Baseball has a serious problem.
And it is not that many of the game's stars are so obviously on steroids that they can't even fit into normal sized batting helmets. Nor is it that two of the baseball's figurehead players, Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, have admitted to using performance enhancing drugs in front of a grand jury. No, the real problem facing Major League Baseball is that no one can, or seems to even be willing to try to, get steroids out of the game.
In the NFL, if a player tests positive for illegal substances, he is automatically suspended for four games. That translates into an entire month of no play and no salary. On the second offense, the suspension moves to six games, and on the third strike, the player is out of the league for at least an entire season. Every week of the season six members of each team submit to random testing.
Baseball, on the other hand, has an extremely lenient policy toward steroid use. To start, steroids weren't even technically banned from the game until September, 2002, when the new collective bargaining agreement came into effect. And it wasn't until this past season that mandatory random testing came into play.
Currently, players are only tested once per season - from the beginning of March until the end of September. On the first positive test, the player is required to undergo a counseling and education session informing him of the dangers of his substance use, rather than receiving a suspension. It isn't until the fifth positive test that a player can even be considered for a season-long ban. Given that a player is only tested once a season, the chance of him being tested five times and found to be using illegal substances is remote.
To date, no major league baseball player has ever been suspended for using steroids.
This weak attempt at cracking down on steroid offenders is laughable when compared with the regulations against these athletes set up in other sports. In addition to the NFL, the NBA, NHL and IOC all have strict and unrelenting rules when it comes to performance enhancing drugs. In addition, baseball has yet to ban substances that other pro leagues and the IOC consider illegal, such as Human Growth Hormone, and only this season banned Androstenedione, the drug made famous by Mark McGwire in 1998. Baseball also fails to test for masking agents that can hide banned substances.
What makes matters worse for baseball, and all the more frustrating for the sport's fans, is that it seems that both Commissioner Bud Selig and the player's union are ignoring the pressure to conform to the rules put forth by nearly every legitimate athletic organization. Major League Baseball's labor contract makes it very difficult for authorities to demand more stringent testing, and even more difficult for the league to hand out punishments to offenders.
Rather than agreeing that steroid use is wrong and detrimental to the sport's reputation (as well as their own health), the players still stand firmly by their contract. Selig and the other men at the top are content to tip-toe around the issue as well so as not to induce yet another baseball labor dispute.
In an attempt to push Selig and the players union into allowing tighter restrictions on steroids, U.S. Senator John McCain threatened to bring up Congressional legislation to override the stubborn labor contracts in 2005. Chances are, Congress won't mess with such legislation, but if people outside the baseball begin to add their two cents, then the problem will reach a new dimension.
What many baseball players seem to fail to recognize in this era of juiced up sluggers is that eliminating steroids from their sport would make the game better. The NFL's players allow for diligent monitoring of their supplemental intakes because they feel that it levels the playing field rather than creating an arms race of who can get the best steroids. In addition, steroids are damaging to a player's health and can often shorten careers, rather than elongate them as seems the case with the San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds.
Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees is a prime example. His increase in injuries and decrease in production over the past few seasons as well as his current health problems, including a benign pituitary tumor, could all potentially be linked to his steroid use.
Though the Bonds BALCO testimony leak has again brought the MLB's steroid issue into the media spotlight, the problem is far from being solved. Until baseball emulates its younger, but wiser, professional athletic counterparts, the steroid era will cast a discouraging shadow over the character of the game.
