No Hall of Fame for Me, Either

by: michael r. shannon | published: 01 22, 2010

I want to discuss Mark McGwire’s steroid confession, but first – in the interest of full disclosure – it’s only fair I mention my own experience with “performance enhancing” drugs.

During my 20’s I played Rugby for a number of forgettable teams in the Midwest. On one of these squads we had a do–it–yourself pharmacist we'll call Mark, since that was his name.

Mark drove a van, lived in a ratty rent house filled with unusual, earthy odors and favored bead curtains instead of doors; so naturally he was the man to see for your under–the–counter chemical needs.

America had learned to its surprise that both the NFL and MLB were full of sanctioned and unsanctioned drug use at that time. Naturally, I thought that if pills worked for the pros, surely a bit of pharmacy would help an amateur like me.

Naively, I assumed a drug called “speed” would give me just enough of a boost to make up for any quickness and aggression deficiencies on my part.

I swallowed the pill a half hour before kickoff and rapidly achieved something of a medical breakthrough: I fell victim to drug–induced paranoia, without being an actual drug addict.

That was probably one of the worst games I played during my 16–season career. For the entire 80 minutes I suffered from this palpable sense of impending doom. I felt there was a real possibility of meeting my lifetime insurance deductible on the very next tackle I made.

Mental toughness could possibly have overcome the psychological manifestations, but there was no mind, least of all mine, strong enough to overcome a case of speed–induced indigestion so powerful I thought I invented acid reflux.

Come to think of it, my sense of impending doom could have been fear that I would dissolve in my own stomach juices.

The rest of my career I played clean, which brings us to McGwire who evidently had more success with his chemical adventures.

Let me begin by acknowledging McGwire’s steroid usage was during a time when official MLB rules banned the substance. Mark was cheating and should suffer the penalty, which in his case appears to be no Hall of Fame plaque.

But my question is: why ban or criminalize steroids in the first place? Why has society decided this particular treatment is out of bounds?

Steroids should be right up there with the Protestant Ethic as a key part of the American Way. Steroids simply permit an athlete to train harder and subsequently recover faster. Steroids are not the lazy man’s way to the medal platform. An athlete who takes steroids but does not increase his training workload enjoys no benefit.

What’s more, steroids don’t give an athlete talent he does not already possess. You could shoot me so full of steroids that I start picking fights with fireplugs and I still could not outrun Darrell Green.

The steroid prohibition is not even intellectually consistent.

Cortisone shots inject a type of steroid and allow injured athletes to play before they’ve recovered naturally. Painkillers allow jocks to play while potentially masking additional damage to the body. What makes one injection OK and the other verboten?

And if chemicals that work invisibly in the body are cheating, why is Drew Brees undergoing “Tommy John” surgery to repair an injured arm fair and square? Both procedures repair damage and allow the athlete to resume training and playing.

Where were sports moralists when Tiger Woods had laser eye surgery to correct his vision to an unnatural 20/15?

(I know sports moralists are all over Tiger now, but I wonder, do you think developing an eye for the ladies was a side effect of laser surgery?)

Steroids, thanks to blowhards like Rep. Henry Waxman (D–TV studio) and other headline–chasing hacks, are surrounded by scare stories. Sure overdosing on steroids is bad, but overdosing on aspirin will send you to the emergency room, too.

Steroids could be thought of as just another training technique that athletes can employ or not employ as they choose, just like having corrective surgery is an athlete’s choice. Either decision should take place under a doctor’s supervision and should not be made by minors without a parent’s consent. If a league decides to ban steroids, then that is a marketplace decision that can be made without Congressional bigfooting.

I can guarantee that regardless of private sector decisions, steroid use will never be popular among a particular subset of politicians. Because one of the documented side effects of steroid use is temporary testicle shrinkage and that might interfere with the hack’s favorite sport: skirt chasing.

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