We What Message Does Pro Steroid Use Send | to Our Youth? Travis Paterson, OP Features Editor Last week Mark McGwire was at the center of headlines again during Baseball’s Hall of Fame announcements. McGwire, long believed to be guilty of steroid use during his home run breaking season of 1998, is one of many athletes at the center of what Sports I//ustrated referred to in 2003 as “The Asterisk Era” for baseball. The asterisk however, can be applied to more than just baseball, providing slippery terrain for those reporters who wish to navigate it. In Jose Canseco’s biography, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, Canseco tells how he taught his former teammate Mark McGwire to use steroids. McGwire broke the homerun record to Barry Bonds’ envy. Bonds then did some even better steroids, and broke the same record three years later. All of this happened while-aged track and field athletes were setting world records at an astounding pace at stages in their lives that tradi- tionally dictated retirement. According to Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports, co-authored by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the decision for athletes to use steroids is one of the most common themes in the current era of sports. Knowing the competition is already using steroids; most athletes realize they cannot advance their careers to an elite level without using steroids themselves. The moral crux of Jose’s story argues that the repu- tation of professional baseball players who were accused of using steroids has been destroyed, when all along it has been the owners to blame. Baseball's popularity skyrocketed during the steroid-enriched 90s, and the owners refused to adopt a newer steroid testing policy, thereby protecting the players’ choice to use performance enhancing drugs. Owners then rewarded the players with the rich con- tracts we see today. As for the media who cover the MLB—how soon the owners forget the fine line reporters have to walk just to bring America’s sport to the people. Baseball was America’s game—pure and simple for a hundred years—and now the game has as thicker layer of underlying politics than its had at any time in history. The issues at hand are denoted in the record books by an upward spike in home run and RBI pro- duction since the early 90s. With the countless news stories of medal-winning track and field ath- letes who have tested positive, and considering the issues baseball has faced, it’s hard to imagine that some proportion of NHL players aren’t also actively using steroids—especially considering the hockey league’s backward steroid policy. In Canada, NHL players are the most popular role models for our young athletes. The NHL/s steroid testing policy was exposed in 2005 when American Bryan Berard tested positive; not as an NHLer, but as a candidate for the US Olympic hockey team, yet eluded punishment from the NHL. However, the argument goes the other way considering that a major percentage of the NHL’ elite participated in the 2006 Olympics without any positive test results. It seems the NHL is currently riding that wave into the next Olympics, until which time players are free to experiment with designer steroids that are unidentified in the NHL steroid policy. \s someone who spends hours each week analyzing NHL statistics, I can’t help but wonder as to the evidence that some players edging into their late 30s are better than ever; at an age level at which even the game’s greatest players showed a decline in production? You certainly 4 2 THE OTHER PRESS JANUARY 22 2007 eae Re PEE won't see any media accusations of players using steroids, because if you're right, you’re a rat, and if you’re wrong, you lose all credibility by fabricating a story. Also, it’s very believable that the ‘new NHL’ is reason enough for the return of former sniper’s whose production had lagged in the years previous to the strike. Though there are some instances where veteran players’ have returned from the strike bet- ter than ever despite missing a year of competitive hockey. For the athletes implicated in the BALCO investigation, particularly baseball or track and field, so many of their careers had hit a wall, only to see them turn a magic corner and perform better than ever. Documented in the Game of Shadows is the evidence of so many athletes whose abilities were slowing, and their sta- tistics proved it, before they began to break their own personal records and shatter a bevy of world and all-time records. As a hockey reporter I’m at the bottom of the totem pole trying to soak up as much as I can, and it’s very apparent the mention of steroids is strictly taboo. Surely it is talked about behind closed doors, but for a reporter to sug- gest its possible existence would jeopardize their reputation, and any accusation could spell an automatic death-sentence for your’ career; yet the writing is on the wall. Canseco’s book won’t win any awards, but who can judge his argument that a baseball prospect from an impoverished background, and an average player at best, wouldn’t consider using performance enhancing drugs to earn a multi-year contract so lucrative it will set their family up for generations? In the North West, Bret Boone was a perfect example. When the second baseman arrived with the Seattle Mariners in 1999 he was a veteran player with average numbers, but by 2001 he had doubled his production numbers propelling the Mariners to a record 116 wins. Soon after the BALCO scandal hit, his production slipped and he was waived to the minor leagues, retiring from the game. The moneymaker of the BALCO operation was THG, or, “The Clear.” THG is an abbreviation for tetrahydro- gestrinone, a modified version of the anabolic steroids gestri- none and trenbolone, both of which are banned Olympic sub- stances known to the USADA. Despite the abolishment of BALCO -and its regime, drugs like THG are still on the market, and are increasingly available to younger athletes in North America. Scared that doping has become a national phenomena, many US high school districts are adopting the National Scholastic Anti-Doping Program (NSADP), who created a steroid and drug testing program that can be adopted by coaches and administrators. By implementing testing programs at the pre-collegiate level, the U.S. hope to minimize the use of banned sub- - stances at the amateur level. The Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport’s website, www,cces.ca, posts media releases of anonymous testing results done at the collegiate level, and names other Canadian athletes who have failed drug tests. Most of the collegiate level athletes who test positive are not found to have used banned steroids, but test positive for traces of cannabis. At this time, it looks as though steroids are not a serious problem with Canadian youth, but without future measures, it is likely they will only become increasingly available, and harder to detect.