Garcia began to study the career trajectories of known steroid users such as Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti and Jason Giambi.?His statistical analysis showed that each aforementioned player’s performance in the areas of batting average and home runs significantly and quantifiably spiked after he?began taking steroids.

The “theory of roidactivity” is detailed in Nick Garcia’s book, “A Very Big League of Their Own: Cracking Baseball’s Steroid Code.” I’ve added it to my reading list.

Sen. George Mitchell’s 409-page report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball describes a thriving underground market for steroids and human growth hormone. What began with just a few players and trainers expanded into a network of dozens, if not hundreds, of professional athletes. That network grew year by year as the players referred their friends and teammates.

Below, we present the findings of the Mitchell report as a social network. Players are connected to the person who first introduced them to the Mitchell report’s star witness, Mets batboy turned personal trainer Kirk Radomski. In some cases, players met Radomski directly; in other cases they are several degrees apart. The statistical and visual analysis that went into making this chart was done using SocialAction, a software tool developed by Adam Perer and Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

How many degrees of separation between every baseball player in the steroid social network?

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

Frank Bowman, a former prosecutor and current law professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, posted some interesting thoughts on the matter on Slate. The Justice Department’s behavior is problematic when it comes to “grand jury secrecy laws” and its policy on “uncharged third parties”:

A mere allegation of criminal wrongdoing coming from government sources can wreck a life or a career. If formal charges are filed, the defendant will at least have his day in court to admit or attempt to disprove the government’s case. But if the allegation comes in a report issued by the private sector, but engineered by the government, the reputational damage is done, and the defendant has no forum in which to contest it.

For precisely this reason, by law, federal grand jury proceedings are secret to protect the reputations of those who are investigated but never prosecuted. Historically, Department of Justice policy has been even more sensitive to these interests. In public filings and proceedings, the DoJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution require prosecutors to “remain sensitive to the privacy and reputation interests of uncharged third-parties,” which “means that, in the absence of some significant justification, it is not appropriate to identify … or cause a defendant to identify, a third-party wrongdoer unless that party has been officially charged with the misconduct at issue.” (The italics are mine.)

Technically, the deals requiring McNamee and Radomski to cooperate with Mitchell probably don’t violate grand jury secrecy laws, because those laws bind prosecutors, agents, and grand jurors, but not witnesses like McNamee and Radomski. And technically, those deals might not have violated DoJ policy on uncharged third parties, inasmuch as Clemens and other players weren’t actually named in official filings or in a federal courtroom. But using plea bargaining leverage to require witnesses to divulge to Mitchell the names of people the Justice Department never intended to prosecute surely violated the purposes of both grand jury secrecy law and DoJ policy.

The requirement for Radomski and McNamee to cooperate with Mitchell was clearly outlined in their plea agreements: 

I will cooperate with non-governmental anti-doping agencies at the direction of the government. I understand that this cooperation may include interviews, statements, or other proceedings.

Frank Bowman goes on to suggest that this potential abuse of government powers is serious enough for Congress to call a formal investigation.

Now, if you think that Professor Bowman is somehow sympathetic to Major League Baseball players who have used anabolic steroids or growth hormone, think again. Bowman believes the “hierarchy of the performance-enhancing drug market for professional athletes” is such that federal prosecutors should primarily target the “athletes” and not the “dealers” which is contrary to the customary prosecutorial practice of pursuing dealers instead of users.

Even if you agree with government involvement in anti-doping efforts of private sporting leagues, there should always be limitations on government behavior to prevent abuses of power.

Source: Slate

CMPB executive director, Steve James, explains the intent of the commercials in a press release:

While the commercials parody the recent baseball scandal, the spots effectively use humor to bring out the truth about the health benefits of drinking milk… By pouring, everyone, not just athletes, can have strong bones and muscles. Milk is indeed a ‘Super Drink.’”

When the commercials originally aired, some people felt they trivialized the issue of steroids in sports. Steroid advocates were amused that the commercials also (unintentionally) highlighted the arbitrariness of performance enhancing substances that society chooses to stigmatize and sports decide to ban.

The steroids in baseball spoofs will air through the end of January 2008.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/rel_us_print.jsp?id=806473