MLB shouldn't stand alone in 'roids battle, By: Ken Rosenthal
06/23/06
Lesson No. 1 from the Steroid Era: It isn't only star players who use performance enhancers, but also journeymen.
Lesson No. 2: It isn't only hitters, but also pitchers.
Lesson No. 3: It isn't only baseball players, but also other professional athletes — yes, even those in the high and mighty NFL.
However, you don't hear much about Lesson No. 3; the NFL is so brilliant at public relations, so entrenched in the national psyche, that it has become practically untouchable.
But doesn't anyone grasp that if baseball players use steroids to help recover from injuries, then the temptation must be even greater in football, a far more violent sport?
Doesn't anyone notice that football players are also producing freakish performances with increasingly outsized physiques?
Or, do 350-pound linemen simply run outrageously fast times in the 40-yard dash as a result of better nutrition and conditioning?
Please.
As much as Major League Baseball deserves to be excoriated for years of denial and deceit, the focus of Congress, the media and general public is too narrow.
It's everyone, baby.
And the only solution is for professional sports leagues to band together, develop more advanced tests and beat the cheaters in a chemical arms race, once and for all.
Such an outcome probably would require Congressional intervention, not to mention an investment of millions annually for the next several decades.
So be it.
MLB is in an awful place right now, even though attendance and revenues have never been higher. If people ever woke up, the NFL and other leagues would face greater scrutiny, too.
The integrity of every sport is in question, or should be. And yet, all anyone wants to know is the identity of the major leaguers whose names were crossed out in a federal investigator's affidavit concerning former pitcher Jason Grimsley.
Shocking as this might be to devotees of Mel Kiper Jr., the NFL doesn't test for human growth hormone, either. Nor is it as clean as commissioner Paul Tagliabue or the league's various sycophants would have you believe.
Former NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski was a pivotal client for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), recruiting fellow athletes from football, baseball and track and field. In 2003, Romanowski was one of four Oakland Raiders who tested positive for THG, a previously unknown designer steroid that was uncovered during the BALCO scandal. And in 2005, 60 Minutes Wednesday reported that three members of the Carolina Panthers filled steroid prescriptions within two weeks of playing in the 2004 Super Bowl.
Hello?
The NFL is getting off easy. So are the NBA and NHL. But the future is more important than the past, or even the present; MLB's steroids investigation looks more pointless by the minute. What's done is done. Little, if anything, will be gained by looking back.
Imagine: MLB commissioner Bud Selig ordered the investigation only after the publication of a book, Game of Shadows. Yet, Selig's recent open letter to fans showed signs that he finally is starting to get "it."
Selig acknowledged that MLB can't simply eliminate performance-enhancing drugs, saying "there will always be a few players who seek new ways to violate the rules, no matter how many we have and how often we toughen them." He also called for other professional sports leagues, their unions and Congress to "join us in pursuing the detection and deterrence of HGH use."
Eureka.
No one man, one union or one league can be trusted to stop performance enhancers. MLB, in particular, has shown that it is incapable of affecting change; it took, almost literally, an act of Congress for the sport to adopt tough steroid testing, and the players remain far too passive on the subject. As for the NFL, heaven forbid that the league admits to anything that tarnishes its squeaky-clean image; this is an outfit berserk over Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
Enough already. Enough of the lies, from every sport.
If you want to say that MLB carries a deeper burden as the most blatant offender, a greater responsibility as the so-called national pastime, that's fine. But for heaven's sake, this isn't just about baseball. This is about what we want sports to represent. About adopting a collective will. About, frankly, the pursuit of a higher cause.
Let's see Selig, Tagliabue, NBA commissioner David Stern and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman stand side by side on the steps of the Capitol. Let's see them acknowledge that they're all in this together. And let's see Congress support them by helping fund the necessary science.
If pro sports leagues truly want to curb illegal drug use, they had better prepare for a long and expensive fight.
That's the final lesson, and it's a sobering lesson indeed.
Ken Rosenthal is FOXSports.com's senior baseball writer.
