AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2007 > December > 14
Friday, December 14, 2007
What a tangled web of deceit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ahhhhhhhhh!
My reaction after taking a steroid injection in the buttocks?
No, my thoughts after perusing most of the 400-plus-page, mind-numbing tome that was the Mitchell Report, then reading a few dozen reaction stories and opinion pieces cranked out feverishly in the 24 hours since its release.
So many thoughts, so many obstacles yet to overcome, such a complex issue.
All one needs to do is read the reactions of so many of you on this blog since ol’ George (Mitchell) took the podium to understand how passionate, how angry, how torn and frustrated so many people are about the entire Steroid Era.
(And by the way, how unfortunate if you’re a clean player who happened to be a star in the Steroid Era, as opposed to being a star in the Deadball Era, or some other era. Hey, blame your teammates who chose not to do things the right way. And by the way, a lot of guys must be wishing Radomski accepted debit cards.)
Wouldn’t it be nice just to be able to shake the Players Association and MLB officials and everyone else in the game by their collective lapel and say, “Good God, man, just do the right thing so people can believe what they’re watching is real!”
Oh, but it’s never that simple. Hardly anything ever is that we care about.
Anyway, I’ll climb off the soapbox. I’m just another member of the media, and we’re often held accountable, too, for supposedly turning the other cheek, like trainers and agents and scouts and coaches, managers and club officials, who all had suspicions if not outright knowledge of guys on the juice during the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s, and into this decade.
And don’t think for a moment that many players, perhaps hundreds, aren’t still using HGH, which can’t be detected by urine testing, the only testing used in baseball, because it’s the only testing allowed by the Players Association. Even if they got smart (which they will, eventually) and agreed to blood testing, there’s still not an absolutely reliable blood test for HGH.
(By the way, most of those mentioned in the Mitchell Report were caught or implicated just because they happened to use the dealer who got pinched. If it had been a drug-dealing clubby or strength coach on the West Coast, you can bet the list would have tilted far more toward players from teams out there.)
By the time there is a test for HGH, some evil-genius chemist will have come up with a new undetectable designer drug to help those players determined to find something that will give them the edge. And when that drug is detectable, there will be another.
That’s how it is in the modern, ultra-lucrative world of pro sports. Ego and/or million-dollar salaries will drive highly competitive athletes to do things.
But at least baseball probably will (eventually) take more steps toward doing all it can to alleviate as much of the problem as possible, to stay on the cutting edge as much as it can. In a multi-billion-dollar industry like this, MLB can do far more than it currently does to stay on the cutting edge.
Baseball needs to turn its drug policy and enforcement over to an independent body, preferably the United States Anti-Doping Agency. And baseball needs to hire a full-time anti-doping administrator, who’d working closely with the USADA at all times.
(If you know how many assistants travel in Bud Selig’s entourage, clogging the pressbox hallway while Bud speaks to reporters about Barry Bonds, prohibiting me from getting past with my garlic fries so I can watch blog while watching the sixth inning of the Braves-Giants game right before the All-Star break, you’d know baseball has more than enough money to hire another staffer.)
Of course, MLB can’t do much of anything without the powerful union’s approval. So as much as players say, “We want to clean the sport up,” until their union agrees to more serious, year-round, unannounced urine testing, and until they agree to seriously consider something like - here’s my recommendation — once- or twice-a-year random blood testing, there are always going to be suspicions that any player doing anything extraordinary is doing it with assistance from performance-enhancing drugs.
Sorry, players, but that’s just the way it is.
Oh, and please, MLB officials, but don’t give us that garbage about not knowing there was a serious steroids problem brewing over the past couple decades.
You either knew, or you were too ignorant or disengaged from the sport to have been qualified to hold the positions you held. I mean, come on.
Either you knew, or you must have had no contact with the people in uniform, playing and coaching the game, and the people in the training rooms working on them, the ones treating the dramatic rise in tendon and ligament tears and other such injuries that should have raised red flags.
And yes, we knew. All of us who cover the games knew or had strong suspicions about certain players. But still, I’ve had about enough with the self-flagellation and self-serving indignation expressed by some in the media, admonishing themselves and us all for not writing more about it.
Because you know what? Without evidence, without hard proof, if we wrote stories about specific players we simply suspected were on ‘roids, on hearsay and rather flimsy (at least from a legal perspective) evidence of the kind implicating many in the Mitchell Report, we’d have never gotten those stories in the papers. That’s a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
It wasn’t until a federal investigation opened the BALCO can of worms that evidence of substance got into the right hands, and some very good investigative reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle worked sources and got leaked grand jury testimony and …. Well, the poopstorm began in earnest. Thankfully.
And only after another government investigation led to a former batboy/clubhouse attendant and a former strength coach flipping and turning informants, that the Mitchell investigation led to a scratching of the surface by implicating dozens of other present and past players to ‘roids and HGH.
But again, let me assure you, if reporters tried to publish stories using only the level of “evidence” the Mitchell Report contained in many instances, those stories would never get past editors and into the papers.
For instance, one player saying he heard another talk about using steroids? Beyond the fact that one player isn’t going to say that to a reporter on the record (he’s only going to say it to investigators, to save his butt), we couldn’t write that as a straight news story, naming the supposed “user” (Brian Roberts, in this case) without some proof and without talking to Roberts and getting his side of the story.
That’s how it works in most media outlets. If it wasn’t, we’d be a nation full of sensational tabloids (OK, no cynical comments from the peanut gallery) and an already gratuitous scandal-for-the-sake-of-scandal mentality would be taken to an entirely new level.
Did I ever see guys with back acne (when they were still using oil-based ‘roids) and prematurely thinning hair, and bloated muscles that we all knew weren’t natural? Yes. Of course. We all did.
But you don’t write, “Joe Blow has hit a career-high 35 homers this season, and if fans could see his back acne they’d know why. He’s a juicer, folks. A fraud.” Unless you had proof, not much you could do but ask folks, and if you think anyone was going to give you proof in the circle-the-wagons world of baseball, you probably don’t understand what a tight circle it is.
Until that bottle of andro was left in Big Mac’s locker, or that clubby was pulled over with some bad stuff in the glovebox of the player’s car he was driving … until those kinds of instances, there wasn’t much substantial evidence to write stories implicating specific players.
There wasn’t much more than the seemingly less-than-credible Jose Canseco and the pitiful Ken Caminiti talking about their own ‘roid use and how many others in the game had used.
(Time to admit it, if we haven’t already: Jose knew exactly what he was talking about. Bitter, yes? Blackballed because of controversy he stirred up? No (he was run out of the game because he could no longer play, period). But truthful? It appears so, at least in most instances.)
But getting back to the point (if I can find it again … oh yes, here it is): We all should have written and said more about ‘roid suspicions, at least in general terms that would have been permitted in the papers and on the air (wait, just about anything is permitted these days on the air, isn’t it? So scratch that.)
Hey, let’s be honest: When you’re around the game every day, covering a team and covering games and talking to players on and off the record on a daily basis for nine months a year, it would have taken a lot of stones to be able to say a lot of them were juicing before some unrefutable evidence starting showing up.
And I do know that when some baseball beat reporters tried to help out investigative reporters at their own papers, give them all they knew about ‘roid use and who was suspected of using, it usually led to closed doors and talk of privacy laws and guys refusing to rat on others because they didn’t have anything to gain by doing so (such as immunity or a lighter sentence).
Here’s another thing: Most writers, broadcasters and others got caught up in the home-run explosion that MLB and its fans enjoyed, at least initially, until things started getting completely out of hand, and guys were hitting 60 homers instead of 45, and big, bad Barry crushed records and left in his wake the feel-good moments provided by smilin’ Sammy (he was phony, but sure could smile and say cute things in that accent of his) and Big Mac (he wasn’t very friendly, but seemed like a good ‘ol working man, and at least he didn’t smirk at us like Barry).
In hindsight, you gotta wonder what might have happened if a more likable, less controversial, less cocky, surly fella than Barry had come along and smashed those records. Hmmm. Would there have been so much effort to bring him down, and put him in a situation where he could perjure himself and eventually lead to federal charges (remember, he’s not charged with using ‘roids, but with lying). I don’ know. Just wondering here, just talking off the top of my head.
Come to think of it, baseball might owe a debt of gratitude to Barry for being such an insufferable jerk. Because if he weren’t, think about it: Would we be talking about this today? Would there have even been a Mitchell investigation? Would those fine reporters at the Chronicle have been able to sink their teeth into another such story and blow the lid completely off the Steroid Era?
So, here goes: Thanks, Barry Bonds. For being who you are. Seems like no one wanted to give you a pass like some did with Big Mac, and some are now with Roger Clemens. And because so many disliked you, Barry, today baseball and its union are in a corner of sorts. They know that the court of public opinion demands they continue to move this ball (no, not Dianobal) forward and do the right thing.
”LYIN’ EYES” by Don Henley and Glenn Frey
City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man
And she won’t have to worry
She’ll dress up all in lace and go in style
Late at night a big old house gets lonely
I guess ev’ry form of refuge has its price
And it breaks her heart to think her love is only
Given to a man with hands as cold as ice
So she tells him she must go out for the evening
To comfort an old friend who’s feelin’ down
But he knows where she’s goin’ as she’s leavin’
She is headed for the cheatin’ side of town
You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
On the other side of town a boy is waiting
with fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
She drives on through the night anticipating
‘Cause he makes her feel the way she used to feel
She rushes to his arms,
They fall together
She whispers that it’s only for awhile
She swears that soon she’ll be comin’ back forever
She pulls away and leaves him with a smile
You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide you lyin’ eyes
She gets up and pours herself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it’s gonna be a long one
She draws the shade and hangs her head to cry
She wonders how it ever got this crazy
She thinks about a boy she knew in school
Did she get tired or did she just get lazy?
She’s so far gone she feels just like a fool
My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things
You’re still the same old girl you used to be
You can’t hide your lyin eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
Honey, you can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
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