Steroid hearings

I must admit that my remote control flicker finger – the one that is employed to change channels – got quite a workout last Thursday. My television was constantly in motion as I switched from one NCAA men’s basketball tournament game to the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, broadcast all day long on ESPN News.
Since most of the basketball games involved little drama (except for a last-second dunk by West Virginia to beat Creighton and a Texas meltdown against Nevada in the final two minutes), I stayed with the hearings to see who would say what, and as it turned out, who wouldn’t say what.
Like almost ALL national columnists and observers, I felt sorry for slugger Mark McGwire because his refusal to address seemed to brand him with the stigma he tried to avoid all during his career. If what you don’t say speaks volumes about what you did, Big Mac came off looking guilty as all-get-out. Yet you probably were moved that the emotion he displayed was genuine because he could see his legacy slipping away before his bespeckled eyes.
Former Ranger Rafael Palmeiro looked like someone was going to ink him to a Hollywood movie contract on the spot, Jose Canseco appeared to be a person in search of a sentence for which he didn’t seem squirrelly and Sammy Sosa looked like someone who knew he was out of his league before this group of politicians. (Odd, they are ALL former Rangers, hmmmmmmm).
The issue of steroids in baseball is serious, but “overblown” in its proportion, according to Red Sox hurler Curt Schilling, who changed his stance in light of Canseco’s recent book, after being quoted in Sports Illustrated as musing about the gravity of steroid usage. I thought that was quite telling from a man asked to chair an anti-steroid task force by Congress.
I was also struck by the inability (bordering on rudeness) of those Congressional members to pronounce the names of the men before them. The baseball commissioner is NOT named “Zelig,” and the players’ rep is not named “Furr.” If you are going to attack and impugn their character, at least call them by their right names.
Up in Plano, people have heard the incredibly sad story told by Don Hooten about his late son, Taylor, who committed suicide after taking steroids while at Plano West High School. Everyone admits that the impetus for the illegal action came from a coach (the young man was asked to “get bigger”), not McGwire or Canseco. Yet the elder Hooten holds MLB accountable for putting its bulked-up stars on a pedestal for the public to admire and emulate.
In that sense, he is correct, but baseball is not the only sport that should be singled out. And the problem with the hearing was that no other institution was mentioned for its past problems (of which they are plenty). The BALCO investigation in San Francisco began over the activities of a football player, linebacker Bill Romanowski, not a baseball player.
The committee members constantly bashed Major League baseball executives for not adopting the “gold standard” of testing – that employed by the Olympic movement. While that group holds its athletes to a different standard, and outlaws many substances that can be found in legal items (over-the-counter cold capsules and natural supplements), it has NOT prevented Olympians from trying to cheat the system. At the Athens Games, there were still a multitude of suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs … and those were the ones who got caught. One would have to think there were others who did not get nabbed.
Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING … will prevent a person from taking shortcuts or cheating when there is BIG money involved. It also means that people benefiting from that performance will also ignore problems so long as the money continues to be produced.
It was also odd for Congress to ask about erasing records of those involved. In the Olympics, steroids were rampant in the 70s and 80s (that group was forced to deal with its problems when it reached such a crisis level). The East German women swimmers of 1976 were prime examples. Their doping was legendary and revealed years later. Yet those gold medals were never taken away and any record established during that meet stood until it was broken. No asterisk involved.
At times, the entire procedure made for good theater, excellent television and some level of education. You learned how lawyers talk and think, how politicians posture and act, and how celebrity always fascinates well past the point of reasonableness.
But, honestly, what can be done to prevent such material from entering this country and keeping it away from young people? I sadly say about the same chance as any other drug.
On that scale, everyone involved – lawmakers, law enforcers, celebrities and regular families, are not doing very well at the plate.