Choosing to skip the Democratic debate, I caught some of George
Mitchell's press conference on steroid use in baseball.
Unsurprisingly, Mitchell found that use of steroids was
"widespread," and that MLB was slow to react, but that after it
instituted random testing in 2002, steroid use dropped. The problem
is, players then shifted to human growth harmone, which is
undetectable in urine tests. He said that all 30 baseball teams had
players who used steroids or other performance enhancing drugs at
some point. He didn't name names in the part of the press
conference that I saw, but did in the report, and they're already
starting to trickle out.
Mitchell advised against disciplining the players unless their
actions were very serious and doing nothing would hurt the
integrity of the game. His reasoning was that many of the
infractions detailed in the report are old news--from 2 to 9 years
ago. Getting caught up in high-profile battles over disciplanary
actions would complicate efforts to forge an agreement between
players and owners to reform baseball's steroid policy going
forward. His recomendations have three parts: 1) Create a
"Department of Investigations" that would look into allegations of
use, especially because some substances remain undetectable. 2)
Improve education as to the harmful effects of steroid use. 3)
Extend the drug testing agreement, which gets trickier because it
requires the approval of the Player's Association.
All in all, a sad day for baseball, but hopefully it will create
an oppourtunity to address this alarming problem.
topics:
Education
