Blood testing would open up a whole new can of worms

Like every family, mine has its issues. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been predisposed to about six different forms of addiction, a few kinds of cancer, a heart condition here or there, diabetes and just for good measure, most people who know him would agree that my father could replace Danny DeVito on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the transition would be seamless. And while I’ve been fortunate to lead a relatively normal life for my first 23 years, it’s safe to say that god only knows how I will eventually turn out.

And it should stay that way.

I promise I’m not going to get all religious on you. That’s definitely not my style. I’m the guy who brings a flask to Midnight Mass. My point here is that I don’t want anyone on this earth, especially any future employers, to have access to information about health problems that could pop up for me down the line. My family’s public record already ended any dreams of running for public office. I don’t want my DNA to prevent me from earning a paycheck.

So what does this have to do with sports, you ask? More than you think. Recently it appeared as though two of the world’s greatest boxers, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, were finally going square off in what Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole called “the most anticipated boxing match in at least 25 years.” For the record, Iole is one of the only people in the world who could actually name 25 fighters from the past quarter century, but you get the picture. This was going to be big, big enough for me to actively seek out a feed of the fight on the internet.

But it won’t happen. Some have speculated that the unbeaten Mayweather is running scared. Others have blamed the sport itself, citing that boxing as it is today it too flawed to ever get such a break. Of course, that’s all conjecture. All we do know is that the Mayweather camp’s request for blood testing before and after the fight infuriated Pacquiao, so much so that he filed a defamation lawsuit stating that Mayweather falsely accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Now obviously there is a much easier way for Pacquiao to prove he’s clean. He could just submit to a blood test and everything would be solved right there. But he won’t and he shouldn’t. Blood testing in sports is the next step to blood testing in the real world, and while the cynic in me doubts that Pacquiao’s refusal is his way of standing up to Big Brother, I appreciate that he is holding firm.

It’s easy to say we want sports to be drug free at all costs, but that’s because we aren’t paying attention to what it might cost us. In 2005, the Chicago Bulls asked their then-22 year old center Eddy Curry to take a DNA test to see if a heart condition he was suffering from could be fatal. Curry refused over concern that the team might find other pre-existing conditions and not want to re-sign him.

What if a similar situation occurred in your workplace? What if blood testing revealed you had a weak heart and a healthier person got a promotion over you? Recent legislation actually prohibits companies from using genetic information to hire, fire or promote, but have far more serious threats from the government stopped businesses from discriminating based on race or gender yet? When it comes down to investing a lot of money in an employee, the maximum $300,000 penalty will probably seem well worth it to some companies.

Blood testing would open a whole new can of worms that we do not want to deal with. On Wednesday, New York Mets’ star third basemen David Wright told WFAN’s Mike Francesa he would support a stricter drug testing policy in baseball, including blood testing for HGH.

"Obviously it would be tough to test with the blood samples,” Wright said. “But anything to clean this game up, I'm all for it. I would love to say that 100 percent of the guys in this game are 100 percent clean."

We all would.

But not if it means having to give up 100 percent of a person’s personal information.

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McGwire failed to tell us the whole truth

Why is it that these guys lie even when they try to tell the truth?

There is no way a pill or an injection helped with all those homeruns? Really Mark? Really? I believe that about as much as I believe he came up with that walking M.A.S.H. unit line all by himself. He did everything else right. He sniffled for the cameras, admitted to using steroids and HGH for virtually his entire career and he sounded genuinely sorry for the decisions that he made.

But when it came time to talk about his numbers, he went right into arrogant athlete mode. He was too proud to admit that at least some of his 583 career homeruns probably came from the extra strength he gained from using steroids. Instead he praised his hand eye coordination and talked about genetics and his god-given ability because even though he eventually had to come clean, he still refuses to let anyone diminish his accomplishments.

Just once I wish a professional ballplayer would be honest about the benefits of steroids. We all know they work. Everyone has seen the guy in the gym with muscles bulging in places muscles aren’t supposed to exist. Ask a bodybuilder or a professional wrestler or someone who runs track what steroids can do. That’s why they’re called performance-enhancers. Why can’t someone like McGwire or Barry Bonds just look into the camera and say, “Did they work? Have you seen my numbers? Do you know how much money I made? Hell yes steroids worked.”

At least then we’d be getting the whole truth.

Our moral outrage today shouldn’t be directed at McGwire because he used steroids. Honestly, who, aside from maybe Roger Maris’ family, has he really let down? American children? Trust me, my little league team wouldn’t recognize Mark McGwire if he were starting at first base for us. And me? I’m certainly not going to stop watching baseball because McGwire cheated and I grew up one of his biggest fans. We all knew steroids were prevalent back then. I accused at least three kids who hit puberty faster than me of being on the juice. So I think I can safely speak for all 23 year olds and say we aren’t shocked by McGwire’s revelations.

If anything, we should be upset that McGwire tried to pull a fast one on us. He wants to be recognized in a separate light than guys like Bonds or Roger Clemens so he came forward and copped to using. He admits making mistakes, but he still wants us to believe steroids didn’t help, which would be like Tiger Woods admitting that he slept with multiple women at once, but assuring us that he didn’t have any fun.

At its core, McGwire’s confession was no different than anyone else's. He was just fortunate to have a lot more time to come up with his story than Alex Rodriguez or Andy Pettitte had with theirs. He managed to tell us everything he wanted us to hear, which wasn’t quite the same as what we wanted to hear.

We wanted a glimpse of what the entire culture in baseball was like from someone not as slimy as Jose Canseco. But McGwire said he never talked about steroids with other players. We wanted him to tell us that steroids did help and maybe apologize to the guys who were ejected from the game because they didn’t want to inject themselves with steroids. Those are the guys we should feel sorry for. Instead, he just gave us a version of the same quote over and over.
 
"I wish I had never touched steroids."

But in the end, he never told us why.

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Random Rumblings: On the baseball season

• Is it me or was Major League Baseball about as predictable as Seinfeld reruns this season? You don’t even need 150 characters to break down the entire summer: Steroids. Rich teams won. Albert Pujols. National League stunk.
  
  Case closed.
  
  But for those who would like me to expand on a season that has played out almost the exact same way for the past decade, here goes nothing…
  
  
• The steroids controversy continued. Alex Rodriguez admitted using. Manny Ramirez was suspended. David Ortiz promised he would get to the bottom of his positive test and never spoke again. All three were welcomed back with open arms by their fans and all three helped their team reach the playoffs.
  
  The bad guys won.
  
  
• So did the rich ones. If the Tigers beat the Twins today, six of the top nine payrolls in baseball will have made the playoffs while none of the bottom twelve will have reached the postseason. The numbers don’t lie. You can pretty much count out almost half the sport on opening day.
  
  Contraction anyone?
  
  
• In order, the second, third, fourth and fifth greatest hitters of my lifetime: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey Jr..
  
  The best, and it’s not close, is Albert Pujols. The NL MVP hits the way Bonds did at the height of his steroid use, seeing one strike a night and usually crushing it. He’s more consistent than ARod or Griffey ever was and hits for more power than Manny ever did. And the man carries his team unlike anyone, at any time, ever has.
  
  
• Pujols is so good that we forgive him for playing in the AAAA League. It’s not his fault the National League has the Nationals, Pirates and Padres. And really, you don’t even have to look at the teams to tell how poor the NL was this season.
  
  Just look at two names: Brad Penny and Julio Lugo.
  
  
• You know what we stopped hearing this year? What a great game-caller Jason Varitek is. That’s what happens when you can’t even hit your wife’s weight over the final two months of the season.
  
  
• The Yankees and Red Sox had a little role-reversal this year. For the first time in over a decade, the Bombers were actually likeable. The zillion dollar additions of C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and the less pricey Nick Swisher helped the team win the AL East and actually loosened up the clubhouse in the process.
  
  The Yankees popped champagne when they clinched the division and set the all-time record for pies to the face following walk off wins in a season. Even ARod made friends.
  
  Meanwhile, the Red Sox dealt with Ortiz and his steroids, Daisuke being overpaid and overweight and Kevin Youkilis calling out the fans of Boston.
  Something just feels different this season.
  
  Even when everything else remained the same.

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Random Rumblings: Anonymity is baseball's biggest problem

We blame the steroids. We blame the late starts to the World Series. God knows we blame the excessively long games. But baseball’s biggest problem took center stage Sunday afternoon, when the most interesting person in the sport was standing at a podium and not at the plate or on the mound.

No, Rickey Henderson is not what’s wrong with baseball.

Not having a Rickey Henderson is the issue.

If this is the cleanest the sport has been in a long time, it’s also the quietest. The best player on the planet, Albert Pujols, has a chance to become the first Triple Crown winner in 42 years and I feel like I know nothing about the guy. Same goes for Hanley Ramirez, who has the tools of a young Ken Griffey Jr., but is about as interesting as the Public Access channel. Take any of the game’s young stars. Mauer, Lincecum, Fielder; we don’t hate any of ‘em, but we sure as hell don’t love ‘em either.

If Henderson was playing today, he’d be tweeting from the outfield. Some would love him, plenty would loathe him, but at least people would have an opinion on a ball player. Look at the other sports. We’ve known everything about LeBron since he was in high school. Brett Favre is a twelve month story. Gossip rags follow Tom Brady everywhere. Baseball is no where close. These players have Peter Gammons wishing he could cover NFL training camps.

Henderson confirmed that he was all done with baseball on Sunday, and if the sport doesn’t act quickly, the fans will follow him right out the door. Sometimes when people talk about golf, they ask what the PGA Tour would be without Tiger. The answer’s simple.

It would be baseball.

• Receiving an endorsement from Terrell Owens is about as beneficial as republicans getting one from George W. Bush, but you’ve got to hand it to the often-controversial Bills receiver. At least he’s willing to step up and pledge his support to Michael Vick at a time when so many other players are scared to hurt their image.
  
  And when Owens points out that “there's a number of guys around the league that have done far more worse things than that and gotten a second chance,” he’s absolutely on the mark.
  
  
• You know what’s more indicative of the racial problems in our country than Sergeant Crowley and Professor’s Gates’ little run-in last week? The fact that Ben Roethlisberger is accused of raping a woman and no one seems to believe her. Because if it were Santonio Holmes or any other black guy in the NFL, I guarantee the media would be taking the alleged victim’s claims a little more seriously.
  
  
• Whenever Hank Aaron speaks about performance-enhancing drugs, it should be pointed out that he has admitted to taking amphetamines – once.
  
  Right. Once.
  
  
• For the record, Stephon Marbury gave better quotes this week via uStream than any athlete has given in a long time. And in between long periods of laugh-out-loud commentary, he did offer great insight about his personal life, particularly his time in Minnesota.
  
  He talked about being a teenager who had gone from the projects in Coney Island to Georgia Tech and then over to Minnesota and basically admitted to just being homesick. It felt like the realest thing I’ve ever heard an athlete say and I respect that.
  
  
• Let me close with the hypocrites of the week: The four major sports leagues and the NCAA, who are suing to block sports betting in the state of Delaware. Do these leagues realize fantasy sports play a major role in any sport’s popularity? They can’t honestly think we all play fantasy for free, right? And I hope they all know their most passionate fans are paying attention to the sports betting odds for a reason.
  
  This is a case I can’t see the sports winning. Delaware is facing a huge deficit and many believe the state can make up millions from legalizing sports betting. If that’s the case, then I’m all for it.
  
  Plus it makes Delaware worth visiting.

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With Ortiz, steroids argument carries some weight

Want to know just how bad things have gotten with David Ortiz? On Tuesday night, I was at dinner with some friends and NESN (the network that carries Red Sox games) was showing Walk Off Sox, which should leave no questions about how the show might end. But there we were, watching the bottom of the ninth of a 2005 game against Baltimore, with Ortiz at the plate, two runners on base, two outs and only three possible outcomes…

1. Ortiz could strikeout to end the game. Of course, that would mean that NESN would have to be willing to show the Sox lose on a show called Walk Off Sox.
2. Ortiz could reach base without driving in the winning run, which would leave it to Manny Ramirez to hit the game winner – an even less likely scenario considering Manny is the anti-Christ in New England.
3. Ortiz could in fact walk off, helping us all to conjure up memories of the days when he was actually better than Jason Varitek.

I’m not kidding when I tell you we had to watch just to make sure Ortiz really was a great hitter at some point in his career. And we had to watch the replay just to be sure that the homerun he hit over the center field fence at Fenway didn’t somehow magically become your typical 2009 outcome for Ortiz: a popup to shallow center.

That’s how bad it has gotten for Ortiz. Everything is questionable at this point. Which is why I think baseball fans have every right to be asking the question no one in New England wants to hear: Was David Ortiz a steroid user? Was his dramatic power surge earlier this decade simply the byproduct of a needle and is the fact that he couldn’t break a lineup at the College Softball World Series the result of him being off the juice?

We don’t know the answer to that question and even if we had a leaky syringe with Papi DNA, he’d still deny everything. But it doesn’t make us wrong for asking and it doesn’t mean we’re evil or un-American for refusing to simply take his word.

Last week, Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal suggested it was unfair that Ortiz’s embarrassing season has lead to talk of performance-enhancing drugs, but conceded that this is what happens in baseball’s current landscape. He wrote that Ortiz is wearing baseball’s Scarlet Letter and that we wouldn’t believe it even if he had somehow just lost it.

But the idea that Ortiz might have been cheating isn’t as impossible as Reynolds wants to believe. It’s not just the fact that in his first 1,693 at-bats, he hit 58 homeruns, and then he nearly doubled that total in his next 1,693 at-bats that suggests something a bit out of the ordinary was occurring. It’s also that his closest friend on the Red Sox was Manny Ramirez, who we now know was either on the juice or trying to find out if he’d be allowed to go on maternity leave.

And Ortiz isn’t just guilty by his association with Manny. What about his friendship with Angel Presinal, who occasionally trained with Ortiz despite being banned from every Major League clubhouse since 2001? We now know Presinal’s clients included Alex Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez and Jose Guillen, all of whom have been connected to steroids.

Would any of this hold up in court? Of course not. But this isn’t just some witch hunt either.

Ortiz’s numbers, both then and now, coupled with his association with known steroid users and providers certainly inject some validity into the argument.

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Manny just the latest jab at a jaded generation

In times of distress, it’s in our fabric to say things we don’t mean. As children, it’s threatening to run away when our parents scold us; as adults, it’s threatening to move to Canada when our President pisses us off. But when it comes to steroids in baseball, our reaction tends to be a little different. Rather than overreact, we’ve been conditioned to say we don’t care or that we aren’t surprised.

But we do and we are. So even though Manny Ramirez is now just another guy on what is clearly an endless list, it still bothers us, particularly those of us who grew up watching him hit. These stories still matter. It’s like fighting when you have no shot to win; the punches still hurt even when you know they’re coming.

But now that Manny becomes the latest star to knock us down, you have to wonder how long it will be before we just stop getting up.

Almost 30 years ago, it was Jimmy Carter who suggested that for the first time in American history, the majority of the population believed the future would be worse than the past. Well for the first time in the history of baseball, a generation has been more regressive than progressive.

If you’re under the age of 30, chances are no player you grew up idolizing was fully clean. That’s something anyone older than that can’t quite comprehend. Manny and ARod and Clemens and Bonds are all we know, which essentially disqualifies us from any conversation about the history of the game. Our opinions are basically invalid to anyone older than us because of what our players represented.

All that leaves is a jaded generation. We’re always going to be a little more cynical and a little less trusting of the guys putting up big numbers. No one will pass the eyeball test. We’ll continue to assume everyone is on steroids.

That is, unless the next punch knocks us out cold.

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Time is now for Selig to step down

Everything in baseball skyrocketed with Bud Selig as commissioner – attendance, profits, franchise value, player salaries and of course, statistics. But while those within baseball might remember Selig for helping the sport succeed economically, the American public will forever associate him with the “fairytale five,” McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and now Alex Rodriguez, the leaders of an era tainted by steroids and phony statistics.

In a time where most of the cheaters remain in hiding and the ones who do confess need to be prepped by crisis management teams before speaking publicly, Selig has the opportunity the make the largest statement of all. He needs to resign, effective immediately, to show the world that he is truly ashamed of what happened throughout his tenure as baseball’s commissioner.

Instead, he’ll sit back and collect his exorbitant $18.5 million salary, which is more than every other commissioner in sports and almost every athlete on the face of the earth. He’ll sit there and condemn the steroid users while taking little responsibility for practically celebrating the use of performance-enhancing drugs ten years ago.

"While Alex deserves credit for publicly confronting the issue, there is no valid excuse for using such substances, and those who use them have shamed the game,” he said. "It is important to remember that these recent revelations relate to pre-program activity. Under our current drug program, if you are caught using steroids and/or amphetamines, you will be punished. Since 2005, every player who has tested positive for steroids has been suspended for as much as 50 games."

How pathetic. Selig will stand up and criticize anyone who was on the juice, but in order to soften the blow to his sport, he points to a testing policy that came along a decade too late. The truth is it essentially took an act of congress for the commissioner to even recognize his sport had a problem.

Now he’s starting to sound a lot like the players who ruined the game. He wants us to forget about the past like McGwire and consider how clean baseball has been in recent years, just like ARod asked fans to do this week. He wants us to consider his entire resume when we judge him, similar to Bonds and Clemens.

But I don’t buy it. I want him to disappear from the sport like Sosa and McGwire. Selig cannot repair his legacy because it’s already set in stone: He had a jacked up salary in a juiced up game that most people consider about as authentic as the WWE.

In the best interest of baseball, Selig should step down and let the game move forward with fresh leadership as it attempts to enter a new era. The history books won’t let us forget what happened during his tenure, but the sport can and will survive.

Selig shouldn’t be so lucky.

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ARod only extends steroid era

This would only be sad if it were a shocking revelation. If somehow, Alex Rodriguez’s steroid use was the tipping point, the moment we all realized that performance-enhancing drugs had destroyed an entire period in baseball. But we’re way beyond that now. The damage was done long ago. The problem with ARod is that he not only adds to the wreckage of these tainted times; he also extends the era.

If the Sports Illustrated report, which cites four independent sources, is true, it guarantees that we will be discussing the men who cheated the game for at least as long as Rodriguez continues to chip away at the already-blemished records of Barry Bonds.

While we all recognize that steroid use went far beyond a select few, we generally hold four of the era’s greatest players more accountable than everyone else –Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. None of those four were on a Major League team last season it appears unlikely any will ever play again.

The talk was fading. The key culprits were out of the game and we were looking at the next generation of great ballplayers to clean up the sport. Now ARod will keep steroids fresh on our minds into the next decade.

As great as he has been, we forget that Rodriguez still has a long way to go before he reaches the record books. He might not get to 600 homeruns this season. He’s still over 100 away from reaching that first of four statistical bonuses in his contract that guarantee him $6 million when he ties Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds in homeruns. ARod has only just begun his assault on history.

So as we prepare for another Spring Training to begin, fresh with those young rising stars who are supposed to rescue baseball, we still have to look the cheaters right in the face, as opposed to just forgetting about them. We now have to watch former players fake being happy for Rodriguez as he shatters history, the same way they did with Bonds.

Rodriguez almost becomes the worst cheat of all. At least the four other key culprits were at the tail-end of their careers. The fifth is in his prime and still has so much more damage to cause.

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Ten homeruns changed everything for Bonds

Baseball teams have given jobs to players that were just as old as Barry Bonds is today, only with much less ability. Think Julio Franco. They’ve employed admitted cheaters, guys who needed steroids just to stand on the field or guys who used them to make history. Think Jason Giambi, among many others. And they’ve held on to men with issues that went far beyond a huge ego or a bad attitude. Think Ty Cobb for god sakes.

Yet it’s almost March and Bonds, arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport, has generated almost no interest from Major League teams. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where we are starting to hear rumors about him heading to Japan to become a real life version of Tom Selleck’s character in Mr. Baseball.

If that does happen, if he truly is banished from American baseball, you can blame it on ten of his 762 career homeruns.

That’s right. The most damaging homeruns to Bonds’ legacy weren’t the ones that vaulted him past Babe Ruth and ultimately Hank Aaron on the all-time homerun list. They were homeruns 64 through 73 during the 2001 season.

That was the season that Bonds, who apparently was extremely jealous of Mark McGwire, broke Big Mac’s single season homerun record. It was also the season that somehow made Barry Bonds more of a cheater than anyone else who used performance enhancing drugs.

If Bonds had hit ten less homers that year, Sammy Sosa would have led baseball with 64 and he would have never had to endure the witch-hunt in the years that followed. Would people still have questioned him? Of course. Would there still be a BALCO scandal? You bet. But look at the way the rest of baseball has handled these problems. Most players have never even been named in a steroid report, despite seemingly obvious signs of use. And even the guys who have been named, like Gary Sheffield, haven’t had to face all that much heat.

In fact, Bonds would have probably been given the same treatment as Sheffield is handed today. And considering the Tigers’ slugger might end up in the Hall of Fame while voters struggle to elect the all-time homerun king, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

We act now as though Bonds suddenly started leading the league in homeruns every single season after his 35th birthday. The truth is that he has led the league just twice in his entire career and one of those seasons came in 1993.

Ten homeruns completely changed our thoughts on Bonds.

And now, ten homeruns are the difference between a spot hitting cleanup with a Major League team and Japan. Or forced retirement.

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