told us [that long-term use of Dianabol is dangerous] because he would just want to make a profit.” These potential problems are amplified during the age of the Internet, where one has the opportunity to buy steroids online.

Check out a website called isteroids.com; it sells illegal steroids to anyone with a credit card. All sorts of oral steroids are sold from prices ranging from $70 to $95 per bottle; the “Pro (Advanced) Bulking Stack” includes 24 bottles of pills and will costs $1200. The site even explains how to avoid getting busted by the Feds during the shipping process. The most disturbing part of the webpage is how difficult it is to find anything resembling a warning about steroid abuse. The only thing I could find was at the bottom of a page titled Effects of Steroids, and the warning states concisely, “Always remember, effects of steroids are very serious. Users do experience bad and negative side effects, so be warned! Do your research.” Yet, there is absolutely nothing to ensure that customers do any research at all; nothing to make sure drugs aren’t being stacked improperly, no one there to monitor long-term use of steroids. It’s actually quite unsettling that this steroid supplier downplays the harmful effects of steroids.

I believe that steroids will continue to be used by the McGwires, Sosas, and Cansecos of professional baseball. And, honestly, I’m fine with that. These baseball players can afford to work with experienced trainers who know all there is to know about how to safely use steroids—because they can be used safely. On top of that, these professional athletes have completed normal human development, and their bodies are not changing at the rate that yours and mine are. So if they want to use steroids, let them. That’s not the problem, and MLB knows that. The problem is when young athletes—kids—hear about these superstars juicing, they think that they can too. They can’t. Even if a student thinks he has absorbed every last morsel of information, even if he thinks his body can handle the drugs, he hasn’t, and it can’t.

How did he Fehr?

Donald Fehr retired from his position as executive director of the MLB players association on Monday after 26 years of service. Fehr is one month away from turning 61. He will be most remembered for his undying dedication to the players, as opposed to his dedication to the integrity of the game. Baseball’s player’s association is the strongest in professional sports, and Fehr did nothing to jeopardize that reputation. Through his cutthroat negotiations with franchise owners, Fehr helped raise the average MLB salary from $289,000 to $2.9 million. He led the players on a strike in 1994 that resulted in the cancellation of that year’s World Series. The average player made almost $1.2 million that season—up 9% from the previous year. A World Series-canceling strike because of $1.2 mil. a year? Not Fehr's crowning achievement, to be sure. The strike was effective, nonetheless: average salaries more than doubled over the next ten years. Because of Fehr, selfish baseball players have been able to squeeze every last dollar out of their organization’s bank account.

Another thing Fehr has done to negatively affect the game of baseball is his handling of the steroid issue. Using the strength of the MLBPA, Fehr was able to keep any drug testing program out of baseball in 2003, 16 years after the NFL, and 4 years after the NBA. Michael Weiner, a skilled lawyer and No. 3 official in the players association, will succeed Fehr. Hopefully, a new face at the head of the MLBPA will clean up the mess that is drug abuse in the MLB. Maybe not though, because it was at the behest of Fehr that Weiner take his position, and it is likely that Weiner will have take all the same stands as his predecessor.

Stop Acting So Surprised

You can add another name to list of convicted steroid abusers in the MLB: Sammy Sosa. The New York Times reported yesterday that Sosa had tested positive as part of an anonymous 2003 test. Yes, that list: the one that stained A-Rod’s reputation when his positive test was revealed by SI's Selena Roberts last February. I don’t know who’s to blame for the supposedly anonymous test becoming not-so-anonymous, but that’s beside the point. Many Hall of Fame voters have said that they will not vote for anyone that they suspect of steroid abuse. Last year, Mark McGuire received 118 votes, 287 shy of the 405 needed to be inducted. I think it’s fair to say that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark McGuire will never make it to the Hall of Fame. But steroids didn’t come out of nowhere in the mid 90s; they had been around long before then. The first anabolic steroid was marketed in the US in 1956, and was designed for Olympic weightlifters. But before long, athletes in other sports noticed the advantage they could obtain by taking the drug. In the 70s and 80s, steroid use was prevalent in the Olympics (19 athletes were disqualified from the 1983 Olympics for juicing), as well as in sports from the college level and up. A drug testing policy was not instituted in the Major Leagues until 2003. Are we to believe that prior to the beginning of testing, no one in baseball used steroids? Of the three players who hit 230 HRs in the decade from 1985 to 1995, two are known steroid users, Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire. The use of drugs to get an advantage over your opponents is nothing new. I mean, baseball players since the 1900s have been chewing tobacco to keep themselves from losing their mental focus. In football, former Broncos defensive lineman Lyle Alzado, a star of the late 70s, said that “I started taking anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopped…ninety percent of the athletes I know are on the stuff”. Former NFL linebacker and coach, Jim Haslett, was quoted as saying that, during the 1980s, half of the players in the league used performance enhancing drugs, as did all defensive linemen. If anything close to these numbers is accurate, we have barely scratched the surface of how prevalent drug abuse is in professional sports. But back to baseball, I wouldn’t be surprised if some 1980s journeyman came out, and in a Canseco-type fashion, rattled off the names of Kent Hrbek, Dale Murphy, Kirby Puckett, and other stars of that generation, as being steroid users. What happens then? What if this Steroid Era of baseball has a past that we know nothing about? If a Hall of Famer like Kirby Puckett was discovered to have used steroids during his baseball career, do we remove him from the Hall of Fame? I don’t know the answer to these questions; what I do know, is that we need to stop acting so surprised when yet another star gets the steroid label tattooed to his oversized biceps.

No More Surprises

When I got wind of Sammy Sosa's recently unearthed positive test for PED's in 2003, I wouldn't describe my reaction as shocked, hurt, nor astounded. Nope, when it comes to this new steroid era in baseball that we are still knee deep in, I am officially numb to any use of performance enhancers, past or present, no matter the excuse. Sure, I was plenty hurt when I heard about Roger; and for a while even refused to believe that my favorite player, Manny Ramirez, was using. I came up with every possible excuse in my head; "a doctor could have prescribed it without him knowing", or "maybe it was for an injury", I even bought the woman's fertility drug alibi for a while. But after no real fight from Manny's camp regarding his suspension, I woke up and swallowed the sad, hard truth. My favorite player, the one guy that was supposed to be clean, the one guy that was born to hit home runs and drive people in, had cheated the game I love. Now, I no longer idolize players in that way, right now there isn't one player in baseball who I wholeheartedly believe has never used anything to gain an unfair edge. It isn't fair to the owners, the coaches, nor the fans shelling out outrageous amounts to see their "heroes" play. And above all, it's a slap in the face to the players of old who paved the way for our athletes today. Sure, it still hurts to see reliever Takashi Saito stroll out in that sacred 24 jersey, but I'll get over in due time. I still love the game of baseball, but until this steroid era ends, for me, there will be no more surprises.

"It's Pathetic and Disgusting"

Phillies left fielder Raul Ibanez is having a breakout season, ranking second in the Major Leagues in RBIs and second HRs. He is on pace to set career-highs in batting average, hits, runs, RBI, steals, slugging percentage, and home runs. It is his breakout power at the plate that is eye-catching. Ibanez has 20 HRs and is on pace to hit 57, which would be more than his 2008 and his 2007 totals combined. He has never hit more than 33 in a single season, and his .671 slugging percentage is more than 100 points higher than his career high of .516. It’s a sad reality that any player who, out of nowhere, demonstrates huge power numbers will be suspected of juicing. This especially true for aging players: Ibanez has played fourteen seasons in his MLB career, and turned thirty-seven this month. The sudden spike in Ibanez’s offensive stats has put him under the sinister shadow of the Steroid Era. Ibanez reacted to these notions with comments as strong as his new homerun-swing: he said on Tuesday, “I’ll come after people who defame or slander me…it’s pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there…You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool—anything you can test…I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made [if the test is positive]”. This violent outburst will go a long way for Ibanez, as he continues to hit more long-balls. Such a vigorous response is far more convincing than what most suspected steroid users come up with as they try to clear their name, e.g. Barry Bonds.

NBC Welcomes Steroids

This week, former-Patriot Rodney Harrison announced his retirement, along with his hiring as an NBC broadcaster for the NFL. Harrison is not the innocuous fan-favorite retired athlete you usually see hired by sports networks. More often, it’s people like Charles Barkley (TNT), John Madden (ABC), or Bill Walton (ESPN). Harrison, however, was twice voted NFL’s “dirtiest player” in an SI poll (2004 and 2006). But, more significantly, he admitted to knowingly taking human growth hormone in 2007. There seems to be a double standard in baseball and football about PEDs. You probably don’t even remember when Harrison was suspended for a quarter of the NFL season for taking a banned substance; it was only in the news for a couple days. But, now, several weeks after the fact, we’re still hearing about Ramirez’s positive drug test, and we’ll hear about it again in a few more weeks, when Ramirez returns from his suspension. Can you imagine Mark McGuire being hired by ESPN on Baseball Tonight? And McGuire hasn’t even been found guilty, tested positive, or admitted to any steroid use! To be honest, why the NFL doesn’t seem to be affected by baseball’s “Steroid Era” is beyond me. It’s not like steroids give batters a bigger advantage over their opponents than they give linebackers. If anything, a football player would benefit more from taking steroids, since strength is so important in a physical sport like football. NBC must see something extraordinary in Harrison, because—outside of New England—he has just about every reason to be hated by fans.

Manny's Roid Rage

Remember last year when Manny shoved the Red Sox traveling secretary, Jack McCormick to the ground? Apparently it was because McCormick said he might not be able to get Manny the 16 tickets he wanted for an upcoming game against the Astros. McCormick was over 60 years old, and Ramirez physically assaulted him.

Less than a month earlier, Ramirez appeared to have instigated a clubhouse argument with teammate Kevin Youkilis. Reportedly, Manny was upset that Youk gets too angry when he didn’t get on base, always throwing his equipment around, drawing attention to himself. Manny had had enough of Youk’s intensity, intensity which some might appreciate in the clubhouse.

In game 3 of the NLCS last year, Manny had to be restrained by teammates when he went after Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies. In a bench-clearing altercation (no punches were thrown), Manny appeared to have the most to say to Victorino. Some switch appeared to have gone off in Ramirez’s characteristically happy-go-lucky self.

At the time, Red Sox nation was appalled at Manny’s uncharacteristic aggressiveness. We were willing to pass it off as another case of “Manny being Manny”, when really it was Manny being something totally different from the carefree, fun-loving Ramirez we have come to love. But, with Manny’s recent failure of a drug test, it makes sense. The drug test revealed that Manny had been taking a women’s fertility drug, something which athletes take to replenish their levels of testosterone, depleted after a steroid cycle. Who knows when Manny first starting using steroids? It was probably right around June last year. This would explain Manny not being Manny about a year ago. He was starting to experiment with steroids, and was exhibiting signs of ‘roid rage.