So a Bunch of Guys Took H.G.H... Should We Care?

As if the names in the Mitchell Report weren't bad enough, even more came out over the weekend: Mary J. Blige. 50 Cent. Wyclef Jean.

If performance-enhancing drugs were commonplace in dressing rooms--though in this case I guess they were more appearance-enhancing--it's impossible to delude yourself into thinking that steroids, H.G.H, whatever, weren't widespread in locker rooms.

Now that everyone's accepted the fact that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is widespread, it seems as if the debate has moved into a new phase.

Does it matter?

Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker has been pointing out some of the hypocracies of the system on his blog. For example, after citing a Sports Illustrated article that describes how Patrick Kerney uses an electrical muscle stimulator before games, spends evenings in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and sleeps beneath silver-threaded sheets tapped into an outlet, Gladwell waxes sarcastic: "It's such a relief 'performance enhancing drugs' are banned from professional sports, isn't it? We have no idea what their long-term health consequences are, and there's a real possibility they offer users an 'unfair' advantage."

Gladwell further points out that the pharma-villains like testosterone and human growth hormone are perfectly legal if they're prescribed by a physician as an aid to injury recovery--and that other procedures used to speed healing, like cortisone injections and ligament-replacement surgery, are commonplace, even celebrated.

We've all marveled at the athlete who "plays through pain"; often, that athlete is getting chemical help to do so.

Why do we cheer the athlete who took a cortisone injection in the locker room, but boo the athlete who took an H.G.H. injection in the bathroom?

Performance-enhancers, in a broad sense, have been around baseball for generations. Ballplayers in the sixties, and, it's alleged, today, used amphetamines to get energy before games. I recall that when baseball was talking about eradicating their use that a reporter quoted some unidentified player as saying something like "if they ban amphetamines, there are going to be a lot of 1-0 games in July."

Now before you begin the kneejerk reaction of "these guys get paid blah blah and they can't bother to try hard blah blah" consider how many other professionals use performance-enhancing drugs. Like me, or you.

I'm not sure what the consequences would be if Starbucks suddenly shut down for a week, but I suspect they'd be more dire than a slight productivity slowdown.

It may be that taking performance enhancing drugs is a normal impulse, the question is where do you draw the line.

Former Phillie Doug Glanville talk about this urge in an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday.

After his first trip to the DL, Glanville writes, "I realized I couldn’t just roll out of bed and play anymore. All of a sudden, I felt old. It was the moment when a player is faced with the choice between aging naturally or aging artificially. I chose door number one, and two years later it was Triple-A or bust. Those who chose door number two ... well, you know the rest."

Tour de France riders have been subject to drug tests since the 1960s, we all know how well that has worked.

When pride and money are on the line, athletes will go to great lengths for victory, no matter how many bottles they have to pee in.

It may be that you'll never eradicate drugs from sports. So here's a suggestion. Why can't you try to eradicate their effects.

Baseball players take drugs to get bigger and stronger, so why couldn't you ban weight gain over a certain percentage per year?

If it's a matter of taking drugs to heal from injury, have a medical panel set a standard recovery time. If you tear an ACL, you're out nine months, no matter how many drugs you take.

Maybe this wouldn't work, but it's not going to work any worse than drug testing has.