Tag: Barry Bonds

I’ll have a column on Barry Bonds tomorrow, but I thougth I’d offer some thoughts on steroids in baseball and the evolution of my thinking.

There was a time when I was completely aghast at the notion that steroids were apparently rampant in the sport, believing they compromised the integrity of the game and its statistical foundation and sent a terrible message to young fans.

But steroids are not the scourge envisioned by the press. It’s not that I endorse their use — I think any athlete is foolish to put that kind of stuff into their bodies. But they are adults and adults get to make decisions about their lives for good or ill.

And don’t give me that line about athletes being role models. They are athletes. They hit a ball with a long stick and often do really assinine things; why we think they should be paragons of virtue — better than the mechanic down the street or the office-worker next door — is a question that begs for an answer.

In any case, here is a summary of my current thinking on steroids in sports. Feel free to let me know that I’m wrong (but, please, keep it clean):

1. Adults should have the right, within limits and so long as they are clear about the risks, to do what they like to their bodies, be it tattoos or steroids or what have you. The government, however, does have a right to step in when an adult’s behavior may put someone else in danger — by banning drinking and driving, for instance, or by prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars to protect workers and other patrons from second-hand smoke. Or by limiting access to adults, as we try to do with liquor.

2. Steroids — like the myriad recreational drugs out there — should be treated as a health issue. A massive health-education campaign is probably needed to demonstrate the dangers to the body and society of steroid abuse. There should be treatment options with law enforcement geared toward pushing users into treatment slots.

3. Sports always has been about finding the advantage and I’m not sure that, ethically, there is a lot of difference between a ballplayer using steroids, a pitcher throwing a spitball or all the body armor batters now wear. That may seem an odd set of connections, but there is some equivalence here — especially when you consider that steroids were not considered a banned substance in baseball until relatively recently.

James Carroll spelled this point out in a June column:

What are the issues embedded in these sporting controversies? In an age when improvement of physical and mental ability is promoted as a fundamental virtue, why do some methods of improvement seem right, while others leave us feeling queasy? What happens when genetic engineering replaces exercise and drug use as the main mode of athletic enhancement? Will bionic athletes whose bodies have been transformed by cloning complete the steroid-inspired movement from sport to spectacle?

It is part of a “drive to mastery” that reaches well beyond the sports world and raises the specter of “genetic manipulation aimed at flawless children” and even “a new eugenics that could ultimately create two classes of human beings.”

Sports already operates in this realm, self selecting for particular attributes — think about the growth in size of offensive linemen in football over the years, or the way all basketball players, regardless of their position, seem taller than in years past.

It is a sports version of natural selection: Hitters who see the ball more quickly than others survive; those who are slower to see it coming in do not. The same kinds of calculations are made about pitchers, quarterbacks, tennis players and soccer goalies. You either get the job done — by whatever means necessary — or you find a new line of work.

So is it any wonder that athletes turn to steroids and other perfomance enhancers?

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