Major League Baseball was trying to put the best spin on news last week that 5 percent to 7 percent of its players have tested positive for steroid use. This isn't a sign of rampant usage, they said. It's hardly the 50 percent or more some former players had predicted.
But it still covers 70 to 100 players, enough to fill the complete 40-man rosters on two teams.
And it's more than enough to taint the nation's pastime, and the many home run records the game has gloried in over the last several years.
Who is to say which players were included in the list of 70 to 100? Baseball isn't releasing that information, and it has destroyed the tests. What if that group consists of the top players in the game? What if steroids is the reason they have performed so well? More than one observer has noticed how certain players seem to have bulked up impressively over the past several seasons. In some cases, this took place during the stages of life normally thought of as the declining twilight of a sports career.
Next year, baseball will begin naming names. It will provide treatment and education for violators, then suspensions and fines if they don't learn. Frankly, it's about time.
Not only does steroid use tarnish the game, it has potentially devastating effects on the culture. Young fans always have adored the best players, seeking ways to imitate them and look like them. A standard built on Hulk Hogan-like muscles is unattainable for most young athletes, unless they use steroids.
We could go on and on about the integrity of the game and the need to preserve true competition based on hard work and natural ability. But there is a much more important argument to be made against steroids. They kill.
The side effects include tumors, infertility and high blood pressure. No one who suffers from these things would ever consider them a fair trade-off for a championship or a few home runs. Athletes who take these risks are demonstrating a disturbing lack of perspective. Unfortunately, this problem has been known to reach all the way down into high school athletics.
Baseball needs to demonstrate that it is taking the problem seriously. Dick Pound, the Olympic official whose name became so familiar to Utahns during the Olympics, told the New York Times that baseball ought to contract with an independent agency to do drug testing. If the sport removed itself from the procedure, it would remove all hints of scandal in the testing procedure itself.
Good idea. The sport, and athletics in general, can never afford to take any amount of doping lightly.