February 28, 2007
The More Things Change
Peter Schmuck notes the history of drug scandals in professional sports don't really change over time. He also thinks MLB could be spending its drug money more efficiently:
Major League Baseball and the other major professional sports need to stay ahead of the curve, but baseball is sadly fixated on rehashing the history of the game's steroid problem through the multimillion-dollar investigation headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell.
The Mitchell probe has bogged down because his investigators lack subpoena power to compel testimony, but Selig is convinced the investigation is necessary to determine the extent of baseball's steroid problem. He bowed to pressure from Congress in ordering the independent investigation. Those millions might have been better spent funding research to produce an effective test to detect the next generation of designer drugs.
Clearly, the job of uncovering the tawdry steroid truth is better left to federal and local law enforcement, which has shut down BALCO and now appears to have many of the bad actors in the mainstream pharmaceutical industry on the run.
Of course, we'd love it if this turns out to be the drug scandal that ends all drug scandals, but this is no time to be naive. It's only been 23 years since the last time we thought that.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:53 AM
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