Gatorade is Major League Baseball’s “official sports drink.” So instructions were sent that no player could be seen drinking anything but Gatorade in the dugout. Not even Aquafina, which is the “official water” of MLB. Not even bottles of water with the labels removed.

White Sox clubhouse personnel said if players take bottled water onto the bench, all the bottled water will be removed from the clubhouse as punishment.

This policy only reinforces the appearance of a pro-steroid agenda by Major League Baseball. MLB sends the following message to baseball fans.

So remember, the biggest threat to baseball isn’t steroids or HGH or amphetamines or runaway ticket prices or four-hour games.

It’s water.

Just think of the contradictory message this sends to the youth of Coach Connolly’s high school football team!

Roorda, a Democrat from Jefferson County, filed a bill today that would bar state tax credits from going to professional sports teams in a league that does not place at least a one-year ban on athletes caught using steroids.

That would mean: No state breaks for the Cardinals, as well as the Royals, the Chiefs, the Rams, the Blues, the state’s minor league baseball teams, or pro soccer outfits…

“Since when in baseball is it four strikes and you’re out?” Roorda said in a statement today.

Never mind that in baseball, it is not one strike and you’re out either. Roorda obviously intends to highlight what he believes to be a weak steroid and doping policy in Major League Baseball.

But it also highlights the government’s “investment” in professional sports via corporate welfare (e.g. sales tax revenue and tax subsidies). Major League Baseball is not the only entity to benefit from the bigger, faster, stronger steroid-fueled performances.

The sales tax will raise $425 million over 25 years for the overhaul of the stadiums. The Royals will contribute another $25 million, the Chiefs $75 million and the state of Missouri $50 million in tax credits.

The State of Missouri has a long-term investment in the success of Major League Baseball. Is there a conflict of interest when the issue of steroid use threatens the sports?

“This bill attempts to send a message to Major League Baseball and to all other professional sports leagues that if they want to continue to ignore the problem that they have with steroids, that we’re not going to continue to underwrite their activities with tax dollars,” Roorda said.  

How involved (taxpayer funds) should the government be in building stadiums for private sports teams? I’ve previously written about my distaste for government regulation of the rules in private sports leagues; I also question whether the government should provide corporate welfare to professional sports leagues especially if the government has a problem with the widespread steroid use.  Thoughts?

“While Congress focuses on the need to eliminate drug use from baseball, law enforcement is struggling to get action on Byrne . . . which fights drugs not just in baseball, but on our streets and in our neighborhoods,” Bouchard said. “Literally thousands of children have been saved from drug scenes by this program.”

“With budgets tightening across the board, we need federal funding for critical law enforcement programs to stay intact. Law enforcement officers need the support and communities need the protection,” Bouchard said.

Federal funding for programs that have allegedly saved “thousands of children from drug scenes” has been cut approximately 60% in the past year.

Last week, Bouchard said he met with federal officials in Washington D.C. about not cutting the money that law enforcement agencies use to target drug dealers and violent criminals. The funding, administrated by the U.S. Department of Justice, was cut from $520 million in 2007 to $170 in the 2008 fiscal year. The money is being shifted to other federal programs.

The grandstanding in Congress on the issue of steroids (purportedly to save the children) increasingly appears to have unintended consequences that ironically may have the opposite effect. This is starting to become apparent with the reallocation of limited federal resources away from more critical issues that are ignored while money is liberally spent to support trivial perjury investigations of professional athletes who lie about their steroid use.

We may be seeing the beginnings of a backlash against the federal governments overzealous pursuit of steroids in baseball. Sheriff Mike Brouchard is politically influential in the State of Michigan; he manages one of the largest Sheriff’s Offices in the country and was the Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006. Brouchard is considered a frontrunner for the office of Governor of Michigan in 2010.

Walker was a National Public Radio correspondent in the early 1980s when he began filling the San Francisco airwaves with his theories regarding baseball — specifically, that on-base percentage was undervalued, fielding was misunderstood and power ruled all. One increasingly intrigued listener was Sandy Alderson, then a young Athletics executive, who soon hired Walker as a team consultant and with him devised the Oakland philosophy now called Moneyball.

As Walker’s website details, the increase in baseball’s power factor has occurred gradually over the past 100 years with only two significant jumps:

Walker found two substantial and essentially permanent jumps. First was the 1920s, because of the introduction of a livelier ball and the sport’s Babe Ruth-inspired embrace of slugging. The second was in 1993 and 1994, when P.F. suddenly leapt 7 percent to about 1.6, where it has since settled. Walker contends that such a jump is far more indicative of a change made to the ball — which Major League Baseball has long denied — than a steroid power boost, which would have produced an effect far more gradual as the decade progressed.

Thus continues the debate of the effects of steroids on baseball statistics.

Source: New York Times

The purpose of these pages is to methodically dissect those claims and assumptions and compare each with what is actually known about it.

He analyzes several steroid assertions and supports each analysis with several scholarly and scientific citations. Some of his conclusions:

• Steroids and Home Runs: “No evidence” that steroids have affected home-run hitting.
• Steroid Side Effects: The side effects of anabolic steroids have been “grossly exaggerated.”
• Kids and Role Models: Adolescents who self-identify with a role model are no more likely to use drugs than those without a role model.
• Kids and Sports Heroes: Teenagers, overwhelming male, who self-identify with a sports role model are slightly less likely to use drugs.

Source: Reason blog; Eric Walker’s Steroid website

Three and half weeks after he quit using steroids “cold turkey” my son took his own life – a victim of the deep depression that accompanies withdrawal from these drugs.

This type of emotional testimony really has a strong effect on me as I’m sure it does on many others. Unfortunately, such emotional testimony is useless when it comes to scientifically, logically and rationally informed public policy.

Despite the testimony of grieving parents and so-called experts, it is not possible to show that anabolics steroids cause suicide. The role of anabolic steroids in depression and suicide is unclear.  Professor Jack Darkes, PhD of the University of South Florida explains why it is important for scientific experts and researchers to remain objective when evaluating such emotional testimony.

Suicide is a devastating and tragic event and the more that is known about the individual characteristics that signal increased risk for suicide, especially in adolescents, the better equipped we will be to intervene in time to save innocent lives like those mentioned herein. Suicide is an event where false-positive identification carries with it little harm at the personal level (certainly much less than the act, especially if handled correctly to avoid any stigma), but great benefit in some cases. Efforts to educate adolescents, families, physicians and others to the warning signs, be they drug use or other risky behaviors or psychopathologies, should be applauded. Efforts to ascribe such events to a single cause can distract attention from other important indicators that need to be noted. Ascribing blame can be comforting at times of devastation when one desperately needs to make sense of events and “do something”. But, from a scientific perspective, such efforts must be looked at skeptically and dispassionately. In this scientists must strive to remain ethically neutral and objective. They must attempt to ensure that they communicate clearly, not adjusting their message for a public seeking confirming statements and value judgments. Science has limitations, as do its research methods. Scientists do their best service when they remember this when reporting on their work to the public.

Our country and the health of our adolescent who face steroid use would be best served if Congressional policymakers would also remain ethically neutral and objective.

Congressman John Tierney (D-MA) revealed that Major League Baseball has granted over 100 therapeutic use exemptions to athletes for amphetamines and related stimulant drugs to treat ADHD. Of course, since the focus of the Mitchell report and the Congressional hearings are on the evils of steroids, the continuing problem of amphetamines in baseball will likely not be seriously investigated at this point.

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1685

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.

Victor Conte has publicly shared his version of events that occurred at the BALCO raid. Conte and former vice president of BALCO, James Valente, both filed declarations in federal court containing regarding Novitsky’s behavior and tactics on the day of the raid. The allegations include “illegally coercing statements, improperly serving search warrants and using excessive force during the raid.”

Michael Rains, an attorney for Barry Bonds, claimed that Jeff Novitsky committed criminal misconduct.

Pitcher Jason Grimsley stopped short of making claims of coercion against Novitsky but changed his mind after federal investigators “wanted him to wear a wire to get evidence against Barry Bonds.”

And now, Clemens defamation lawsuit seems to suggest that the aggressive interrogation tactics and threats used by Notivsky et al may have manipulated the truth in McNamee’s allegations of Clemens’ steroid use and growth hormone use.

In spite of the lack of integrity, questionable ethics, and suspect motives that have been alleged against Jeff Novitsky, his interrogation tactics may still be perfectly legal.

However, it should be noted that baseball players aren’t the only “dirty players” in the doping game. The biggest cheaters in the entire major league baseball doping scandal may not be the ones with the balls and bats.

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. 

The adverse side effects of anabolic steroids used at the levels necessary to achieve these [performance-enhancing] effects can be significant, however. In part, this is because the doses of anabolic steroids typically used by athletes are much higher than those that would be prescribed for any legitimate therapeutic use, between 5 and 30 times greater than the level of testosterone naturally produced by the body.

Steroid use by competitive bodybuilders and steroid use by baseball players are apples and oranges.. The extreme use of anabolic steroids by competitive bodybuilders does not represent the quantities used by 95% of competitive athletes in various other sports. Equating the dangers of extreme steroid use in bodybuilders with typical steroid use in MLB players is inaccurate and misleading.

It is apparently irrelevent to the authors of the Mitchell Report; they entered with the assumption that all non-therapeutic anabolic steroid use will have serious adverse effects on the athlete; steroids could not be used at any level without dangerous side effects. Essentially, all steroid use was considered abuse by the Mitchell Report.

Advocates of illicit steroid use by athletes argue that the adverse side effects have been exaggerated, focusing their arguments on the limited clinical trial data available. Medical ethics have prevented the scientific study of the massive doses of steroids taken by athletes using these drugs to obtain an athletic advantage. Despite this limitation, however, there are sufficient data to conclude that there is an association between steroid abuse and significant adverse side effects.

And the “sufficient data” that Senator Mitchell cites to arrive at the conclusion of “significant adverse side effects” in MLB players using steroids is based on – you guessed it – competitive amateur bodybuilders! Apples and oranges.

The irony is that on the very same page where Senator Mitchell asserts the “significant adverse effects” of steroids, he actually cites a study on athletic performance that reflects dosages that are more likely to be used by professional baseball players and as well as the majority of competitive athletes.

S. Bhasin, et al., The Effects of Supraphysiologic Doses of Testosterone on Muscle Size and Strength in Normal Men, 335 New Eng. J. of Med. 1-7 (1996)

This study revealed an “absence of systemic toxicity” and no increase in the “occurrence of angry behavior” during the administration of a 10-week 600mg/week testosterone enanthate cycle.

In spite of Mitchell’s statement that such a study would not exist due to “medical ethics,” he is most certainly aware of its existence since he cited it. The likely explanation is that he remains ignorant to the quantities and cycles of steroids used by baseball players and athletes in general.

Not all anabolic steroids are created equally in terms of side effects. Nor do all dosages and manners of steroid administration result in the same side effects.