Monday, August 20, 2012
Steroids and Sport-2012
With the recent
suspension of baseball’s Melky Cabrera, the ugliness of the steroid era has
been exposed yet again. Cabrera has been suspended for fifty games, ending his
season. Cabrera has been playing for the San Francisco Giants, and was having a
fine year, up to this point.
In fact, he recently
won the award as the Most Valuable Player in the All Star game. Now he is out
of work.
In a Sun Media article in last Saturday’s
paper, Ken Fidlin wrote: “Major League Baseball wants everyone to believe that
performance enhancing drugs are a thing of the deep, dark, dirty past, held in
check by a thoroughly modern testing apparatus”. As we have now discovered,
such is not the case.
Cabrera was in the
midst of his best season, ever, in baseball. He was batting .346, had 11 home
runs, and 60 runs-batted-in. His two key hits in the All Star Game ensured that
the National League would have home field advantage in the upcoming World
Series. His suspension will also jeopardize the chances of the San Francisco
Victor Conte knows a
little about this topic. He owned a lab in the Bay area called BALCO, and he
supplied many athletes with performance enhancing drugs. He got caught, served
hard time, and is now out of the business. But he does go on the record as
saying that the use of a new “synthetic testosterone” is now widespread among
athletes. He calls it “the biggest loophole in anti-doping”.
Athletes can spread
testosterone cream on their body, get the healing benefits overnight, and in
the morning their levels of the drug are back to normal baseline counts. Conte
said that there is a way to test for the substance, but that it is not being
widely used. He said that cheating is currently like “taking candy from a
baby”.
In a rather
interesting attempt to avoid the suspension, Cabrera and his cronies set up a
fictitious website, along with a product that does not exist, to prove that he
inadvertently took the drug. But he became entrapped in a series of falsehoods
and lies.
Jeff Novitzky is a
criminal investigative agent for the American Food and Drug Administration. He
and his cohorts are investigating all of the activities surrounding Cabrera’s
suspension: his trainers, handlers and agents, his friends, and likely his
teammates, as they search for the source of the synthetic testosterone that
first became apparent at the All Star Game.
Baseball Commissioner
Bud Selig spoke to a group of owners last week in Denver
Cabrera spent his
first five years in the big leagues in New
York Atlanta , and another in Kansas City
Many of the players
who play it straight are angry that yet another of their fellow players has
been caught. Melky should have to pay the piper. His All Star MVP title should
be stripped, along with all of the toys he got in the deal.
Sooner or later,
professional sports will become clean. Let’s hope so.
# posted by James Hurst @ 12:18 PM 
