Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 30, 2002
Steroids:

There's been a lot of news about steriods lately. I haven't wanted to comment on this, because I felt the whole story wasn't out yet. Now we get this from Caminiti on ESPN radio:


''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," Caminiti told Sports Illustrated.

However, Caminiti told Patrick on Thursday that he "has no idea what percent is taking it." He said steroids barely even came up in the initial in-depth interview with SI.

"I know a couple of guys who took steroids but it's mostly a clean sport," he told Patrick.

"I didn't mean it to go like this at all. I just want to live my life. All of a sudden I'm just getting bombarded now."

Sports Illustrated spokesman Rick McCabe said the magazine stands by its story, which set off a furor around major league baseball this week.


So what's the truth? There have been a few stories in the media lately that have printed exaggerated claims as if they were the truth (a story on teen drinking sticks in my mind). I think what happened was this:

  1. SI did the interview.

  2. The editor saw the steriods comment and decided that was the lead.

  3. The media has suspected this for years, and now they have an excuse to go full bore on the subject.

  4. Old-timers can't stand the fact that hitting records are falling like leaves in November.

  5. They get Curt Schilling (who loves to shoot his mouth off) to confirm the abuse.


Now we are getting all these pundits who want to clean up the game. Please.

Sportswriters/broadcasters know nothing about science. In 1999, ESPN was going to do a story about creatine. I was in on the story idea meeting. I didn't know what creatine was, but it was being pitched as a "this is awful, this should be exposed." But the more questions I asked about it, the clearer it was that creatine was simply protein. When ingested, it gets digested just like any protein. I don't know if any of you have ever put protein in pH 0 acid, but when you do that, you destroy the protein. Creatine is food. It's concentrated protein, but it's just food. If you don't drink enough water, you bind up, but that's it. I tried to point this out to them, but they were convinced it was something bad, so they did a story that was wrong. If you work out and take lots of creatine, you get big muscles. If you do that and take steriods, your muscles heal faster, so you can work out more and build more muscle. So don't believe the claims about steroids unless you examine the facts yourself.

For example, I found this on the web (emphasis mine):


Anabolic steroid abuse has been associated with a wide range of adverse side effects ranging from some that are physically unattractive, such as acne and breast development in men, to others that are life threatening, such as heart attacks and liver cancer. Most are reversible if the abuser stops taking the drugs, but some are permanent.

Most data on the long-term effects of anabolic steroids on humans come from case reports rather than formal epidemiological studies. From the case reports, the incidence of life-threatening effects appears to be low, but serious adverse effects may be under-recognized or under-reported. Data from animal studies seem to support this possibility. One study found that exposing male mice for one-fifth of their lifespan to steroid doses comparable to those taken by human athletes caused a high percentage of premature deaths.

In other words, the health effect of long term steroid use hasn't been studied. What if you used them just for a winter to build muscle mass?

There was an article on ESPN.com this morning that I can't find now. I'll paraphrase. The author was noting that players were more concerned with working out than with drinking. I'm sorry, that's a positive. I'm sure alcohol abuse has ruined more careers than steriod use ever will. My mother has been on steriods for a long time, and I've seen what they've done to her. But my guess is, if you use them for the winter, bulk yourself up, you really don't need them that often to maintain your muscle power. In that case, there may be no long term effects. So there may be a silver lining here; players are developing better work habits because they need to train so much.

Also, I'm tired of all these players or ex-players who say steriod use is high, but never name anyone. Okay Curt Schilling, who's using steroids on the DBacks? Brian McRae, you say you know guys who go down to Mexico and get them. Who are they? Or are you just trying to keep your seat on BBTN by being controversial? Benji Gil says players get them while in winter league ball in Mexico. But they don't name names. I hope Canseco does name names. People will say he has not credibility, but if he does this, we'll have a better handle on how many actually use it.

I don't think this is a big deal. Baseball players for years thought that weight lifting hurt their performance. Once is was discovered that you could bulk up and hit a ball farther, everyone was going to do it. Steroids aren't destroying the record book. Better training is. If you want to clean it up, let's have the law enforced. Maybe the FBI can look into this, talk to McRae and Schilling and Canseco and Gil and Caminiti and get names and sources and arrest some people. Wait, they are too busy trying to keep us getting blown up by terrorists.

Never mind.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:59 PM | Baseball