The saddest example of what I’m talking about is the story of Marion Jones, a star of track and field, who had to give back five Olympic medals earned at the 2000 Olympic Games when she admitted to having taken performance enhancing steroids. Once celebrated as the world’s most gifted female athlete, Jones also had to endure a six month prison sentence for lying to a Grand Jury.
Who’s Telling The Truth?
In the battle of ace pitcher Roger Clemens and his one-time friend and trainer Brian McNamee before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, we are subjected to yet another ugly installment of the performance enhancing steroid saga. Who is telling the truth about performance enhancing drug use, pitcher Roger Clemens, definitely one of the heroes of the game, or trainer Brian McNamee? And who will be subjected to a prison term for lying to a committee of the U.S. Congress? Stay tuned to find out.
Will the unholy alliance of performance enhancing steroids and athletics never go away? Maybe not. That’s because every party to the issue including the public has different ideas about the rightness and wrongness of the issue, and too many would prefer not to think about it at all. They just want it to go away. Their anger, if they’re feeling it at all, has mostly to do with being forced to think about it because a segment of the evening news has pushed it under their noses.
Let’s Not Be Naive
And let’s not be naive. There are powerful reasons for athletes to think they need to take performance enhancing steroids and human growth hormone, not least of which is the fear that everyone else in their sport is doing it, and they’re afraid of not remaining competitive. The economic motivations are just some of the reasons. Athletes do care about breaking records in their respective sports, and they do care about longevity in their chosen sport. They love the way winning makes them feel about themselves and the accompanying adulation.
On the other hand, we can’t let our athletes take performance enhancing drugs, can we? How “real” is the game we’re watching as sports fans if we do that? How “honest” is it? Doesn’t the game simply become a case of who has the best pharmacy and the best personal pharmacologist? Is that what we want for our professional teams? Is that what we want as a role model for our young people?
The Libertarian Solution
Or do we really care? Do we really care that although a slew of laws and regulations are already on the books that they are regularly being ignored or violated? Okay here’s my proposal. We decide not to ban steroids at all. We stop all drug testing. Not just in the United States but world-wide. We say that anything goes. Let the athletes be free to take whatever they want, in whatever quantity they want, and as often as they like. Let the athletes decide whether they are willing to chance the health risks. That’s not the public’s concern. In other words we adopt the libertarian solution.
On the other hand, to ensure that public morality prevails and to help ensure public confidence in our professional sports, we will insist on this: All athletes taking performance enhancing substances or who owe their participation in their sport to having used the human growth hormone in the past must wear a prominent sign, both front and back, whenever they are performing their sport that says the following: “Steroid User.” Furthermore in the telecasts of all sporting events, a graphic must appear on screen containing the same information anytime the image of an athlete appears who is a previous or current user. “Steroid User” will flash across the screen.
Steroid User Sign
My proposal also provides a solution for the Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire dilemma. How do we handle the achievements of these baseball players in the record books? We use the asterisk approach in print media, as has been already suggested a number of times and which, as far as a I know, is already being done in some cases, but we also use the graphic approach any time their images appear, whether in print or in video. On audio, whether radio or a recording, an announcer would have the job of giving voice to some version of the “performance enhancing drugs” statement. At the same the official game program for each game would also have to include indicators as to who the steroid drug users are.
Drug Pavilion at Cooperstown
As for future record books, they should probably be published with “drugs” and “drug free” sections. The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, would include a special “performance enhancing drugs” pavilion. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire would appear in that wing, not in the same room with Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. Pitchers would be handled in a similar manner. Depending how the current Clements McNamee hassle plays out, Roger Clements, that is, his picture and statue, could end up in the special “drugs user” pavilion at Cooperstown.
What do you think of my proposal? Let me know, and anyone interested in sending in a donation for the new “Drugs Pavilion” at Cooperstown why send it right in. Remember to mark your check for the Performance Enhancing Steroid Drug User Pavilion at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Okay, I admit that this is not a pretty proposal. It’s borne out of frustration, a lot of it.
Mandatory Drug Testing
If you don’t like that idea how about that we fully enforce the laws that are already on the books including random, mandatory steroid drug testing? And, yes, cheaters, that is, people who manufacture, sell, inject, and use substances that happen for the moment not to be detectable through current testing technology are guaranteed substantial jail terms, probably even more severe terms than others.
Not pretty at all, right? but the alternate is even less pretty, and that is, to have more and more Marion Jones’s having to give back medals and having to spend time in prison. Nothing pretty about that.
To see a sampling of the other writing of Stephen Alan Saft, also known as S.A. Saft, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft
No comments:
Post a Comment