A Common Sense Injection

I don't always agree with Jason Whitlock, but I do this time.  Maybe now that baseball is being forced to confront the fact that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is rampant beyond some bulked-up home run hitters, the majority of the sanctimonious media members and fans who are vilifying Giambi, Bonds and the rest will finally slow their roll. 

It's time to wake up and smell the HGH, ladies and gentlemen.  All sports feature rampant performance-enhancing drug use.  We can pretend that it doesn't, and keep living in the dreamworld where our athletes used to be "untainted."  Or, you can join the growing minority that has chosen to accept reality.

A friend of mine and I were discussing this a few weeks ago.  She said that there is no way Lance Armstrong didn't do drugs.  I basically told her that I didn't really give a shit one way or another if Lance did drugs or not.  He still survived cancer, he still won a bunch of Tours, and he was still a heroic figure to me.  She disagreed. 

Why?  "Because it's cheating,"  she said.

Cheating? 

What is cheating when just about everyone is doing it?  And where do we draw the line? 

Steroids are taken legally every day by both athletes and ordinary people to help them recover from injuries.  Drugs keep cropping up all the time that help athletes recover faster.  You think the reduction in injury recovery times in sports is simply due to improved surgical techniques?  Please. 

America is a country where more people use prescription and non-prescription drugs than any other society in the world.  Some of these drugs pose an undetermined risk to our health.

So are we all "cheaters"  then?

Do I 'cheat' every time I pop some Jolt Gum to defy nature and stay awake after staying up late the night before?  Is it cheating when a person takes Prozac so they can hold a job?  How about all those people on Ritalin to help them 'focus'?  Some of those drugs go to people who truly do need them to function in society.  But a lot of them are overprescribed.  No one disputes that fact. 

I knew someone in college who had a running prescription for Ritalin...even though by his own admission, he didn't really need it.  Said it helped him to focus.  Isn't he a cheater?  How would his classmates have felt if they found out he was, for all intents and purposes, using a performance-enhancing drug to get good grades? 

"But it's against the rules.  And against the law!" you say.  You know what else is against the law?  Speeding.   Yet most people do it.  Drunk driving is also against the law, yet every day hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans do it.  Rules get broken all the time. 

That joke you told at work yesterday?  That was against the law.  It could get your company sued, and you fired.  You made someone feel uncomfortable and put your whole operation at risk for your own gratification and to endear yourself to a clique of co-workers.  Then after half of your workdays, you go to happy hour.  You go self-medicate with alcohol to help you forget about how shitty your day was.  Then you drive home after a one too many (also against the law) so you can go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.  How different is this from an athlete who uses amphetamines and 'steroids?'  How is someone who doesn't self-medicate with alcohol supposed to compete with you?  Cheater.    

"But steroids (whatever those are - they've become very hard to define at this point) endanger your health," you reply.  Sure they do.  You know what else wrecks your body?  Alcohol.  Cigarettes.  Diet pills.  Acetominophen, if abused.  And a whole lot of that shit you can buy over the counter at GNC isn't tested -- and might just kill you if you're unlucky.  The government no longer regulates nutritional supplements the way they supposedly regulate prescription drugs.  Remember Ephedra?  There was a brief period when the NFL banned it, yet you or I could have gone to GNC and bought it over the counter.  Millions of nutritional supplements are purchased in this country every year, and yet almost none of them are tested until somebody dies. 

So spare me the crap about the rules and the law.  Neither the people who make the rules nor the people who make the law are infallible.  None of them are beyond reproach.  And those rules don't exist to protect the athletes.  They exist to protect the leagues and owners.  The politicians make the laws to protect themselves and get re-elected.  They want to keep you dreaming, because it gives them something to rage against on the campaign trail. 

You can keep that health argument, too.  Millions of people make the choice to smoke and drink to excess every day, even though it's been proven that these activities can shorten your lifespan and destroy your health.  You mean to tell me that smokers have a right to kill themselves for a brief high and a lifestyle choice, but athletes don't have that same choice -- simply because the politicians have made one activity legal, and another one illegal? 

For all we know, the most cutting-edge performance-enhancers out there may be no more harmful than fatty foods.  Maybe even less harmful.  We just don't know, because (much like marijuana) the government is about a hundred steps behind the doctors and pharmacists cooking up this stuff.

Bringing this back to baseball, I warned most of you about this more than once.  I warned that pitchers were also juicing, and that nobody knew the extent of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball.  I warned that it was useless to go on witch-hunts and blame the users.  

I'll admit, I believed Bonds initially because I wanted to.  Then the more I thought about it, the less I cared...and I'll admit that Lance probably had a lot to do with it.  He was the one who first made me confront the notion that whether someone takes 'performance-enhancing' drugs or not, certain feats of athleticism are amazing.  And there has been so much drug use in sports over the years that purity is a pipe dream.

I was trying to look out for you.  Why?  Because I hate to see intelligent people allow their emotions to tear gaping holes in their logic. 

I don't enjoy seeing people who I like and respect taken for a ride by people who only like them for their wallets.

I wish we lived in a more virtuous world, but we don't.  We can try to adhere to the righteous path ourselves, but we can't pretend that everyone else is.  We also cannot pretend that their cheating is any worse than the cheating we see and let slide all around us every day.

You want to vilify Bonds, Caminiti, Canseco, Palmeiro and Giambi while you admire The Babe, Mantle, Williams, Rose, Cobb, Clemens, Griffey, Thome, Schilling, Pedro, and Pujols?  Fine.   You want to believe any pro athlete that is forced to issue a denial, even though they are doing it mainly because that's what a sleepwalking public demands from them?   Fine. 

But as the shit continues to hit the fan, don't say I didn't warn you.

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