As Major League Baseball prepares to start its season in a matter of weeks, Washington, D.C., is taking a vastly renewed interest in the national pastime.
And the attention is not just coming from the relocated Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals.
Instead, Washington is abuzz over the suspected use of steroids in baseball, an oft-leveled charge most recently brought to light in former slugger Jose Canseco’s new book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big.”
The House Committee on Government Reform will hear testimony today from seven current and former major leaguers, including Canseco, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, along with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and other baseball officials.
Slowly building for a decade, shot into the public consciousness in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) investigation and detonated in Canseco’s new book, baseball’s steroid scandal is eliciting varied reactions from those concerned with restoring prestige to the nation’s pastime.
Madison attorney Ed Garvey, who formerly served as executive director of the National Football League Players Association, says the hearings will help shine some light on the steroid issue, but that ultimately baseball will have to take action to stop their use.
“Everything Congress does is political — they all want to see their face on ‘Meet the Press’,” Garvey said. “The problem you have is that the major league owners have done nothing. They’re sort of asking for these hearings.”
Still, Garvey says signs from Selig’s office are not encouraging.
Baseball, under the threat of legislation from U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, implemented a new policy on performance-enhancing drugs in January. But the scope and penalties of the policy, which assesses a 10-day suspension for a first-time positive test, have been ridiculed for not going nearly far enough.
“They’re sending the message of, ‘Cheat if you can, and if you get caught, we’re going to give you a slap on the wrist,'” Garvey said.
Madison Mallards General Manager Vern Stenman argues team owners are as culpable as Selig and the offending players, and they will need to help in the crusade to oust steroids from the game.
“Everybody gets the idea players have so much to gain [from using steroids], but so do the owners,” Stenman said.
There are some, however, who believe the steroid issue has been blown out of proportion. University of Wisconsin pediatrics professor Norman Fost, a self-described “extreme” sports fan, contends professional sports leagues should authorize the use of performance-enhancing drugs for all athletes.
While health risks are often cited as a reason for banning steroids, Fost claims no severe repercussions have been proven to result from the drugs in adults. Instead, most side effects pertain to cosmetic changes and temporary infertility — not life-threatening consequences.
Fost argues legalizing steroids would even improve safety, because doing so would bring an underground industry under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration.
“Steroids would be regulated in the same way as all other drugs and tested for safety,” Fost said. “It would stop companies like BALCO that lack FDA oversight.”
Fost says baseball and Congress’ tougher stance on steroids is highly hypocritical. If the MLB is truly concerned about players serving as role models, then the league should seek to move away from the promotion of alcohol and tobacco, according to Fost.
“We have a baseball park called Miller Park, where fathers drink beer and drive their sons home, and the league does nothing about that,” Fost said. “Yet we have steroids that cause almost no deaths and they’re mentioned on the front page of the paper and in the State of the Union address.”
Some say baseball needs to look at the NFL, which has not faced nearly as much scrutiny in regards to juiced players. But Garvey, who led the players’ union during the ’70s and early ’80s, warns the NFL is still plagued by steroids, albeit on a less noticeable scale.
“When I was running the union, most users were linemen,” Garvey said. “It’s one thing to be a great big guy in the middle of the offensive line. It’s another to swing and hit a ball 500 feet, when before you could only hit 300 feet.”
