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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Baseball's tougher steroid tests: A red-letter day for whoever has succeeded BALCO.
Nov 17, 2005 | Where do you think the best lab is? The one that's leading the way, producing today's version of THG, the synthetic steroid the drug cops didn't even know existed until somebody sent them a syringe?
Or should I say where do you think the best labs are? Because as baseball's drug punishments keep getting stronger, beating the drug cops has got to be a growth industry. BALCO got busted, but there are other BALCOs out there. Some lab is on top of the game, and its prices just went up.
Baseball and its players union have modified the current collective-bargaining agreement for the second time to toughen penalties for steroid use, announcing Tuesday that positive tests will result in a 50-day suspension for the first offense, 100 days for the second and a lifetime ban for the third. Those banned for life will be able to apply for reinstatement after two years.
The agreement is likely to cause a grandstanding Congress to back off its threat to pass a law mandating longer penalties for steroid use, or at least to exempt baseball from it.
Lawmakers were concerned about our nation's youth and didn't want kids following the example of juiced-up ballplayers by taking steroids. As Murray Chass pointed out in the New York Times, politicians interested in the health of this country's kids ought to be introducing bills to ban cigarettes, but it sounds silly just to say that, doesn't it?
Steroid manufacturers don't have lobbyists or political action committees and they don't write big fat checks as campaign contributions, or at least they don't do so as steroid manufacturers.
So this sort of thing is inevitable. The testing and penalties have to keep getting tougher until the public is satisfied the problem has been solved. Then we'll all get worked up about some other problem, regardless of how big a problem it really is, or whether any of us actually know the first thing about what we're talking about.
The owners and executives can stop pretending that they care about this issue and always have, and the politicians can turn to the next problem that's threatening the youth of this country and that can get them on television without alienating their biggest donors.
In the meantime, the bad guys, the drug makers, dealers and users, will stay ahead of the cops. They always do. Everyone who thinks there were only 12 dirty players in the major leagues this year, the number who got caught, clap your hands. And then fly around the room twice. Go ahead. It should work, because you're dreaming.
