Professional sports may have reached an all-time low last month.
Hockey players are on strike and whining about salaries, basketball players are attacking fans, and baseball’s best are admitting to years of steroid use.
Sure, athletes have never been squeaky clean: There always seems to be an Olympic medal stripped here, a football player addicted to pain-killers there, and an array of suspensions and arrests for behavioral problems on and off the field. Yet looking at everything witnessed in the last month, it would appear that the conduct of these competitive and oftentimes overly aggressive athletes has gone from bad to worse.
As a nation, are we supposed to sit back and watch some of the country’s most powerful, wealthy and talented citizens embarrass not only themselves but the teams and leagues for which they play? Are we supposed to let the people who regularly fill the pages of our newspapers, decorate the walls of children’s rooms and cover our cities’ billboards act in a way that would be unacceptable for anyone else?
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain seems to think not. The senator announced Saturday that if Major League Baseball players and their owners do not adopt stricter drug testing measures by January, he would introduce legislation enforcing mandatory testing standards.
The U.S. Congress would certainly have the ability to pass such legislation under the Commerce Clause. The clause from Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states that Congress can regulate commerce with foreign nations and between states. Major League Baseball players are drawn from nearly every state and a variety of other nations, fans from all over the country buy tickets and apparel, and contracts with the media and other endorsements are national, interstate agreements. Such legislation would be a pretty clear-cut case of something that falls under the confines of the commerce clause and is therefore within Congress’s governing scope.
Therefore, the question isn’t can Congress pass such legislation, but should it. Issuing testing standards isn’t a matter of public safety, public health or even the legality of the substances for which the athletes are tested. It’s a matter of publicly asserting a level of morality. Requiring drug-testing would serve to clean up Major League Baseball, but more importantly, it would send the message to athletes and citizens alike that as a country, we will demand a higher level of conduct and integrity from professional athletes.
It would tell those whose salaries rely on ticket sales and other purchases from the general public that steroids are an unacceptable, dishonest way of attaining their levels of performance and fame.
The truth is that the United States passes laws legislating morality all the time. Taxing based on income is a moral decision, based on the belief that increased earnings comes with an increased responsibility to society in the form of taxes. Even statutory rape can be considered moral legislation. If sexual intercourse between an adult and a consenting minor causes no harm to the younger person, what reason do we have to ban it other than as a society, we see it as something morally reprehensible?
Of course, there comes a point when legislating morality infringes on individual freedom, yet this point is hard to determine. Should pornography be outlawed? Does allowing it to continue as an industry send a message that we as a society find it morally acceptable? Those supporting a ban on abortion back up their claims on completely moral grounds, and one of the most controversial, current debates questions whether the government has the right to control what would otherwise be a moral decision by the mother of an unborn child. Anything that seems to limit individual decisions certainly causes divisions in our society, showing that to a large degree, we are nervous about letting our government influence our moral decisions.
In the case of Major League Baseball, imposing mandatory drug-testing standards is a moral legislation in which the benefits outweigh any restricted freedom among players and owners. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is a practice that almost everyone can agree is fundamentally wrong, but one in which unfortunately far too many athletes partake. Such legislation would improve the overall morale of Major League Baseball, and perhaps professional sports in general. It might even have ripple effects, sending the message to owners and players in other sports leagues that they had better solve their problems before Congress does.
In all likelihood, the threat of Sen. McCain’s legislation will probably scare the MLB into shaping up before intervention is even required. Yet if this is not the case, McCain will be more than ready to use his powers granted by the Commerce Clause to start drafting legislation that imposes the morality our professional athletes have recently failed to show.
Jamie Shookman ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English and political science.