Home > Articles > Dayn Perry
Pumped-Up
Hysteria
Forget the Hype.
Steroids Aren't Wrecking Professional Baseball.
by Dayn
Perry
This article
originally appeared in the January 2003 issue of Reason magazine. It has been reprinted with
permission. Visit www.reason.com.
[http://reason.com/0301/fe.dp.pumped.shtml]
Had Ken Caminiti been a less famous ballplayer, or
had he merely confessed his own sins, then it would
have been a transient controversy. But it
wasn’t. Last May, Caminiti, in a cathartic
sit-down with Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated,
became the first major league baseball player,
current or retired, to admit to using anabolic
steroids during his playing days. Specifically, he
said he used them during the 1996 season, when he was
named the National League’s Most Valuable
Player. And his truth session didn’t stop there.
"It’s no secret what’s going on in
baseball. At least half the guys are using
[steroids]," Caminiti told SI. "They talk
about it. They joke about it with each other....I
don’t want to hurt fellow teammates or fellow
friends. But I’ve got nothing to hide."
The suggestion that steroids are a systemic
problem in professional athletics is hardly shocking,
but such candor from players -- particularly baseball
players, who until recently weren’t subject to
league-mandated drug testing -- was virtually unheard
of. Before the Caminiti flap had time to grow stale,
Jose Canseco, another high-profile ex-ballplayer,
upped the ante, declaring that a whopping 85 percent
of current major league players were
"juicing."
The estimates were unfounded, the sources
unreliable, and the implications unclear. But a media
orgy had begun. The questions that are being asked of
the players -- Do you think it’s worth it? How
many are using? Why did the players union wait so
long to adopt random testing? Why won’t you take
a test right now? -- are mostly of the
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
variety. The accusation is ensconced in the question.
This approach may be satisfying to the
self-appointed guardians of baseball’s virtue,
but it leaves important questions unexplored. Indeed,
before the sport can solve its steroid problem, it
must determine whether it even has one.
From those sounding the clarion call for
everything from stricter league policies to federal
intervention, you’ll hear the same two-pronged
concern repeated time and again: Ballplayers are
endangering their health and tarnishing
baseball’s competitive integrity. These are
defensible, if dogmatic, positions, but the sporting
media’s fealty to them obscures the fact that
both points are dubious.
A more objective survey of steroids’ role in
sports shows that their health risks, while real,
have been grossly exaggerated; that the political
response to steroids has been driven more by a moral
panic over drug use than by the actual effects of the
chemicals; and that the worst problems associated
with steroids result from their black-market status
rather than their inherent qualities. As for
baseball’s competitive integrity, steroids pose
no greater threat than did other historically
contingent "enhancements," ranging from
batting helmets to the color line. It is possible, in
fact, that many players who use steroids are not
noticeably improving their performance as a result.
There are more than 600 different types of
steroids, but it’s testosterone, the male sex
hormone, that’s most relevant to athletics.
Testosterone has an androgenic, or masculinizing,
function and an anabolic, or tissue-building,
function. It’s the second set of effects that
attracts athletes, who take testosterone to increase
their muscle mass and strength and decrease their
body fat. When testosterone is combined with a
rigorous weight-training regimen, spectacular gains
in size and power can result. The allure is obvious,
but there are risks as well.
Health Effects
Anecdotal accounts of harrowing side effects are
not hard to find -- everything from "’roid
rage" to sketchy rumors of a female East German
swimmer forced to undergo a sex change operation
because of the irreversible effects of excess
testosterone. But there are problems with the
research that undergirds many of these claims. The
media give the impression that there’s something
inevitably Faustian about taking anabolics -- that
gains in the present will undoubtedly exact a price
in the future. Christopher Caldwell, writing recently
in The Wall Street Journal, proclaimed,
"Doctors are unanimous that [anabolic steroids]
increase the risk of heart disease, and of liver,
kidney, prostate and testicular cancer."
This is false. "We know steroids can be used
with a reasonable measure of safety," says
Charles Yesalis, a Penn State epidemiologist, steroid
researcher for more than 25 years, and author of the
1998 book The
Steroids Game. "We know this because
they’re used in medicine all the time, just not
to enhance body image or improve athletic
performance." Yesalis notes that steroids were
first used for medical purposes in the 1930s, some
three decades before the current exacting standards
of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were in
place.
Even so, anabolic steroids or their derivatives
are commonly used to treat breast cancer and androgen
deficiencies and to promote red blood cell
production. They are also used in emerging anti-aging
therapies and to treat surgical or cancer patients
with damaged muscle tissue.
Caldwell cites one of the most common fears: that
anabolics cause liver cancer. There is dubious
evidence linking oral anabolics to liver tumors, but
athletes rarely take steroids in liquid suspension
form. Users almost uniformly opt for the injectable
or topical alternatives, which have chemical
structures that aren’t noxious to the liver. And
as Yesalis observes, even oral steroids aren’t
causally linked to cancer; instead, some evidence
associates them with benign liver tumors.
More specifically, it’s C-17 alkylated oral
steroids that are perhaps detrimental to liver
function. But the evidence is equivocal at best. A
1990 computer-assisted study of all existing medical
literature found but three cases of
steroid-associated liver tumors. Of those three
cases, one subject had been taking outrageously large
doses of C-17 oral anabolics without cessation for
five years, and a second case was more indicative of
classic liver malignancy. It’s also C-17 orals,
and not other forms of steroids, that are associated
with decreased levels of HDL, or "good"
cholesterol. But, again, C-17s are almost never used
for athletic or cosmetic purposes.
Another commonly held belief is that steroid use
causes aggressive or enraged behavior. Consider the
case of San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds,
whose impressive late-career home run hitting and
built-up physique have long raised observers’
eyebrows. Last season, Bonds, long known for being
irascible, had a dugout shoving match with teammate
Jeff Kent. A few columnists, including Bill Lankhof
of The Toronto Sun and Jacob Longan of the Stillwater
News-Press, obliquely diagnosed "’roid
rage" from afar. "There’s very
inconsistent data on whether ’roid rage even
exists," says Yesalis. "I’m more open
to the possibility than I used to be, but its
incidence is rare, and the studies that concluded it
does exist largely haven’t accounted for
underlying factors or the placebo effect."
Scientists are nearly unanimous that excessive
testosterone causes aggression in animals, but this
association begins to wither as you move up the
evolutionary ladder. Diagnosing such behavior in
athletes is especially tricky. "There’s a
certain degree of aggression that’s not only
acceptable but necessary in competitive sports,"
Yesalis says. "What’s perhaps just the
intensity that’s common to many athletes gets
perceived as steroid-linked outbursts."
Fears about steroid use also include other
cancers, heart enlargement, increased blood pressure,
elevated cholesterol levels, and musculoskeletal
injuries. Upon closer examination, these too turn out
to be overblown. Reports associating heart
enlargement, or cardiomegaly, with steroid use often
ignore the role of natural, nonthreatening
enlargement brought on by prolonged physical
exertion, not to mention the effects of alcohol
abuse. The relationship is unclear at best. Evidence
supporting a link between steroids and ligament and
tendon damage is weak, since steroid-related injuries
are virtually indistinguishable from those occurring
normally. And blood pressure problems, according to
Yesalis, have been exaggerated. There is some
associative evidence that steroid use can increase
the risk of prostate cancer, but this link has yet to
be borne out in a laboratory setting. No studies of
any kind link the use of anabolics to testicular
cancer.
Addiction is a legitimate concern, and Yesalis
says a quarter to a half of those who use steroids
solely to improve their body image exhibit signs of
psychological dependence. "But in all my years
of research," Yesalis continues, "I’ve
only known three professional athletes who were
clinically addicted to steroids." The
distinction, he explains, is that professional
athletes see steroids as little more than a tool to
help them do their job -- the way "an office
worker views his computer." Once their playing
days are over, almost all the athletes within
Yesalis’ purview "terminate their use of
the drug."
One reason the health effects of steroids are so
uncertain is a dearth of research. In the almost 65
years that anabolic steroids have been in our midst,
there has not been a single epidemiological study of
the effects of long-term use. Instead, Yesalis
explains, concerns about extended usage are
extrapolated from what’s known about short-term
effects. The problem is that those short-term
research projects are often case studies, which
Yesalis calls the "lowest life form of
scientific studies." Case studies often draw
conclusions from a single test subject and are
especially prone to correlative errors.
"We’ve had thousands upon thousands [of
long-term studies] done on tobacco, cocaine, you name
it," Yesalis complains. "But for as much as
you see and hear about anabolic steroids, they
haven’t even taken that step."
What about the research that has been done? At
least some of it seems to yield engineered results.
"The studies linking steroid use to cancer were
performed by and large on geriatric patients,"
notes Rick
Collins, attorney, former bodybuilder, and author
of the book Legal
Muscle, which offers an exhaustive look at
anabolic steroid use under U.S. law. The hazard of
such research is that side effects observed in an
older patient could be the result of any number of
physiological problems unrelated to steroid intake.
Moreover, the elderly body is probably more
susceptible to adverse reactions than the body of a
competitive athlete.
Collins believes that some studies were performed
with a conclusion in mind at the outset. "Their
hearts were in the right place," says Collins.
"Curtailing nonessential steroid use is a good
and noble goal, but they undermined their efforts by
exaggerating the dangers." Call it the cry-wolf
effect.
For instance, it’s long been dogma that use
of anabolic steroids interferes with proper hepatic
(liver) function and causes thickening of the heart
muscle. However, a 1999 study at the University of
North Texas found that it’s not steroid use that
causes these medical phenomena; rather, it’s
intense resistance training. Weight-lifting causes
tissue damage, and, at high extremes, can elevate
liver counts and thicken the left ventricular wall of
the heart. Both disorders were observed in
high-intensity weightlifters irrespective of steroid
use. The researchers concluded that previous studies
had "misled the medical community" into
embellishing the side effects of use.
Testosterone-Fueled Panic
The cry-wolf effect may have as much to do with
the boom in steroid use as anything else. Athletes
were inclined to be skeptical of warnings about
steroids because their own experience contradicted
what critics were saying. When use of Dianabol and
other anabolics began to surge in the 1960s and
’70s, opponents decried them as ineffective. The
message was: They don’t work, so don’t
take the risk. But steroids did work, and users
knew it. Once weightlifters, bodybuilders, and other
athletes realized they were being lied to about the
efficacy of steroids, they were less likely to
believe warnings about health hazards, especially
when the evidence backing them up was vague or
anecdotal.
One of the chief drumbeaters for the
steroids-don’t-work movement was Bob Goldman,
author of the hysterical anti-steroids polemic Death
in the Locker Room. Goldman, a former competitive
power-lifter turned physician and sports medicine
specialist, was an early, and shrill, critic of
performance pharmacology. In his 1984 exposé,
Goldman attributes steroids’ tissue-building
qualities almost entirely to the placebo effect. His
agenda may have been morally sound, but his
conclusions ran counter to the preponderance of
scientific evidence at the time.
Today, his claims are even less supportable.
Goldman is working on a new edition of the book, one
that he says will better crystallize current
scientific thought on the subject. Of his 1984
edition and its seeming histrionics, Goldman says the
book was intended "as an educational tool to
warn high school students of the possible hazards of
drug use, but then it became something else."
Whatever his intentions at the time,
Goldman’s views played well in the media, which
cast the book as a sobering empirical assault on
performance-enhancing drugs. Its warnings soon gained
traction with lawmakers. Although the Anti-Drug Abuse
Act of 1988 had already made it illegal to dispense
steroids for nonmedical reasons, Congress, ostensibly
out of concern over reports of increasing steroid use
among high school athletes, revisited the matter in
1989.
Congressional hearings convened to determine
whether steroids should become the first hormone
placed on Schedule III of the Controlled Substances
Act, reserved for drugs with substantial abuse
potential. Such legislation, if passed, would make
possession of anabolic steroids without a
prescription a federal offense punishable by up to a
year in prison. Distributing steroids for use,
already prohibited by the 1988 law, would be a felony
punishable by up to five years in prison. What’s
usually forgotten about these hearings, or perhaps
simply ignored, is the zeal with which many
regulatory agencies, research organizations, and
professional groups objected to the proposed changes.
The American Medical Association (AMA), the FDA, the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, and even the Drug
Enforcement Administration all opposed the
reclassification. Particularly adamant was the AMA,
whose spokespersons argued that steroid users did not
exhibit the physical or psychological dependence
necessary to justify a change in policy.
Nevertheless, Congress voted into law the 1990
Anabolic Steroids Control Act, which reclassified
steroids as Schedule III controlled substances,
placing them on legal par with barbiturates and
narcotic painkillers such as Vicodin, just one step
down from amphetamines, cocaine, and morphine. Now
even first-time steroid users faced possible jail
time.
Black-Market ’Roids
Prohibition naturally produced a black market, and
unintended consequences followed. Besides creating
yet another economic niche for the criminal
underworld, the legislation scuttled any hope of
using steroids as a legitimate and professionally
administered performance enhancer.
Criminalization of steroids created dangers more
serious than any that had prompted the ban. Once
steroids became contraband, many athletes bought
black-market anabolics that, unbeknownst to them,
were spiked or cut with other drugs or intended
solely for veterinary use. Physicians were forbidden
to prescribe steroids for promoting muscle growth and
thus were not able to provide steroid users with
responsible, professionally informed oversight. New
league policies even ban the use of steroids for
recovery from injuries.
Combine the lack of medical supervision with the
mind-set of the garden-variety steroid user, and you
have a potentially perilous situation. "Many of
those using anabolic steroids," says Penn
State’s Yesalis, "have the attitude that if
one [dose] works, then five or 10 will work even
better. That’s dangerous."
Athletes who acquire steroids on the black market
are loath to consult with their physician after they
begin using regularly. If they do disclose their
habit and ask for guidance, the physician, for fear
of professional discipline or even criminal charges,
may refuse to continue seeing the patient. For
professional athletes, another deterrent to proper
use is that all responsible doctors keep rigorously
accurate records of their dealings with patients. The
fear that those records might be leaked or even
subpoenaed makes pro athletes even less likely to
seek medical guidance.
Since many of the observed side effects of
steroids -- anecdotal, apocryphal, or otherwise --
most likely result from excessive or improper use of
the drug, one wonders: Can steroids be used for
muscle building with a reasonable degree of safety?
"The candid answer is yes, but with
caveats," says Collins, the attorney who
specializes in steroid law. "It would need to be
under the strict direction of a physician and
administered only after a thorough physical
examination, and it would need to be taken at
reasonable and responsible dosages."
It’s a statement that even Goldman, once the
bellwether scaremonger, says is "something I
could probably agree with."
Herbert Haupt, a private orthopedist and sports
medicine specialist in St. Louis, is
"absolutely, unequivocally, positively
opposed" to steroid use as a training or
cosmetic tool. But he concedes that properly
supervised use of the drug for those purposes can be
reasonably safe. "The adverse side effects of
steroids typically subside upon cessation of
use," says Haupt, "and use over a short
span, say a six-week duration, probably carries
nominal risk."
Moreover, the official attitude toward steroid use
seems anomalous when compared to the treatment of
other methods that people use to improve their
bodies. "People die from botched
liposuctions," Collins notes. "We’re
also allowed to inject botulism into people’s
faces [in botox therapy], but no one is allowed to
use steroids for similar cosmetic reasons."
Collins is quick to add that adolescents, whose
bodies are already steeped in hormones, cannot use
steroids safely. But the fact remains that the
illegality of steroids makes responsible professional
oversight virtually impossible.
Another puzzling distinction is the one made
between steroids and other training supplements. Many
baseball players have openly used androstenedione, a
muscle-building compound that major league baseball
hasn’t banned even though it’s merely a
molecular puddle-jump from anabolic steroids.
Androstenedione is a chemical precursor that is
converted to testosterone by the liver. Creatine
monohydrate, another effective supplement, is far
more widely used than androstenedione and is
virtually free of stigma. Creatine is chemically
unrelated to anabolic steroids or androstenedione and
also differs in that it does not manipulate hormone
levels; rather, creatine allows muscle cells to
recover from fatigue more quickly. But all three
substances -- creatine, androstenedione, and anabolic
steroids -- increase a naturally occurring substance
in the body to promote the building of muscle tissue.
Anabolic steroids simply accomplish this end more
quickly and dramatically.
The list of "artificial" enhancements
doesn’t stop there. Indeed, the boundaries of
what constitutes a "natural" modern athlete
are increasingly arbitrary. Pitchers benefit from
computer modeling of their throwing motions. Medical
and pharmacological technologies help players to
prevent and recover from injuries better than ever
before. Even laboratory-engineered protein shakes,
nutrition bars, and vitamin C tablets should
theoretically violate notions of "natural"
training. Yet no one claims these tools are
tarnishing the competitive integrity of the game.
Muscle Beach Zombies
Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers has said, in a
bizarre admission, that he doesn’t throw as hard
as he can because he fears that the line drives hit
by today’s players, if properly placed, could
kill him on the mound. And you need not read the
sports pages for long to find someone complaining
that today’s "juiced" ballplayers are
toppling the game’s sacrosanct records by the
shadiest of means.
This sentiment began percolating when Roger
Maris’ single-season home run record tottered
and fell to Mark McGwire in 1998. Since the Caminiti
and Canseco stories broke, sportswriters have been
resorting to preposterous rhetorical flourishes in
dismissing the accomplishments of the modern hitter.
Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News,
for example, writes: "To all the freaks, geeks
and ’roid zombies who have turned major league
baseball into a Muscle Beach version of the Medellin
Cartel: Take your records and get lost."
Yet baseball statistics have never existed in a
vacuum. Babe Ruth became the sport’s chief
pantheon dweller without ever competing against a
dark-skinned ballplayer. Chuck Klein of the
Philadelphia Phillies posted some eye-popping numbers
in the 1930s, but he did it in an era when runs were
scored in bundles, and he took outrageous advantage
of the Baker Bowl’s right field fence, which was
a mere 280 feet from home plate. Detroit pitcher Hal
Newhouser won two most valuable player awards and a
plaque in Cooperstown in part by dominating
competition that had been thinned out by World War
II’s conscription. Sandy Koufax crafted his run
of success in the ’60s with the help of a
swollen strike zone. Also a boon to Koufax was the
helpfully designed Dodger Stadium, which included,
according to many, an illegally heightened mound.
Gaylord Perry succored his Hall of Fame career by
often calling upon an illegal spitball pitch. Take
any baseball statistic, and something is either
inflating or depressing it to some degree.
Beginning in the mid-’90s in the American
League and the late ’90s in the National League,
home runs reached unseen levels. This fact has
encouraged much of the present steroids conjecture.
But correlation does not imply causation, as the
deductive reasoning platitude goes, and there are
more likely explanations for the recent increase in
homers.
Home runs are up, in large part, because several
hitter-friendly ballparks have opened in recent
years. Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies
since 1995, is the greatest run-scoring environment
in major league history. Until the 2000 season, the
Houston Astros played in the Astrodome, a cavernous,
run-suppressing monstrosity with remarkably poor
visuals for hitters. They replaced it with Enron
Field (now renamed Minute Maid Park), which is second
only to Coors Field in terms of helping hitters and
boasts a left field line that’s so short
it’s in violation of major league rules. The
Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Brewers, and Texas
Rangers also have recently replaced their old
ballparks with stadiums far more accommodating to
hitters. The Arizona Diamondbacks came into being in
1998; they too play in a park that significantly
inflates offensive statistics. The St. Louis
Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, and Chicago White Sox
have all moved in their outfield fences in the last
few years. Add to all that the contemporary strike
zone, which plainly benefits hitters, and it’s
little wonder that home runs are at heretofore
unimaginable levels.
And then there is Barry Bonds and the momentous
season he had in 2001. In the midst of Bonds’
siege on McGwire’s still freshly minted
single-season home run record, Bob Klapisch of the
Bergen County, New Jersey, Record made a
transparent observation-cum-accusation by writing,
"No one has directly accused Bonds of cheating
-- whether it be a corked bat or steroids...."
Bonds is plainly bigger than he was early in his
career. That fact, considered in tandem with his
almost unimaginable statistical achievements, has led
many to doubt the purity of his training habits. But
Bonds had bulked up to his current size by the late
’90s, and from then until 2001 his home run
totals were in line with his previous yearly levels.
So there’s obviously a disconnect between his
body size and his home runs. Last season, bulky as
ever, Bonds hit "only" 46 homers, which
isn’t out of step with his pre-2001 performance.
More than likely, Bonds had an aberrant season in
2001 -- not unlike Roger Maris in 1961.
Steroids vs. the Perfect Swing
This is not to suggest that no ballplayers are
taking advantage of modern pharmacology. Rick Collins
says he knows some major league ballplayers are using
steroids but can’t hazard a guess as to how
many. And Yesalis believes that at least 30 percent
of major league ballplayers are on steroids.
But then there are skeptics like Tony Cooper of
the San Francisco Chronicle, a longtime
sportswriter and 20-year veteran of the weightlifting
and bodybuilding culture. During the 2001 season, as
Bonds was assailing McGwire’s freshly minted
home run record, Cooper responded to the groundswell
of steroid speculation by writing that he saw no
evidence of steroid use in baseball. Cooper had seen
plenty of steroid users and plenty of "naked
baseball players," and he couldn’t name one
obvious juicer in the entire sport. As for Bonds,
Cooper called the accusations "ludicrous,"
writing that the Giants’ slugger "merely
looks like a man who keeps himself in
condition."
Canseco, of course, claims 85 percent of players
are on steroids. Caminiti initially said half, then
backpedaled to 15 percent. Other players have dotted
the points in between with guesses of their own.
Whatever the actual figure, such widely divergent
estimates suggest that not even the ballplayers
themselves know the extent of the problem. And if they
don’t know, the pundits assuredly don’t
either.
A more reasonable (and answerable) question is: If
players are on steroids, how much of a difference is
it making?
Not much of one, according to Chris Yeager, a
human performance specialist, private hitting
instructor, and longtime weightlifter. Yeager’s
argument is not a replay of Bob Goldman’s
assertion that steroids function merely as placebos.
Yeager posits that the engorged arms, chests, and
shoulders of today’s ballplayers could well be
the result of steroid use -- but that they
aren’t helping them hit home runs.
"Upper body strength doesn’t increase
bat speed," he explains, "and bat speed is
vital to hitting home runs. The upper body is used in
a ballistic manner. It contributes very little in
terms of power generation." Yeager likens the
arms, in the context of a hitter’s swing, to the
bat itself: simply a means to transfer energy. A
batter’s pectoral muscles, says Yeager,
"are even less useful."
Yeager isn’t saying steroid use couldn’t
increase a batter’s power. He’s saying most
ballplayers don’t train properly.
"There’s a difference between training for
strength and training for power," he says,
"and most baseball players train for
strength." If hitters carefully and specifically
trained their legs and hips to deliver sudden blasts
of power, then steroids could be useful to them, but
by and large that’s not what they do. "Mark
McGwire hit 49 home runs as a 23-year-old
rookie," Yeager says. "And, while I think
he probably used steroids at some point in his
career, he hit home runs primarily because of his
excellent technique, his knowledge of the strike
zone, and the length of his arms. Barry Bonds could
be on steroids, but his power comes from the fact
that he has the closest thing to a perfect swing that
I’ve ever seen."
Much Ado About Nothing
In what at first blush seems counterintuitive,
Yeager asserts that steroid use may have decreased
home run levels in certain instances. Specifically,
he points to Canseco. "I’m almost positive
Canseco used steroids, and I think it hurt his
career," says Yeager. "He became an
overmuscled, one-dimensional player who couldn’t
stay healthy. Without steroids, he might have hit
600, 700 home runs in his career."
In short, steroids are a significant threat to
neither the health of the players nor the health of
the game. Yet the country has returned to panic mode,
with both private and public authorities declaring
war on tissue-building drugs.
The chief instrument in that war is random drug
testing, which major league baseball adopted in
September 2002 with the ratification of the most
recent collective bargaining agreement. Players can
be tested for drugs at any time, for any rea son
whatsoever. Leaving aside what this implies for
players’ privacy, testing is easily skirted by
users who know what they’re doing.
Sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for steroids
at the 1988 Summer Olympics and forfeited his gold
medal, but subsequent investigation revealed that
he’d passed 19 drug tests prior to failing the
final one at the Seoul games. Yesalis says most
professional athletes who use steroids know how to
pass a drug test. Whether by using masking agents,
undetectable proxies like human growth hormone, or
water-based testosterone, they can avoid a positive
reading. At the higher levels of sports, Yesalis
believes, drug testing is done mostly "for
public relations." Image protection is a
sensible goal for any business, but no one should be
deluded into thinking it eliminates drug use.
Nevertheless, lawmakers are lining up to push the
process along. California state Sen. Don Perata
(D-East Bay) has introduced a bill that would require
all professional athletes playing in his state to
submit to random drug testing. Federal legislation
could be forthcoming from Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.).
It’s unlikely that any bill calling for this
level of government intrusion will pass. But the fact
that such legislation is even being considered
suggests how entrenched the steroid taboo is.
Meanwhile, baseball’s new collective bargaining
agreement has firmly established drug testing in the
sport. The Major League Baseball Players Association,
contrary to what some expected, agreed to the testing
program with little resistance.
The measure won’t do much to prevent the use
of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, but it
may serve as a palliative for the media. At least
until the next cause célèbre comes along.
Dayn Perry is a freelance sportswriter based in
Austin, Texas.
This article
originally appeared in the January 2003 issue of Reason magazine. It has been reprinted with
permission. Visit www.reason.com.
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