Needles and Pills

While preparing for my fantasy football drafts, like all my readers and millions of fans are out there doing right now, and enjoying another Rangers stretch we were hit with back to back positive tests for performance enhancing drugs in baseball.  Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon tested positive for elevated testosterone, received 50 game bans and luckily for the MLB and its fans both players had the grace to accept their punishments without a farce of an appeal or explanation such as “I took a tainted vitamin B pill unknowingly” or the successful Hebrew Hammer defense keeping my piss in a refrigerator over the weekend tainted my test and created a false positive.”  Sigh. We were treated to a fun after-the-fact story of Melky’s camp creating a series of fake supplement websites to try to create a successful we didn’t know it was tainted defense.  At least he admitted guilt before that story came out and he seems to have dodged blame for it.

That’s the good news, players actually admitting it.  As we have seen before with players like Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz admitting to their use, fans seem eager to forgive. When you are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens or Mark ‘Fifth Amendment’ McGwire and refuse to simply own up to what is plainly obvious, fans hate you for it. We as fans aren’t so naïve to believe that professional sports will ever be clean. There is simply too much reward for minimal risk at this point. When you come clean and don’t insult the fans’ intelligence we laugh at you, call you a cheater and move on quickly.

The bad news is, especially for such a statistically driven game like baseball, doping will be here forever. Say it Squints-style from The Sandlot “fffooooooorrrevvvvver”.  It’s the risk-reward I mentioned above.  For baseball especially its clear why a lot of athletes would take performance enhancing drugs at the risk of the stigma and suspensions that come with it. 

Let’s put ourselves in either Melky or Bartolo’s shoes.  Melky is 28 years old and finally eligible for free agency.  In baseball this is your first humongous contract. Why not take performance enhancers for a couple years around your prime age (to deflect some suspicion from improving stats) settle in to a 5 year 85 million dollar guaranteed contract and be set for life?  Baseball doesn’t test but a fraction of players at any time and you can roll the dice that the testosterone is out of your system at the time of tests.  

The same goes for Bartolo, only hes on a 1 year deal this year and 35 years old. Hes looking for one last multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to send him into retirement.  He has even less to lose by doing this (being paid so much over his career) compared to what he could gain otherwise. Sure his career may largely be over now, but so what? Without the drugs it may have anyway. For Melky, prior to last season he was a bench player looking to earn a bump over veterans minimums throughout his career. Why not take the two year risk and set yourself up for life?

The other thing is these drugs are used as much for recovery as they are for increased strength.  I play baseball currently at the spry young age of 30. 9 innings no matter what, no time limit, in 95 degree heat, once a week.  I got injured for 3-4 weeks. I can not imagine playing 10 straight games in the hot ass Texas summer in August after already playing 100 games in the season and not wearing down or being slow to recover from tweaks and strains.  Wearing down lowers your stats, prevents you from getting performance bonuses and gets you less at arbitrations and the open market. Why the hell wouldn’t you take drugs to lessen the impact of wearing down, or get you back on the field in 2-3 weeks instead of 4-6?

There is simply way too much money involved and not a lot of risk. Sure the first time costs you 1/3 of a season, but you aren’t banned. Someone will take a chance with you. It wont be a 5 year 85 million dollar contract for Melky, but rather a 2 year 20 million dollar contract since some GM out there wont believe that testosterone helped that much in Melky throwing up 53 hits in month of May. After all, most of that had to be because he is in his prime right? All the positive drug test did was make him cheaper for you.  Hell, even Manny at age 40 with two positive tests caught at least one flier.

Based on the foregoing, it is easy to understand why the players do it. Pious fans get up and rattle on about how can the players destroy the integrity of the game and asterisks and the like.  If any fan was presented with the choice of rolling the dice for tens of millions of dollars or being out of the league with no other life skills and fan would do it. Shit, we all start with nothing, but very, very few of us end up with even just a half million dollar a year salary.

With Major League Baseball still woefully behind the NFL in terms of number of tests, especially off-season tests where players build the muscle for the season, it is clear the players are still going to be encouraged to roll the dice. It’s a sad fact for baseball, but one I think will be around until MLB gets aggressive with either its punishment or testing protocol.  If baseball was ever to be believed for its tough stance on doping they would begin to adopt the doping protocols of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the punishments of the IAAF.  If you get caught as a track and field athlete you are banned for two years.  Obviously Major League Baseball knows that its star players dope.  With the sport sitting as the 3^rd most popular in the country on most polls, baseball can’t afford to ban players for two years.  So instead they keep the tests limited and the bans short knowing they’ll catch some people but letting others slip through every year to try to mollify the disgust at doping in baseball while preserving much of its star power.

For me, I think I watch the game, and all professional sports, under the assumption many players aren’t on the level. There is too much money at stake to be “honorable” and maintain a level of integrity most other fans seem to need. After all this starts at the high school level for kids who have no shot at a big time college career, not to mention a pro career. On my high school football team and wrestling teams I know for a fact several players hopped in a car, went down to Tijuana and got some “supplements”. It will always be there, and as long as we are entertained, and the journalists continue to safeguard the hall of fames from known dopers I think the system works. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.