The Dope Show Continues

This week, Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams was suspended for the entire 2006 season for violating the National Football League’s substance abuse policy for a fourth time. The illicit drug he was found to have in his system in each of his offenses was marijuana. Williams has never tested positive for any performance-enhancing drug, nor has there ever been any evidence of any other illegal substance discovered in or on him. The extraordinarily talented Williams has long been a controversial character due not only to his repeated marijuana violations, but for his having walked away from the sport for a brief period as well as his affection for meditation, yoga, art and his being unusually soft-spoken and articulate for a football player.

Barry Bonds will break Henry Aaron’s all time Major League Baseball career home run record by season’s end if his oft-injured knee holds up. Bonds almost certainly takes - or at the very least has taken – steroids. Steroids increase an athlete’s ability to perform by reducing healing time after workouts or injury and thereby artificially maximizing training sessions and increasing strength and power. Unfortunately, they can have what most might consider negative side effects, such as cancer, a tendency to precipitate aggressive behavior and shrunken genitals.
Major League Baseball has known about not only Bonds’ use of steroids for years, but of widespread, consistent use throughout its 30-team network.
Baseball’s tacit approval of the use of such drugs can be understood simply as its turning a blind eye in response to economic pressure.

MLB’s popularity and revenues had been in continuous decline since the early 1980’s and its heroes had long gone away. Pete Rose had been busted for gambling and subsequently banned for life, marquee teams like the Yankees and Red Sox were struggling to fill their own and visiting ballparks and the only shining star in Baseball’s otherwise darkened sky was a man by the name of Ripken whose claim to fame was having played more consecutive games than anyone else, albeit often rather well.
So when, in 1998, Messrs. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa came along and chased Roger Maris’ 37 year old single season home run record of 61, everyone – public and baseball executive alike – was willing to ignore the fact that while Sosa alone would have appeared to be cartoonishly large, next to the pockmarked, gargantuan McGwire, he almost looked normal. That year, McGwire hit 70 home runs, Sosa 66. In 2001, Bonds hit 73.

Baseball more than any other sport, measures its significance and allure by numbers. It is constantly in balance with offense and defense with the common denominators being the rules of the game and the geometry of the ballparks as they relate to the players. While there has been, at times, an uneven evolution of ability in certain aspects of the game, the balance has remained consistent, existing in a state of - as more than one cheesy scribe has put it – perfect Zen.
It cannot be stressed enough that while advances in strength training and nutrition have produced far greater results than were possible in the time of Mantle and Maris, to go - in one generation - from two guys with farm-boy roots and roping forearms who can hit a ball 430 feet to weight room freaks with acne and gigantic heads who can knock a horsehide straight out of a stadium takes more than “Body by Jake” videos. It takes drugs; performance enhancing drugs. Were these drugs shown to have no negative side effects, it would seem logical that they become an unhindered part of the sports landscape. For the same reason that athletes seeking to build mass today eat things other than raw eggs and steak, the evolution of knowledge in nutrition will continue to reap benefits for not only athletes, but for the rest of the population. However, it is because steroids have conclusively been shown to have consistently negative side effects that they cannot be legal in sports at any level. It is simply not fair to make an athlete have to decide between his or her career and his or her health. It is very much the same as sexual harassment in that regard.

Now, back to Ricky Williams.
Marijuana has never been considered a “performance enhancing drug,” as even a brief listen to any live Grateful Dead concert will confirm. For anyone who has ever smoked grass, it is no great realization that one would likely not want to attempt to run away from a 280 lb. lineman with 4.5 speed when one cannot even consistently grab a Dorito because one keeps missing the bag’s opening because one cannot see the bag’s opening due to the tears welled up in one’s eyes as a result of the hysterical laughter inspired by the way one’s dog is looking at the television.
It is highly unlikely that Williams ever was high at practice or a game. The NFL has marijuana on its “banned” list because marijuana is illegal and the NFL is trying to keep a shiny - however perverse - all-American reputation intact, which is no small feat when a large part your fan interest is derived from a desire by most to see enormous men try to kill each other.
Steroids, unlike marijuana, create an uneven playing field; they distort history, they confound statistics and they promote an unfair advantage.

Barry Bonds will likely play out this season and Major League Baseball will then truly move forward with its inquiries. Unfortunately for its fans, the action will come too late and the damage will be irreparably done.
The National Football League, meanwhile, will uphold the suspension of one of its kinder and more colorful characters due to an, at best, misinformed and misguided rule. Were Ricky Williams to break one of the NFL’s cherished records, his being a pot smoker would hardly taint the occasion. In fact it would likely quickly become less of an important “example” to show the impressionable and more a late-night talk show joke.
If Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s record, baseball, as we know it - already hanging onto its history by a thread - is over.