Lewis On Steroids, More Than Meets The Eye: Dan Lewis has taken up the challenge and responded to my post yesterday saying that major league baseball needs to begin testing for steroids. Remember, the nub of my argument was that steroid testing is imperative to protect the health and rights of players who don't use steroids, especially ones who feel pressure to do so. Here's the relevant passages of Dan's post that deal with my argument. I'll be interjecting when events warrant:
Third, and most importantly to me, Eric McErlain wonders if I'm against testing MLBers for steriods, considering I implied that I'm not previously. That one I'll actually have to comment more on. Now's a good time.
Baseball has already banned steroids by virtue of the fact that 'roids are illegal to begin with. And getting caught with them would certainly be worthy of some sort of suspension. As they should be. Similarly, if baseball's problem is nearly as big as Ken Caminiti says it is, the league owes it to the drug-free players to test. Heck, even if it's only around 5-10% of all players, testing should happen.
But there are two problems. First, the vast majority of fans and writers -- myself included -- have no idea if steriods are required to be as big and strong as baseball players are.
Which is where I'm happy to step in in order to offer some of my personal experience. Since 1997, I've been working on and off with a strength coach by the name of Bob Whelan, aka "Maximum Bob," proprietor of Whelan Strength Training in Washington, DC. Bob is all about lifting weights -- heavy weights -- in order to increase strength and encourage fitness. He's trained a number of college and professional athletes, including former Louisville basketball great Pervis Ellison.
Even better, Bob is much more than some guy who has spent his life in the gym. An ex-Air Force firefighter, Bob has two masters degrees, including one in exercise science. So when you deal with Bob, you deal with some serious brawn and brains as well. Oh, yeah, and there's one condition to working with him -- if you use steroids, or help anyone else obtain steroids -- you can find somebody else to train with.
Not long after I started training with Bob, I asked him point blank about "nutritional supplements". I had seen personal trainers in my other gym push them pretty hard as a good way to bulk up fast, and I was curious.
"Bob, do these things really work?"
He looked back, and in his thick New England accent said, "Well, they work, sort of, but don't be fooled into thinking that they provide anything at all that you can't get in regular food."
"At the end of the day, you need to remember that the best way to get the energy you need to work out hard and gain muscle mass is from a balanced diet. Supplements in no way shape or form are able to do that better."
So, if the nutritional supplements so many athletes are taking don't provide anything that a regular balanced diet will provide, then why do athletes take them at all? Hang on, we'll get to that answer, and if you agree with Dan's point of view, you may not like what you find. But back to Dan:
And we tend to assume scandal first and find evidence later (often egregiously). Rick Reilly's recent accusations of Sammy Sosa are a good example. Testing will just lead to more of that, because the majority of people won't believe the clean results. In fact, it'll do more harm to the innocent than before.
Let's assume that Barry Bonds doesn't use 'roids but that most people believe he does, pee test or no. His test comes back clean. How quickly will Reilly et al demand he take a second test -- after all, if he has nothing to hide, what's the harm? Steroids will stay in the news cycle, and whenever a guy has a breakout year -- even if his test comes back negative -- the roiding accusations will build, to the detriment of his legacy.
As I've pointed out previously, there are plenty of athletes, including Olympic champions Carl Lewis and Ian Thorpe who have dominated their sports and have never been accused of steroid use. They've taken their tests quietly just like everyone else, and come up clean. I think Dan's point here is clearly without merit. As for the abuse Lance Armstrong is taking in Europe, there are other reasons for that, ones I will examine in another post.
Additionally, this is a really odd source for Dan to be citing in order to bolster his argument. In it, Baseball Play America makes a very good case arguing that in fact Bonds does take steroids. From charting his weight gain, to introducing photographic evidence, the group makes a persuasive case.
 |  |
|---|---|
| Bonds in 1997 - 190 lbs. | Bonds in 2001 - 228 lbs. |
But the one piece of evidence that should make everyone sit up and take notice is a statement from Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti saying that Bonds uses nutritional supplements to bulk up.
Just before the 2002 Winter Olympics, Pavle Jovanovic, a U.S. bobsledder from Toms River, N. J., was banned from the games for using 19-norandrostenedione. Nothing unusual about that at all, it happens before every Olympics these days.
But what was unusual, and was documented by James Brown of HBO's Real Sports, was that he had never taken steroids directly. Rather, he had simply taken nutritional supplements -- supplements that he was unaware were contamininated with steroids.
It's important to point out that the FDA doesn't regulate this industry, hence, nobody is doing independent testing to determine what these supplements contain. According to a peice in the Chicago Sun-Times released right before the 2002 Games:
Since legislation was passed in 1994, the Food & Drug Administration has not had regulatory control over dietary supplements. So while hundreds of new over-the-counter products have emerged, there is no way for the FDA to ensure that they are labeled properly. And since then, many athletes have tested positive for the steroid nandrolone.
In the course of Brown's HBO report, he took three samples of the nutritional supplement that Jovanovic was using and brought them to a lab. After testing, it was discovered that all three samples were contaminated with 19-norandrostenedione.
Further, when Jovanovic appealed his suspension to his sport's governing body, he cited his ignorance as a reason to let him compete. His appeal was rejected. They did this, in part, on the grounds that the US Olympic Committee, in its own literature concerning nutritional supplements, specifically warns against their use because they are known to be contaminated with banned substances. In the words of Dick Pound of the International Olympic Committee, head of the IOC's anti-doping efforts:
''What you have here is two guys striking out all over the place,'' he said. ''Listen to Hays and his brakeman (Jovanovic), and what you discover is that it's everybody's fault in the world except theirs. You can't have an IQ of over room temperature and not be aware of the problem. The standard explanation--excuse--is that [nandrolone] came from the nutritional supplement.
''It certainly affects track and field. It affects swimming. And bobsled. Look, we don't know what's in these supplements, either. And if we test them once, we still don't know what's in them from batch to batch. If you don't know what's in these things, and you can't rely on the labeling, stay away from them. Our advice is, 'You're all eating balanced diets. You don't need nutritional supplements.'''
Beginning to connect the dots here? So Bonds says he uses nutritional supplements. Supplements that the experience of the IOC shows are regularly contaminated with steroids. But, like Jovanovic, Bonds, if he ever got caught, could fall back on some plausible deniability -- saying he didn't know the supplements were contaminated. Does this prove Bonds uses steroids? Of course not. But it does provide all of the circumstantial evidence one needs to make a case that steroid testing is needed, and needed now. Let's finish with Dan's post:
Second, there are a lot of relatively safe stimulants that can be used for either better awareness and/or mass gain. The Lex Herald-Leader goes in depth on this. Jeromy Burnitz sums up Eric's take well: Sooner or later, you're going to have to test for everything. And it's a losing battle.
Sorry, but Burnitz says nothing of the sort, and he's an odd person to quote in an argument in favor of fighting steroids testing as he's on the record not only saying that he doesn't use steroids, but he's against anyone else using them either. Here's the relevant passage from the article that Dan links to:
"It's the nature of the game, of professional athletes in general," says Jeromy Burnitz, who is known for his refusal to use steroids or supplements. "There's so much money to be made, the competition level is so high, you resort to whatever you can. A lot of guys have gotten a lot bigger and I think it's cheating."
Which seems to dovetail well with the argument that I made yesterday. But there's more from Burnitz in this story:
Some players openly question whether baseball truly does want to regulate the use of steroids and other performance-enhancement drugs. They say, the game benefits from batters who hit the ball farther and pitchers who throw it harder.
"Rest assured of this," Burnitz says. "If they do start testing and make that a part of our game, you won't see as many guys hitting bombs."
Like I said, nothing in these passages indicates that Burnitz agrees with anything that Dan ascribed to him. Neither does this article present any evidence that the supplements that players are taking are safe -- in fact, other evidence suggests the exact opposite is the case. But back to Dan:
I'd like to see steroid testing done, but only for two reasons: one, the harms of roiding are well known and two, one shouldn't have to take such a risk to be a big leaguer. But things like creatine and Hydroxycut probably aren't that bad, and one has to be careful of turning a good idea into a witchhunt. Going too far in this campaign will only hurt the sport.
Could it hurt the sport anymore than players using performance enhancing drugs that allow them to make a mockery of the legacy of the sport? That's pretty unlikely if you ask me.
With the owners and players getting along so nicely, the players have to fight the steroid testing as much as possible. Any sign of weakness will give the owners a way to belittle the players even further. Maligning Jay Payton for taking Hydroxycut isn't good for the sport, and giving Barry Bonds a hard time for openly using legal, supposedly safe mass-builders is even worse. In the end, the union should capitulate, but they can't afford to make this a gimmie.
Indeed, creatine and Hydroxycut may not be that bad, but nobody really knows. What we do know, however, is that nutritionally they are no better than the food you can buy at any grocery store. What we also know, is that the industry that makes and markets these products is completely unregulated and evidence suggests they are regularly contaminating them with steroids and other banned substances. In their pure form, they might be safe. But to suggest that we know this beyond a reason of a doubt is preposterous.
In the past, Dan has jumped on other sportswriters for accepting the position of the owners uncritically in their coverage of a potential baseball strike. After going over Dan's arguments concerning steroid testing, I think it's pretty clear that it's him who's uncritically accepting the position of the players association on steroids. NB: that's the union, not the players themselves, who have already told USA Today that 79 percent of all players back independent testing, and another 44 percent feel pressure to use steroids in order to keep up with those who do.
Back during the 2000 Sydney Games, the IOC's Pound claimed that America was "in denial" about steroids use among American athletes, whether amateur or professional. For those who oppose steroids testing, I'm beginning to wonder if that opposition isn't anchored in the fear that if we do test, the whole shooting match is going to come apart. If that's the case, testing won't be the culprit, but rather the players who are making a mockery of the sport by using steroids in the first place.
