Much has been made of the lack of integrity in professional sports, most recently in baseball’s Mitchell Report, with revelations of widespread use of anabolic steroids, testosterone, and growth hormone. But few reporters seem to be interested in investigating the alleged improprieties of federal investigators involved in the crusade against doping in sports.
Roger Clemens’ defamation lawsuit against former trainer Brian McNamee vaguely hints at impropriety by federal investigators, including Jeff Novitsky, during their interrogation of McNamee. There is a long trail of alleged investigative misconduct that has followed Jeff Novitsky since the beginning of the BALCO scandal. Read the rest of this entry »
I am shocked at the misinformation regarding lidocaine that has circulated the media news sites and blogosphere as it relates to major league baseball player Roger Clemens. The addition of lidocaine to a B-12 injection didn’t seem unusual to me or even in need of an explanation. I didn’t think I need bother to comment upon it; surely, someone would explain it.
ESPN interviewed two “experts” - Dr. Ken Dretchen, pharmacology department chair at Georgetown University and Dr. John F. Dombrowski, director of pain medicine at the Washington Pain Center. They were clueless. Amazing. But I definitely won’t hold it against them. They are most certainly experts in their respective fields, just not experts on doping. Read the rest of this entry »
The Roger Clemens interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes will turn out to be a disaster for Clemens. Attorney Rusty Hardin should be fired for advising him and speaking out for him in the press.
Hardin told the press recently that Clemens received multiple injections throughout his career. He even compared the use of, shall we say performance-enhancing injections, to those of a high-performance racehorse. Great analogy (sarcasm) - compare a suspected doper to another sport that has historically been plagued by doping.
The California Milk Processor Board (CMPB), better known as the producers of the “Got Milk?” campaigns, has decided to re-release two of the five “Got Milk?” spoofs of the steroids in baseball scandal. This was timed to take advantage of the heightened media coverage and public awareness resulting from the recent allegations of steroid use by MLB baseball players in the Mitchell Report. Read the rest of this entry »
The Mitchell Report made some nice weekend reading; it was a good piece of investigative journalism on the history of steroid use in professional baseball. I’ve offered my criticism of the Mitchell Report as being an overpriced review of secondary sources that was extensively documented elsewhere. But I must admit there was a good amount of primary source reporting in the testimony of Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee (thanks to the U.S. Justice Department).
According to the Mitchell Report, the use of anabolic steroids by athletes is not simply an ethical problem or a health problem. Cheating with the use of performance enhancing drugs is a “broader and more nuanced activity” that can seriously threaten the integrity of baseball.
Baseball players who use anabolic steroids are vulnerable to being victimized by gamblers:
[D]rug dealers could blackmail a player to alter the outcome of a game in exchange for maintaining the secrecy of the player’s substance use. Such threats to the integrity of the game are as serious as gambling.
The Mitchell Report noted problems with current steroid education programs in MLB that focus on severe steroid dangers and deleterious side effects:
[T]hese health risks… generally will not deter a player from using these substances. This is because players who use or are considering using performance enhancing substances do not consider them dangerous if used properly. This view is reinforced when players see that other players who they know are using performance enhancing substances arc not experiencing the adverse health effects described in the educational materials.
This makes sense. If steroid use is rampant and the clubhouse, yet no one is experiencing any of the negative side effects, then why would players give any credence to the MLB “steroid education” programs? Perhaps overstating and exaggerating the side effects and related scare tactics are not effective in a drug education program? Read the rest of this entry »
The Mitchell Report reveals the general ignorance about steroid use by Major League Baseball players and many other athletes in competitive sports. I would hope that the investment of millions of dollars into steroid use in MLB would result in a basic understanding of the various steroids used by baseball players and the quantities involved.
But apparently this was not within the scope of their investigation. Instead, investigators relied on a survey of bodybuilders and weightlifters to document and determine the manner, methods, and quantities of anabolic steroids used by professional baseball players and presumably all competitive athletes. Read the rest of this entry »
The highly anticipated Mitchell Report on the “illegal use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances by players in major league baseball” was publicly released today. Dozens of writers will offer their commentary on the 400+ page report (including appendices). I am fairly certain my commentary in the next few days will be a departure from the norm.
The first thing that I want to bring attention to is the extent of bias against author William Llewellyn and his exhaustive anabolic steroid reference manual, Anabolics 2007. His 1000+ page reference is the most exhaustive treatise of performance enhancing substances used in competitive sports. Read the rest of this entry »
HBO Films is planning to make a movie about Barry Bonds and all the characters involved in the BALCO steroid scandal. They recently purchased the rights to the book “Game of Shadows” written by the investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hollywood is already promoting this as a “Barry Bonds” movie. I think everyone will be overloaded with stories about Bonds, if not already, by the time the movie is released on HBO. How many people will really want to see a movie about Barry Bonds?
Game of Shadows is well-written and interesting book that is about much more than Barry Bonds. I hope that director Ron Shelton is able to breathe life into movie adaption with an engaging depiction of the BALCO steroid scandal. I am hopeful as he has had some notable success with sports films: Read the rest of this entry »
