Supplements have long been a part of sports. Nutrition and diet go hand in hand with these vitamin stacks to make a player recover faster and perform better. So what about Steroids? Are PEDs cheating?
Sadly there is no simple answer here…because technically they are not explicitly referenced in the rule books and no tests for PEDs are performed on players. Hit a pitcher hard enough to injure them and your bat is tested, but nothing happens if you blow up to 280 when last year you were 205.
Here is the simple truth. Players are going to do what they are going to do. I cannot mandate to you what you put into your body. I personally have to take Testosterone in order to keep my levels up and I see a doctor several times a year to adjust it. So for me to say you can’t do something would be hypocritical. I’ve played with many guys who have done supplements and PEDs.
You can’t talk about PEDs these days without Lance Armstrong coming to mind. We praised his abilities and as a nation cheered for him every year as he accomplished what no other had ever done. Then the story came out, and we as a nation were crushed. Once the one of the greatest and most praised athletes on the planet, he is now regarded as a pariah and shunned.
You see there are dozens of reports that Steroids cause heart problems, cancer, strokes and numerous other health issues…however (and this is interesting) there are few published studies can provide a PROVEN link to these afflictions as being caused by PEDs. Now please don’t send me hundreds of articles and so on, because I’m not here to debate the truth, I’m just a guy writing about a sore subject…
The Anti Doping Agency (USADA) banned Armstrong for life for his transgressions and has stripped of all of his titles…yet this does not diminish what he accomplished. He doesn’t have to worry about being inducted into a hall of fame, since none exists for his sport, but what about others like Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens? Both were caught up in the BALCO scandal years ago and now there names are forever linked to PEDs and likely they will never get into the hall of fame.
Which comes to my response…and you’re probably not going to like it. Get rid of the drug testing. Legalize the use of PEDs.
Why? Because you’re fooling yourself if you think Softball is the only place where PED use is rampant. The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL are just the beginning…before you even get to amateur sports. Here is why I think this: If you legalize it, then it would allow those substances to be effectively prescribed by physicians and adequate studies to be conducted on such drugs, something that is all but impossible under current federal regulations.
Dr. Norman Frost (a professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin) says “Legalization would also allow the drugs to be manufactured in FDA-regulated facilities, so athletes could be more confident about dosing, purity, contamination and other safety issues. The present system drives them to obtain drugs from manufacturers who have no oversight, increasing the risk of harm.” Which is correct. Buying Steroids is easy, but knowing if you have good or bad or harmful ones …well I’m not a chemist so I have no idea HOW you would know.
You only have to look at the legalization of Marijuana to see this hypothesis proving true. Little by little states are legalizing it’s use…and because of it, the quality and the controls around it are regulated and it’s doing good. Well enough that other states are now contemplating legalization.
So if we did legalize PEDS does this violate the integrity of the game? Let’s think about it…it’s already going on. The pros have been doing it for decades and have access to better quality than we do and they have better ways of hiding it. Would legalization level the playing field? or lead to more health issue? We can’t know…because we need to study the long term effects that PEDs would have on the body…and with the illegal nature of the drugs there is no way to establish a baseline and to determine if the PEDs or the chemicals mixed in are the danger… we can’t know because we can’t study it…
“Athletes can sleep in (elevation-mimicking) hypoxic chambers, vaulters use fiberglass poles and riders can use the fastest bikes,” (Softball players the hotest composite bats on the market) Fost said. “Why shouldn’t athletes be able to take advantage of the latest (doping) technology? People have been doing it since the beginning of time. Fans aren’t turned off by it. It’s quite the opposite, really. Barry Bonds was one of the biggest draws in sports, and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought the fans out in droves during their home run chase. People want to see bigger, stronger, faster athletes hit home runs and Olympic records being set.”
Therapeutic use of testosterone has been shown to be safe. A 1996 paper on use of synthetic testosterone published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed notable gains in strength with no major side effects other than a handful of cases of breast tenderness and increased acne among the 40 men ages 19-40 who completed the study. Men’s health clinics have been popping up all over to help men maintain there health after age 35…all of these gains stem from Testosterone and steroid use.
Fost added that the message that legalization of PEDs would send to children is no different than the one sent by other regulated vices: alcohol and tobacco. “The difference is that smoking kills 400,000 people a year, almost all of whom become addicted in adolescence, and drinking kills tens of thousands, many of them children,” Fost said. “Deaths attributable to steroids are extraordinarily rare.”
When was the last time you were shocked that a pro athlete was linked to PEDs? It costs them money, some millions…but the use of PEDs, as testing statistics show, remains largely a consequence-free environment.
In the end who’s life was changed by Armstrong’s revelations? Did your life change? Did your families? Probably not. Now I know there are some who have died from improper steroid use, and I’m not advocating it…just offering an opinion.
Which brings up my final thought… is the use of PEDs in Softball cheating…Well, since I take them every week (under doctors supervision) I’m going to say “no”. There is no rule in any association handbook that says I’m cheating. Of course there are plenty of players doing far more than I am and doing it with no doctors supervision….but I can’t judge them…only myself.
See you out there.
Softball Nation 365 