The Code
The unwritten Code of players and trainers that Canseco violated with his recent memoir “Juiced” is simple: You don’t talk about other players’ training habits, diet, medications, or conduct, in or out of the clubhouse. Those that do talk out of school can find themselves on the outside of baseball.
“Most guys don’t take steroids,” said one player who wished to remain unidentified because of the Code. “Even saying that you don’t means that you put the guys who don’t say anything, whether they do or don’t, in a jackpot with [the media]. It also means that the rest of us [who don’t use steroids] will always be suspects. It’s like every record, whether a guy uses or not, gets put into question for all time.”
Feeding the Fire.
The media certainly has its part in perpetuating the steroid problem. There is justification for exposing a form of cheating that alters records in a historic sport where records are everything. Yet it would seem like the hundred billion dollar machine grinding up sports news feeds with a tabloid-like glee on the momentary sensationalism rather than taking some sort of journalistic high ground.
The irony is that the MLBPA, trying to protect its membership from such exposure, actually feeds the media when they won’t allow a first-offense treatment option into the program.
Players in football and basketball who take treatment have a generally a much easier time with the media. There is no gain in kicking someone who’s already acknowledged falling down. Yet the sharks will line up three deep to icon-bash Barry, who wants to go down in history for connecting with the ball, even as he flails defiantly with those same people who will write his story for all time.
Photo Op? Of Corpse.
Congress only contributes to the spectacle with a public airing of baseball’s dirty laundry on steroids. If Congress can arm twist the MLBPA into accepting the treatment option in a final plan, the hearings may end up as something more than a mere photo opportunity.
The minor league rules cast aside any doubt that Major League Baseball takes the matter seriously, and wants to do something intelligent about the problem. They have modeled their program after other successful player programs in the sports industry, and the international Olympic system.
It would seem that it is the MLBPA that is the problem. They have veto power on anything regarding the testing and discipline of players for substance abuse. They have warmed up to the subject like a two-year-old being told they have to take a nap. Progress has been made, mostly with the threat of federal regulation that the PA cannot control. If allowed to stand, the current set of rules, even with better testing, will generate token penalties that will not curb performance enhancers or substance abuse in baseball.
Very little is likely to change, unless Congress threatens to curb baseball’s near limitless legal powers, or until the next player dies and the policy scandal fans the flames of the media frenzy once more.
