Amid the release of Jose Canseco’s book, “Juiced,” and the BALCO scandal, steroids has forced its way to the forefront of Major League Baseball, and that’s not exactly a good thing. The concern over the use of anabolic steroids has grown to mammoth proportions, so big that it currently overshadows the success of any team or individual.
Not only that, but the steroid problem has reached the point where Congress now feels obligated to step in and do something about it. Their answer? An 11-hour hearing on steroids with the likes of Commissioner Bud Selig and star players such as Curt Schilling and Sammy Sosa.
Congress said that they held a hearing on steroids to ensure that MLB has the right testing program in place to prevent the use of steroids because they believe that the current policy’s punishments are far too weak. By doing so, they are also attempting to find out if the players rumored or suspected of steroids are guilty, in light of the fact that these players are looked up to as heroes and role models by children everywhere.
In my opinion, they made little ground in regard to this. Every player subpoenaed to the hearing either denied ever using steroids or attempted to avoid the questions all together. When the players did answer, most of them did so in a nervous fashion with guilt written across their foreheads.
To me, protecting the children and the game of baseball from the harmful effects of steroids is the key issue and should be, but I think Congress reasoning is more of a ploy to divert attention from the fact that they want baseball to do exactly what they say.
The hearing took place despite the fact that MLB has an antitrust exemption from issues such as drug testing policies that no other major sports league, such as the NBA or NFL, possesses. In my opinion, Congress is holding this exemption over their heads in order to get what they want: a stricter drug policy.
MLB has come a long way on the issue over the past couple years, including a new drug testing policy that includes random testing for anabolic steroids as well as other drugs and performance enhancers just recently instated in January of this year.
After reviewing the policy, I think that it really only has two flaws. The fines for positive tests are much too small in proportion to their huge salaries, and the testing is administered in an unsupervised fashion.
Unlike the motives of Congress in this matter, Selig’s goal is easily recognizable. It is as clear as day to me that he is doing everything in his power to protect the image of MLB and all of its players, especially superstars like Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants and Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees. He wants to avoid asterisks in the record books at all costs. Why? If it were discovered that someone like Bonds or Mark McGwire did steroids then undoubtedly there would have to be some sort of asterisk next to their name because they achieved those stats with an unfair advantage, thus leaving MLB with a nasty steroid stigma. That is exactly what the commissioner is trying to avoid.
Even so, Selig seems to be doing a great job considering the fact that the most scrutinized player in this whole ordeal, Bonds, was not subpoenaed to the hearing.
This is probably the strangest thing of all. Bonds has been linked to BALCO more often than any professional out there, and he shows the physical side effects that a steroid user would display, yet he is not at the hearing.
The future of baseball and its bout with steroids is far from over. As the committee chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) said, “We’re in the first inning of what could be an extra inning ball game.”