...and the hell with those drugs

by Tony Basilio

Even though I long for the real thing, I still love today’s sports. I qualify that remark because most of the sports we see these days have been inflated, augmented, exaggerated well past the limits of authenticity. Today’s sports are part Jessica Simpson, yet part lip-syncing Ashley. They’re half early Pamela Anderson, and half Pam Anderson after the surgery. They’re part young Barry Bonds, and part Barry after 30. In decades past they got diamonds like Mays and Aaron. We get Bonds and Sammy Sosa, the sports equivalent of cubic zirconia.

Although traditionalists hate it, the sports culture at large can’t seem to get enough of today’s drugged-up sports world.

Barry Bonds and the BALCO case have many finally coming to grips with the fact that much of what we see in sport, both amateur and professional, is chemically enhanced. It is a reality that is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Dr. Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor who co-authored the book The Steroids Game, put it this way recently on my radio show: “Fans today in all sports view every sport as entertainment. Sanctity of records doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters is the here and now.”

Professor Yesalis has been a lone voice for decades, decrying the alarming proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. He’s been featured in national publications, on all three major networks, and he’s even testified before Congress about an epidemic that has filtered down even to our local playing fields.

“The latest empirical data shows that over one million kids between 9th and 12th grade have cycled anabolic steroids,” says Yesalis. Cycling simply means that these youngsters used the stuff in enough quantity to alter their physique or gain an edge. According to Yesalis, “You can use these drugs a couple of times, but it won’t do you any good. You have to complete a cycle to reap performance benefits.”

By now, you’ve probably assumed that football players are the most frequent users of performance-enhancing drugs. But ponder this number: Of the one million cited by Dr. Yesalis in that study, close to half of the steroid users in high school were young girls.

“They see the possibility of getting a college scholarship. Believe it or not, adulation is also a reason that more females are turning to this dope,” Yesalis says.

And cycling has lasting benefits. Studies show that athletes who have cycled maintain 30 to 80 percent of whatever edge they gained. When asked what sport in our country Yesalis thought was free of performance enhancement, he glibly answers, “Curling is clean.”

We could cry out in righteous indignation at where pharmacology is taking us in this century of tainted athletics, but consider the following: Major League Baseball, under a season-long cloud of a burgeoning steroid scandal, is coming off a record-breaking year at the turnstiles. Face the facts: We want to see superhuman feats. Whether they are “real” or not, we want video game sports. As Yesalis states, “Bottom line: the use of drugs makes sports more entertaining.”

So how do we explain that in recent national polls regarding drugs and sports, an overwhelming preponderance of fans want rigorous drug testing for athletes? Yesalis has a theory: “Fans want to feel like what they see is real, even if it really isn’t.”

That ambivalence applies to those who oversee the sports we watch as well. “League commissioners, owners and administrators want to put into practice systems that have plenty of loopholes. It’s ideal to have a drug-testing policy that appears strong, when in fact it is only a formality. What’s been created at all levels of sport is plausible deniability. Doping has been too great for sports for there to be a true movement to clean this up,” Yesalis says.

So where do we go from here? “I don’t think that if you were born today and lived to be 80 that you would see clean sports. I travel all over the country and speak to groups, and I constantly hear a similar refrain. It’s always the other guy who’s using or somebody else’s team. When I speak to high schools, invariably coaches complain about teams in their county that use but say it doesn’t go on in their school.

“It is the same with college sports. It’s always somebody across the conference that’s doing it. Until we get serious and decide that enough is enough, this type of sports is here to stay,” Yesalis says. His words are sad, but true.

Tune in and talk sports with Tony Basilio weekdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on ESPN Radio WVLZ 1180 AM.

December 16, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 51 © 2004 Metro Pulse