Taking the Piss Out of Steroids

Remember the baseball hearings back in March, when preening, self-righteous Congress-critters spent more than eleven hours on, among other things, trying to badger slugger Mark McGwire into admitting he'd used steroids? The inquisition's inquisitors' outright charge against athletes who use performance enhancers was not just that they engage in something that's "not safe," but that they are immoral cheaters who set a terrible example for America's precious towheaded children. 

Wired's Mark McClusky, though a bit late to the ballpark, offers a common-sense solution to the problem of sports drugs: Let's stop calling these substances a problem. Simple and effective.

After all, technology has already altered our games in ways both large and small. Golf balls fly farther, tennis rackets allow players to hit the ball harder, skis turn more easily, bicycles are more aerodynamic and lighter. ... Where do we want the line to be? Is there a difference between using a nanotube-infused tennis racket and using steroids, if the net effect (an increase in power) is the same?

I pointed out more or less the same thing here. More good perspective on steroid use comes from the New York Times, in the form of this piece that quotes Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Caplan mocks the handwringing over self-enhancement drugs. To him, it is all technology: "The lawyer who's taking a pill to stay up is also carrying a computer or P.D.A. to help his brain remember things. Are we going to throw away our calculators?"

Comments

[jconde]

The problem is that allowing drug use in sports is effectively the same as requiring drug use. Virtually no one who abstained would be competitive, assuming professional teams would even allow them the choice.

Do you actually think that would be a good thing?

Of course this sort of thing should be regulated by the leagues rather than the goverment. But a complete lack of regulation would not be an improvment.

John

[Matt in Cincy]

I agree with John. How many thousands of minor leaguers and college atheletes would be forced to use the juice only to never make it to the bigs? Add to that the true reality of "roid rage" and "Big Man On Campus" would take on an entire new meaning. No good at all.

[Phil]

Do you people really think that only a few ballplayers are doing this? Do you honestly think open steroid usage would change the game in any way besides the 1900s image you have in your head?

[Baylen Linnekin]

It's definitly not an issue for Congress. I like Jacob Sullum's take that using steroids is akin to an actress getting a boob job.

You said it yourself. It's "not just that they engage in something that's 'not safe,' but that they are immoral cheaters."

Baseball doesn't allow steroids. So if players are using them, it's cheating. There's nothing intrinsically unethical about corking your bat either. But if baseball doesn't allow it and you do it anyway, then you're cheating. It's that simple.

[Dave Meleney]

Each of these analogies have SOME explanatory power: the comparison to a corked bat, to the lawyer with her computer and caffeine, and to the actress with the boob job....but as the rate of technological progress doubles every few years we know we'll soon be seeing conundrums that far exceed anything in 2005.

Major league baseball may get to the point where it just legalizes altered bats and some quite remarkable taking of certain drugs. Or, alternatively, it may go to bats being x-rayed and players submitted to drug testing before every at bat. Hopefully without green and red lights above the batting circle and a breathalyzer read-out on the scoreboard in real time.

The players union already favors testing for some drugs and not for others, partly depending on which drugs are killing their members.... and possibly depending on which drugs are depleting or enhancing their retirement and health care funds!

But baseball has always wrestled with issues of fair play... Rogers Hornsby's book is filled with old-time ball players who thought one was ethically REQUIRED to throw spitballs and beanballs, come into second with spikes in the air, and have a spy in the scoreboard stealing the catcher's signs.

When linebacker Lawrence Taylor told "60 Minutes" that he often sent expensive hookers to an opponent's room the night before a big game the reporter acted so shocked. When a Tour-de-France rider told 200 people here in Denver that about 70% of the riders on the Tour use illegal substances, I was shocked.

Even if you agree with Peter McWilliams that the state should stay out of these issues and even if you believe that many countries will eventually come to this position, you are still left with lots of complicated dilemmas as new technologies appear, some with dangerous and unpredictable costs, and others that just seem like they should be forbidden.

If you were wrongfully charged with murder wouldn't you be willing to pay your attorney to take a drug which would make him twice as charming and persuasive even if it might give him cancer? Would the bar association try to ban use of such a drug? Haven't high school kids been choosing to smoke on just that basis for over a 100 years now?

When a 3rd string catcher named Brian Downing started lifting weights seriously about 30 years ago and started hitting lots of home runs he doomed the whole future world of serious baseball players to remarkable schedules of weight lifting. But if it hadn't been Brian, someone else would have come along.

It's easy to feel that life is getting much more competitive and I have to teach my daughter the value of integrity on a much more complicated mosaic than her grandparents had to face. But wait a minute, her grandparents faced the depression and drought on the drylands farms of Colorado on one side, and mass starvation in China on the other. Maybe she can deal okay with Hulk Hogan on the baseball field and genetically modified grains that save a billion lives but raise difficult new questions...do ya think?

[Ryan B.]

There is no easy way to say that people who are using drugs to run faster, jump higher, or hit harder are ruining the game/sport for everyone. The simple fact is that they are cheating and ruining records of honest people by making themselves stronger and hitting more homeruns, making more touchdowns, or running for 2 extra miles. This has probably ruined about 30% of the records that have been set. I believe that the pressure to use steroids is not from the outside world but from the coach. If this is true what is the coach thinking to put their players career on the line and maybe even their player's life. This is more a morale issue then a legal issue we need to have more strict laws enforced to stop the use of steroids or have a government hands off and set a new higher rank of sports where cheating has become acceptable. If we do this would society actually accept that it has become okay to cheat?