Say you’re a big-league ballplayer with a career-high 16 home runs. You see guys who once celebrated batting-practice homers now on pace to hit 30. You see former beanpoles and midgets in lockers next to yours who look like Hans and Franz.
You were born with extraordinary hand-eye coordination and decent power, but compared with Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Bagwell and even former Smurf Steve Finley, you now look like Woody Allen. You know America has gone gaga over the long ball. You know hitting 60-odd homers–and striking out almost three times that much–has Sammy Sosa asking for $15 million a year.
You have a wife and three kids who spend as if you make $15 million. You’re nearing 30. You need to reinvent yourself. The pressure mounts for you to climb that steroid stairway to heaven.
Would you? If you’re playing the one sport that doesn’t test for anabolic steroids or pro hormones like andro–that doesn’t save players from themselves– could you afford not to take the stuff? I’d be tempted to risk testicular cancer and living with the mood swings of ‘roid rage. Sure, steroids are illegal, but they’re no harder to score than marijuana.
I doubt today’s baseballs are nearly as juiced as some of the players–“juice” being gym slang for steroids. Baseballs again are flying out of parks at a record rate mostly because more and more baseball players are turning themselves into football players. Even “little” White Sox shortstop Jose Valentin looks as if he could win a 175-pound bodybuilding contest.
As Commissioner Bud Selig said the other day at Comiskey Park: “I think of Clemente, Aaron and Mays and realize today’s players are just so much bigger. Of course, I say the ball hasn’t changed. But the size of the players has.”
In fairness, many players have built strength and mass the new-fashioned way, by eating right and lifting weights under the supervision of conditioning coaches now employed by all teams. And some have sped their progress by taking supplements such as andro and creatine.
But the puffy-cheeked, growth-spurt evidence says some players in search of the quickest, surest results have injected the artificial testosterone known as steroids. So why is baseball the only sport that doesn’t test for NFL-banned steroids and andro? Because baseball is basically controlled by the world’s strongest union–the players.
Don’t blame the commissioner’s office. Blame the players’ association for refusing to soften its stance on drug testing. By now enough players could be at least psychologically addicted to cycling on and off steroids that they would fight testing, potential suspensions and certain shrinking.
So will it take a mega-dosing tragedy for the players to concede steroid testing? Or will it merely take fans slowly being turned off by a sport dominated by chemically engineered robo-sluggers?
“This,” Selig said, “is an issue I’m very concerned about.”
Yet, while Selig continues to educate himself about the supplements explosion, many of baseball’s managers and general managers wouldn’t know creatine from Ovaltine. Many mistakenly blamed creatine for baseball’s recent rash of hamstring pulls. About half the injuries, said Cubs manager Don Baylor, were “artificially induced.”
Baylor, an ex-player who thought only dumbbells lifted weights, is a victim of misinformation. Creatine is the one supplement ballplayers should take.
“Creatine,” says Joey Antonio, a professor of health and exercise at the University of Nebraska, “is a natural product found in meat–it’s not something concocted in a lab. There is no evidence creatine can increase the incidence of pulls by, say, increasing dehydration. It just provides more energy for high-intensity, short-duration sports like weightlifting. It’s extremely safe.”
The body makes creatine. Supplementing it merely replenishes the supply. Yet while the Cubs strongly advise players against taking creatine, the Sox sanction it. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the Cubs.
But asked about steroids, representatives of both teams say something like, “Don’t know. Don’t want to know. Can’t control it.”
Steroids and other muscle-growing products are what’s wrong with baseball. If I owned a team, I would hire an ex-bodybuilding champ who lived on “juice” to counsel my players. If I couldn’t save them from themselves, I would at least want them to have the best information.
