Steroids overpower baseball's credibility
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
More and more, those SportsCenter highlights, the ones where the baseballs soar deep into the outfield seats, now come with questions.
Where it was once wondered what the batter hit or what the pitcher was thinking when he served it up, the operative question around many homers has become:
Is the slugger on steroids or not?
Are a batter's mounting home run totals or sudden bursts of power naturally produced or excellence through chemistry? Is it real or is it 'roids?
For years now there has been creeping doubt about the integrity of some of baseball's eye-opening numbers and the people who have produced them. Even before androstenedione became part of the vocabulary there was pause for concern.
Now, there is wholesale suspicion about players on the "juice" and not just among cynics. On the heels of Jose Canseco's vow to write a tell-all book ripping open the world of steroid use and Ken Caminiti's admission that he was was on steroids when he won the National League MVP Award in 1996, baseball's dirtiest laundry is being given an unprecedented public airing.
Yesterday, a USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll said 80 percent of the people interviewed believe steroids have contributed to the game's offensive rampage. Thirty-six percent said they believe half or more of all major leaguers use performance-enhancing drugs. Now, Congress says it plans to hold hearings that will look into steroid use in athletics.
Meanwhile, it is obvious baseball has little interest in a meaningful inquiry. The focus, at the moment, is in using the controversy as a stick to poke at the players association during increasingly contentious negotiations.
There is a reason baseball is the only major professional sports association that doesn't have a prohibition against performance-enhancing drugs or a testing program. It is because baseball has built much of its recovery from the strike of 1994 around the explosion of home runs. Home runs are great for the gate. They're good for television.
Only now, with the secret out of the bottle, more people are wondering how many of those belting them are doing on their own... and how many are the product of slugger in a test tube. Every time someone hits a homer or ends up on the disabled list the questions linger.
Players are growing tired of being asked about the problem. They're testy about speculation surrounding who is on the juice and who isn't.
And, that's good, if it finally prods them to action. What needs to happen is that enough players, particularly the marquee ones, step forward and demand that their union and the owners get together and adopt a responsible program for testing.
They've heard the questions, now it is in their power to answer them.
