For MLB, clean is merely a dream
OK, time to sit down with the kids and share the heartbreaking news.
There is no Santa Claus coming down your chimney on Christmas Eve. There is no Easter Bunny. No Tooth Fairy to stuff money under your pillow.
And no chance, as San Francisco Giants All-Star outfielder Melky Cabrera reminded us Wednesday, that Major League Baseball is a clean game.
The steroid era might be over in baseball, but pervasive cheating will be around as long as pine tar and the rosin bag.
The only difference is the new drug du jour is synthetic testosterone, not steroids, and it might be rampant throughout Major League Baseball.
Victor Conte, founder of the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) that brought down some of sports’ biggest names, says as many as 50% of major league players are using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. He has no proof, of course, but says he talks with players and they have no reason to lie to him.
“I’m not going to name names, but I’ve talked to a lot of top players in Major League Baseball, and they tell me this is what they’re doing,” Conte said. “There is rampant use of synthetic testosterone in Major League Baseball.”
It’s easy, Conte said, to use testosterone without being caught. Take it before you go to sleep, and by the time you get to the ballpark the next day, your testosterone level is too low to register a blip on the drug screen.
“We’ve known for a period of time that fast-acting testosterone is a logical choice for athletes who are willing to break the rules in order to win,” said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. AntiDoping Agency. “To some extent it’s a performance-enhancing drug of choice because it significantly reduces the risk of being caught.”
Said Conte: “It’s so easy to circumvent (a drug test). I call it the ‘duck-and-dodge’ system. The only people that get caught are the dumb and the dumber.”
No one is giving Cabrera an IQ test these days, but he flunked the drug test he took last month.
Cabrera not only admitted he took testosterone, he also didn’t bother going through the appeal process.
He becomes the fourth major league player suspended for drug use this season. And if you dare believe Conte, there are hundreds out there who are beating the system every day.
“There’s such a loophole, you really wonder if Major League Baseball has a genuine interest in stopping these guys,” Conte said.
MLB officials, incensed by that statement, will go to their graves insisting they want a clean sport and have the most stringent testing of any U.S. sport. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have caught Cabrera, come up with a positive test on National League MVP Ryan Braun last winter or ruined Rafael Palmeiro’s legacy in 2005 after he got his 3,000th hit.
“Does that mean there is nobody out there trying to beat the system?” MLB executive vice president Ron Manfred said. “No, it doesn’t mean that. It means that we’re doing everything humanly possible to catch people. We use the very best, most sophisticated methodologies that are available.
“Look, in the history of sport — forget baseball — people are going to continue to cheat. They just caught two people in the Olympics.”
We are left to our own suspicions. When a player has a comeback season, is he cheating? If a pitcher throws 100 mph on consecutive days, is he using human growth hormone or testosterone? If a player hits 50 home runs, is he circumventing drug tests, because surely he must be on steroids.
It’s unfair. We’re taught people are innocent until proven guilty. Trouble is, our innocence has been assaulted so many times, we’re left with cynicism and distrust. It stinks.