It's true. Six days ago, Sports Illustrated reported that Alex "You Don't Have To Worry About A Juiced-Up Barry Bonds Holding The Home Run Record For Too Long" Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in a blind survey test in 2003. Rodriguez confirmed these allegations Monday, admitting he used performance-enhancing drugs during his sojourn in Texas in an interview with ESPN's Peter Gammons.
"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day. Back then it was a different culture," Rodriguez said.
It was a different culture back then, wasn't it? Flash back to 1998 when then-cultural icon Mark McGwire is neck and neck with Sammy Sosa in an epic hunt to break Babe Ruth's single-season home run record. An Associated Press reporter gets a peek inside Big Mac's locker, and suddenly, Americans have a new household word: androstenedione. McGwire's admitted use of the then-legal steroid has helped not only tarnish his record (as evidenced in Hall of Fame voters keeping him off the ballot despite the pure merit of his numbers), but it also helped get andro pulled from the market. In March 2004, Congress appended andro (along with many other anabolic steroids) to the list of controlled substances, and less than a month later, long before Congress's bill took effect, the FDA banned its sale.
Andro wasn't the only casualty of America's anxiety over whether her national pastime had been tainted. In 2001, MLB implemented its first random drug testing policy. Not enough to assuage the uneasiness of skeptics, in 2002, negotiations between MLB and the MLB Players' Association produced the survey test that ultimately fingered A-Rod as a user of performance-enhancing drugs. The agreement was this: If, in this anonymous test, more than 5 percent of the blood came back positive for performance-enhancing drugs, the MLB would mandate annual random blood-work tests of all players. It came back somewhere between 5 and 7 percent.
And that's how the "different culture" of "back then" got to where it is today. That blind survey that just this past week yanked A-Rod back down among the ranks of juiced players also proved to the MLB that the game was tainted in the first place. Several congressional hearings, grand jury investigations and tell-all exposés later, and here we are. Fraught with an undying apprehension that our most precious national pastime is populated with cheaters.
Steroids get us so up in a tizzy that after the A-Rod story broke, ESPN didn't even afford yesterday's Tobacco Road rivalry its usual week's worth of front-page coverage before the game. If you're neglecting Duke-UNC for something else, it's big.
Ought it be? Well, let's look at why we care about performance-enhancing drugs in the first place.
The Mitchell Report, the independent investigation into drug use in baseball, opens with four key reasons why use of performance-enhancing drugs is bad. First, they're unhealthy. Second, kids see professionals as role models, so they might use drugs, too. Third, it complicates the validity of records and statistics accrued while on drugs. Fourth, it's unfair to players who don't take drugs. If you're reading between the lines, all four points boil down to one that sounds awfully like South Park's Mr. Mackey, "Drugs are baaaad, mm'kay?"
Caffeine has harmful properties, it's a late-night performance-enhancing drug, and it keeps you up longer than someone who isn't drinking coffee. Vitamin C supplements, if taken in excess, can damage your digestive tract, enhance the performance of your immune system and you'll be healthier than people who aren't taking the supplements. Working out can cause hernias, and sets you at a competitive advantage over those who don't work out. I hate to drill this in so flatly, but the "drugs are bad because we said so, and because they're bad, you can't have them" justification has way more legitimacy than it should. Many of these players were taking over-the-counter testosterone-enhancing drugs that any of us could have picked up at the time if we so chose. Why vilify them any more than your average Joe at the gym drinking a protein shake? Lamenting steroid culture has more to do with fear of drugs than it does competitive equity or protecting our youth.
I'll still be pulling for A-Rod to break Barry Bonds's home run record, and I hope I stop hearing the word "tarnished" every time the subject is broached.
Danny Lewin is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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