Thomas Hauser on Sports: Remembering the Journey

Baseball’s Steroid Problem

As the 2005 season began, Major League Baseball faced a scandal of a different kind. Baseball’s Steroid Problem Recent reports of steroid use by Major League Baseball players are shadowing the start of the 2005 season.A federal grand jury has heard testimony regarding alleged steroid use by Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi. Jose Conseco claims in a new book to have shot up with Mark McGwire. Some of the allegations might be unfounded, but it’s clear that the presence of steroids in baseball constitutes a significant problem . Let’s start by noting that allegations of steroid use aren’t new.They surfaced in the late 1980s and gathered steam in 1998, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa vied to become baseball’s new single-season home-run king. McGwire acknowledged using a natural hormone called androstenedione , which is favored by body-builders and has since has been banned by Major League Baseball. Sosa denied steroid use, but his body changed in remarkable ways. Meanwhile, Bonds was growing from a 185-pound leadoff hitter into a 230-pound behemoth. After hitting a career-high forty-nine home runs in 2000, he smashed seventy-three round-trippers in 2001. Then, in June 2002,TomVerducci authored a groundbreaking expose for Sports Illustrated. “Steroid use, which a decade ago was considered a taboo violated by a few renegade sluggers,”Verducci wrote, “is now so rampant in baseball that even pitchers and wispy outfielders are juicing up and talking openly among themselves about it.” Verducci described the game as a “pharmacological trade show” with hundreds of players relying on illegal performance-enhancing drugs. He quoted Curt Schilling as saying, “I’ll pat guys on the ass [baseball’s traditional slap on the butt for a job well-done], and they’ll look at me and go, ‘Don’t hit me there, man. It hurts.’ That’s where they shoot the steroid needles.You look at some of these players and you know what’s going on. 176 THOMAS HAUSER Guys out there look like Mr. Potato Head, with a head and arms and six or seven body parts that just don’t look right.They don’t fit.” Verducci also reported on former All-Star Ken Caminiti, who acknowledged winning the 1996 National League MostValuable Player award while on steroids. “I’ve made a ton of mistakes,”Verducci quoted Caminiti as saying, “but I don’t think using steroids is one of them.It’s no secret what’s going on in baseball.At least half the guys are using steroids.They talk about it. They joke about it with each other.The guys who want to protect themselves or their image by lying have that right. Me? I don’t want to hurt teammates or friends, but I’ve got nothing to hide. If a young player were to ask me what to do, I’m not going to tell him it’s bad. Look at all the money in the game.You have a chance to set your family up, to get your daughter into a better school. So I can’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ Not when the guy next to you is as big as a house, and he’s going to take your job and make the money.” Major League Baseball’s response to Verducci’s revelations was a resounding nothing. Commissioner Bud Selig and his owner-brethren largely ignored the issue. Bonds, who insisted that he had added muscle exclusively through proper diet and training, told the Associated Press, “What players take doesn’t matter. It’s nobody else’s business.The doctors should spend their time looking for cures for cancer.” Then came a crisis that couldn’t be swept under the rug. In February 2004, a federal grand jury in San Francisco handed down indictments charging four men with the illegal distribution of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances. Among the indicted were Victor Conte and Greg Anderson. Conte had founded the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), a medical facility that specialized in testing athletes and providing them with “nutritional supplements” through a subsidiary known as SNAC (Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning). Anderson is a longtime friend of Bonds and had begun working with the star as his personal trainer in 1998.The site of their workouts was a gym located one block from BALCO. Anderson introduced Bonds to Conte, who arranged for a nutritional supplement plan...