Words. For Your Consideration...
"WHEN the Baseball Hall of Fame commemorates its 70th anniversary with an exhibition game in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Sunday, five of its members will play on the national field of dreams. At least two of them — Paul Molitor and Ferguson Jenkins — were busted in the 1980s for using cocaine. Molitor later said he was sure he wasn’t the only player on the team using drugs.
Given what we now know about baseball’s drug habit, the remark sounds quaint. This week’s report that Sammy Sosa tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 is only the latest in a long string of revelations. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire — what great players haven’t been linked to drug use?
... For decades, baseball beat writers — the Hall of Fame’s designated electoral college — shielded the players from scrutiny. When the Internet (and exposés by two former ballplayers, Jim Bouton and Jose Canseco) allowed fans to see what was really happening, the baseball writers were revealed as dupes or stooges. In a rage, they formed a posse to drive the drug users out of the game.
But today’s superstars have lawyers and a union. They know how to use the news media. And they have plenty of money. The only way to punish them is to deny them a place in Cooperstown. The punishment has already been visited on Mark McGwire, and many more are on deck.
This makes no sense. On any given day, the stands are packed with youngsters on Adderall and Ritalin (stimulants used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and college students who use Provigil (an anti-narcolepsy drug) as a study aid. The guy who sings the national anthem has probably taken a beta blocker to calm his stage fright. Like it or not, chemical enhancement is here to stay. And it is as much a part of the national game as $5.50 hot dogs, free agency and Tommy John elbow surgery.
...Despite these changes, or because of them, Americans continue to love baseball. Fans will accept anything except the sense that they are being lied to. Chemical enhancement won’t kill the game; it is the cover-up that could be fatal..."
1 comment:
So here's the thing: cheating is, I suggest, when you make the playing field less level to your own advantage. Using a corked baseball bat is cheating because other players don't have access to the same corked bats.
Now, performance-enhancing drugs could one day be used by everyone, but not right now. Right now, performance-enhancing drugs are potentially dangerous, and most would have to be desperate or crazy to put themselves at risk in that way.
It seems wrong to suggest that we should be encouraging people who are playing games for a living to risk their long-term health (or in fact their lives) in pursuit of marginally-better performance. So this seems to put it out of reach of sane players.
Besides, if everyone were using PEDs, there'd be no reason to use them at all in a sport like baseball. In weightlifting, if it were safe enough for everyone to use, everyone probably would, and it wouldn't be cheating.
Provigil, right now, is the same story, so it's probably cheating. However, as far as I know, there have been few noteworthy side effects to its use. Down the road, we may come to trust drugs like provigil to be a natural part of encouraging productivity, just like listening to music or something. Were that the case, it wouldn't be cheating anymore.
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