This is certainly the biggest story of the day. Sports Illustrated reports the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, including Promobolan in 2003, according to four independent sources. According to the article:
“Rodriguez’s name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball’s ’03 survey testing, SI’s sources say. As part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association, the testing was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.”
If Bud Selig had any semblance of responsibility of the game, he’d order A-Rod tested right now, fopr HGH as well as steroids, or at least go back and re-test samples submitted since 2003. Too bad Bud can’t resist the manic glint of money. No wonder he got a contract extemsion from the owners after taking the blame on Capital Hill and promising never to do it again in exchange for a wrist slap and a “shame-on-you.” The article continues:
“The results of that year’s survey testing of 1,198 players were meant to be anonymous under the agreement between the commissioner’s office and the players association. Rodriguez’s testing information was found, however, after federal agents, armed with search warrants, seized the ’03 test results from Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., of Long Beach, Calif., one of two labs used by MLB in connection with that year’s survey testing. The seizure took place in April 2004 as part of the government’s investigation into 10 major league players linked to the BALCO scandal — though Rodriguez himself has never been connected to BALCO. The list of the 104 players whose urine samples tested positive is under seal in California.”
But this is the most damning part of the article:
“According to the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, in September 2004, Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players’ union, violated an agreement with MLB by tipping off a player (not named in the report) about an upcoming, supposedly unannounced drug test. Three major league players who spoke to SI said that Rodriguez was also tipped by Orza in early September 2004 that he would be tested later that month. Rodriguez declined to respond on Thursday when asked about the warning Orza provided him. When Orza was asked on Friday in the union’s New York City office about the tipping allegations, he told a reporter, “I’m not interested in discussing this information with you.”
Anticipating that the 33-year-old Rodriguez, who has 553 career home runs, could become the game’s alltime home run king, the Yankees signed him in November 2007 to a 10-year, incentive-laden deal that could be worth as much as $305 million. Rodriguez is reportedly guaranteed $275 million and could receive a $6 million bonus each time he ties one of the four players at the top of the list.”
Meanwhile, Tim Finchem still sticks his head in the sand and refuses to acknowledge that testing for HGH is necessary on the PGA TOUR. When you leave a gap in testing and something as widely popular in the sports world remains undetectable in your league, all you do is give the cheaters a roadmap. In baseball’s case, the owners gave the cheaters a roadmap to the record book and they all gleefully swam piggishly in the river of money. If there is one thing that Game of Shadows teaches us, it’s that if the story of a sports record being broken is too good to be true, it usually is.
Just look at this list of sports in which either the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency, or other professional sports organizations that had athletes caught and punished for performance enhancers (not recreational drugs) in the last four years: Wrestling, Archery, Cycling, Track and Field, Racquetball, Weightlifting, Paralympic Track and Field, Paralympic Alpine Skiing, Judo, Paralympic Sled Hockey, (Paralympic Sled Hockey!?), Paralympic Basketball, Boxing, Taekwondo, Bobsled, Ice Hockey, Swimming, Sled Hockey, Team Handball, Snowboarding, Curling, Fencing, Synchronized Swimming, Baseball, and Football.
As an aside, if paralympic athletes are cheating using steroids and HGH, the PGA TOUR has no business hiding behind the veneer of golf’s altruism. Golf’s ethos is not meant to be used as a shield. It’s meant to be used as a shovel to find the cheaters and uproot them. But Tim Finchem needs outside pressure to agree to change his policy. The TOUR needs full coffers in these tough times and he’ll mistakenly assume fan attendance and sponsorship dollars will drop if word gets out someone might be doping. To the contrary, the fans and sponsors that will flee baseball in the wake of this revelation – the game’s marquis draw in the flagship franchise is A-Fraud – wilol flock to a progressive sport like golf which could benefit from transparency.
Couple that with the death of young high school athletes like Taylor Hooten and the anecdotes of young girls doing HGH to stay trim and you can see how Congress must take forceful action. Look at the health risks: increased aggression, delusional feelings of invincibility, delusions and paranoia, liver and cardiovascular deterioration, circulatory and respiratory deterioration, breakdown of the endocrine system including the ability to produce testosterone or estrogen just to name a few. Of course, there is also the worst risk – death.
For every drug cheat you protect, it’s another dirty secret ticking like a time bomb that you have to conceal. And in the long run, the lies will unravel. Look at BALCO, taken down by a rival track coach who got sick of having his cheaters lose to BALCO’s cheaters. Somebody in the chain will squeal, somebody will let something slip, somebody will be careless. Then, like today, there will be hell to pay.
The difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice is not just the difference between HGH and B 12, but the difference between testing that is ineffective and ineffective, between expelling cheats and concealing them, and between avoiding scandals in the sport by excoriating and excommunicating the cheater for making the wrong choice.
Meanwhile, the Daily News does a great job exposing how baseball makes up bogus, junk science excuses not to test for HGH. Jeff Novitzky, all I have to say is Go, Go, GO! Hang ’em high. On second thought, hanging’s too good for ’em.
Click here for my review of the Roger Clemens Senate Hearings I attended last year.
