baseball's steroids

Baseball Was Better With Steroids
$1.99

Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report
$25.95
I think three groups of readers will find Radomski's book worth reading.

The first group are former and current players, from the high school level to the major leagues. They usually want to know what the competition is doing and what is really going on in the sport they are currently playing, or have played in the recent, or even distant, past.

The second, larger group, are the fans who love the game as spectators.

A third group, who believe baseball is an important part of American popular culture, will feel obligated to read it, and I recommend they do. As a primary source, it is invaluable and professional historians and sociologists will know how to deal with it as such.

Dedicated baseball fans will, apparently, almost always want to shoot the messenger, Kirk Radomski, for telling them the unpleasant truth that many, if not most, of their heroes are liars and hypocrites who take illegal, performance enhancing drugs, and too often use corked bats to get more hits. And that these players get away with it because clubhouse personnel, including people like Kirk Radomski himself, help them get away with it.

Most of the (current) Amazon reviewers have either attacked Radomski's character directly or implied that his book is some kind of joke:

"Kirk Radomski and his Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report will be stashed away to be finished for another time; I will pick it up and finish it some other day. Maybe ..."

"One negative I can find is in the beginning, he overstates himself. He said HE led the Mets in downtown in their victory parade in '86. He thinks people think HE's the man who started the whole steroid rage."

"Radomski seems to think he was important because he spent time with big name athletes who made a lot of money."

"The author is a joke."

"The book was very very repetitive and in parts read like a high schooler had written it."

"There was an enormous ego present throughout the book, especially when he flaunted the contracts his clients received."

"Not recommended for young impressionable idealistic fans."

"Radomski constantly brags that he knows sooo much more than any ballplayer about the proper use of these *ILLEGAL-DRUGS*. This bellowing braggadocio... is repeated... not just once... but over... and over... and over... again."

" 'Everybody' is this guy's best friend in the book. Total phony. Not worth the money. Wait to buy until it is on the one dollar book sheld - shouldn't be long."

When you consider that Baseball Digest runs advertisements for funeral urns in the size and shape of baseballs with the names of favorite teams on them, it isn't hard to understand why the messenger is getting a few pitches thrown at his head. After all, when hundreds of thousands of fans are dedicated enough to have their ashes deposited in baseball shaped urns after they die, we're talking about serious business.

However, in spite of all the ruffled feathers, it's pretty clear that Radomski is telling the truth. For one thing, he doesn't have any reason to lie, while players have every reason. Also, while Radomski is no scientist, he is nevertheless a very intelligent guy. He didn't train as a biochemist so we shouldn't expect to hear his scientific opinion about the effects of hormones on biological systems. Radomski is, however, highly knowledgeable about the pragmatic EFFECTS of performance enhancing drugs and its clear that players knew this and therefore came to him to get the right mix to help them through the season.

The reader should not have to be reminded that most biochemists don't understand the biological mechanisms of performance enhancing drugs either, and that is why they are afraid of them. They don't know what their side effects will be twenty years into the future because they don't know precisely how they act on the body in the present.

But ethical issues are not different in baseball and baseball regulations aren't essentially different from other regulatory activities, from banning abortion and making suicide illegal to breaking up monopolies and setting speed limits for highways.

Baseball, however, has a unique position in American culture even though its rules are, more or less, arbitrary. It's not written in stone, for example, that first base should be 90 feet from home base or that the distance to left field should be 200 feet or 500 feet. These things are all part of an American ritual and when they change they must change with the appropriate amount of mumbo jumbo and finally, with the consent of most of the fans and players.

Clearly, there is nothing ethically distasteful about using corked bats or even aluminum bats that weigh half as much as wood bats but are twenty inches longer. And there is nothing ethically wrong with changing baseballs to that they will travel twice as far or half as far when hit, or making them bigger or smaller. It's really just a matter of what fans and players think will make the game interesting.

The use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports has to clear two hurdles. The first is the hurdle of baseball tradition just mentioned. The second it the hurdle of government regulation, in general.

The government allows nicotine and alcohol but bans marijuana and cocaine and allows creatine and amino acids but bans human growth hormone and steroids. These decisions are not completely arbitrary and they aren't completely rational either and individual citizens have every right to disagree with them and even break the rules if they feel it is in their best interest, or in the best interest of society, to do so. But for any law or rule, if lawbreakers are caught, they are punished, and judges don't usually listen to lawyers who try to argue that the law itself is incorrect.

But then again, judges don't seem to be inclined to prosecute those who use illegal drugs to the same extent they punish those who provide them, probably because the law has always been prejudiced towards the rich and powerful and prejudiced against the poor and powerless.

Radomski is lucky he only got five years probation, even though the only punishment Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will get is not getting into the Hall of Fame.

In his poem The Wolf and the Lamb, Jean de la Fontaine said it a very long time ago, echoing the ancient Greek Aesop, "The reasoning of the strong is always better than the reasoning of the weak."

Boston Red Sox (Roger Clemens, Sports Illustrated) White Wood-Mounted Sports Poster Print - 16" X 20"
$99.99
This poster shows Roger Clemens throwing a pitch. On the right is a copy of his signature. At the bottom it says "Roger Clemens" and "Sports Illustrated" and also has the Boston Red Sox logo. This poster measures approx. 16" x 20" William Roger Clemens (born August 4, 1962, in Dayton, Ohio), is a professional baseball player, a starting pitcher. He last pitched for the New York Yankees, and is one of the preeminent pitchers in major league history. Clemens has won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than any other pitcher. He throws and bats right-handed. He has played for the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, and Houston Astros.

Miken Steroids Tee - Small
$17.99
Miken's steroids black t-shirt available up to size XXXl. 100% cotton.