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8 Performance-Enhancing Drugs and Antidoping Policy in Major League Baseball Experience, Incentives, and Challenges T HE PROBLEM with performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in professional sports has many dimensions. It is commonly agreed that the use of PEDs by professional athletes needs to be combated for the following reasons: (1) It creates unfair competition , (2) it distorts records, (3) it instigates PED use by formerly clean athletes, (4) it endangers the health of users,1 and (5) it encourages youth to emulate the examples of their favorite players. The response to these problems in the United States has been reluctant. The U.S. public, like sports fans around the world, lives vicariously through its teams and its heroes. Star athletes push the known boundaries of speed, endurance, and strength. Sports fans are understandably enthralled when records are broken. Top athletes not only produce a piece of history; they push out the boundaries of human achievement. Symbolically, by doing so, they appear to chalThis essay is based on “Performance Enhancing Drugs and Antidoping Policy in Major League Baseball: Experience, Incentives, and Challenges,” in Threats to Sports and Sports Participation, ed. P. Rodriguez, S. Kesenne, and J. García (Oviedo, Spain: Universidad de Oviedo Press, 2009). Performance-Enhancing Drugs and Antidoping Policy ▪ 147 lenge our greatest limit, our mortality. The Greeks invented stories about demigods to imagine the transcendence of human performance . If PEDs promote record-breaking performance, then the first reaction of most fans is to be excited. It is not until the publicity around PEDs passes a threshold of scandal and unacceptability that an expectation of policies to control the abuse emerges. Even then, there is a strong tolerance of rule breaking, as long as the violators do not get caught and the executives give the appearance that they are forthrightly attempting to curb the problem. In the United States, an additional peculiarity exists. Professional baseball has been around since the formation of the National League in 1876, when the records of individual players and teams began to be kept.2 Baseball was unchallenged on the pedestal of spectator sports until at least 1958 by the NFL and some twenty-five years later by the NBA. The production function of baseball is much more individualistic than that in football or basketball, and, as such, the records of individual players stand out more. Most individual player records in baseball are hallowed in U.S. culture. Almost any baseball fan can tell you who hit the most home runs in a single season and how many home runs were hit; indeed, many nonfans can also answer those questions. It is probable, however, that very few basketball fans can tell you which player scored the most points in a single NBA season and how many points he scored. Thus, if a defensive lineman uses steroids, and this enables him to set the record for tackles per season, the feat is barely noticed.3 But if an outfielder uses steroids, and it is presumed that this enables him to hit seventy-three instead of sixty-three home runs, then every baseball writer, radio or television commentator, and blogger in the country has something to say about whether the record should count. Finally, it is important to remember that baseball and other unionized sports must negotiate any antidoping policies with their players’ associations. Drug policy is a mandatory subject for collective bargaining in the United States. Thus, unlike the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Tennis Federation (ITF), 148 ▪ Chapter 8 or NASCAR,4 which can unilaterally set drug policies without player approval, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and other team sports are obligated to set policy bilaterally. It is against this backdrop that the evolution of baseball’s experience with PEDs should be analyzed. National Legislation The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 prohibited the distribution of all prescription drugs unless authorized by a physician . In 1970, Congress enacted the Controlled Substances Act, which stipulated criminal penalties for drug offenses, but steroids were not specifically mentioned as a controlled substance. However, in 1988, an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act was passed that made the distribution of anabolic steroids illegal unless authorized by a physician. A further amendment in 1990, known as the Anabolic Steroids Control Act, set stricter controls with tougher criminal penalties (up to five years in prison) for the distribution of steroids and human growth hormone (HGH). Penalties were also established for the possession of anabolic steroids, but not for...

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