More dirty business in baseball
Posted: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:02 AM
Mike Cameron tested positive for a banned stimulant, and the first thing he wanted the fans to know was that it wasn’t steroids.
“The one thing I wanted to make sure was explained is, no steroids,” the free-agent centerfielder, who played last season for the Padres, told a local radio station.
And why would he not want to take steroids? Because they’re illegal? Because they give the game a black eye? Because they brand him as a cheater?
What about it, Mike?
“That would be 50 games,” he said, meaning steroids, “and that would affect me a whole lot more.”
The stimulants, on the other hand, are only 25 games off at the beginning of next season. So to him, it’s not the crime that matters, it’s the punishment.
For the record, Cameron, like everyone else who’s ever tested positive, said he took the stimulants unintentionally in a supplement that he and players' association doctors determined must have been tainted.
I’m not sure I get this supplement business. Athletes wolf them down at alarming rates. If somebody told them bat guano would make them better, they’d be drinking guano smoothies for breakfast every morning.
That’s how they came to take steroids and HGH and everything else they guzzle, inject, swallow and smear themselves with – they heard it would make them better. It’s why they continue to take anything that might make them better without breaking the rules – intentionally, at least.
It makes you wonder how Ty Cobb hit .367 for his career and how Babe Ruth belted all those home runs. The only supplements they had were beer, whiskey and chewing tobacco. Yet their records stood for decades, and Cobb’s career batting average never has been bettered.
It’s not clear how much effort Cameron put in trying to determine if the supplement he took was safe. He only said that he talked to association doctors afterward, and that was their conclusion. Cameron didn’t have any of the original supply left to test.
You would think that no player would take anything new before getting approval from Major League Baseball, the union, maybe a doctor and his mother. Of course, you would also think that there would be better regulation of these potions to make sure that they’re not jam-packed with illegal things.
Baseball probably hopes we’ll take Cameron’s suspension as proof that its testing program is working. Unfortunately, the big drug news this week in baseball isn’t Cameron’s test but the revelation by The New York Times that teams get a day or two notice when the drug testers are coming to do supposedly random and unannounced tests.
Two days notice for a drug user could be enough time to mask whatever he’s taking or make other provisions to dodge the drug police. But, according to the Times, the testers call the teams because they need to get parking passes and credentials to get past the security checkpoints at the gate.
Teams can say they don’t pass the information on to the locker room, but, c’mon, folks. If you were running a team and thought there was even a sliver of a scintilla of a chance that one of your players wasn’t totally clean, you’d be calling the manager or the trainer and spreading the alarm. That’s just human nature.
