Columnist Dean Juipe: Only a ban will stop steroid use

Dean Juipe

Friday, May 31, 2002 | 9:30 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

What I would do in that situation isn't particularly relevant, let alone entirely predictable.

Picture yourself on the verge of breaking into Major League Baseball or maybe with a season already under your belt.

A few of your colleagues are taking steroids and, perhaps, seemingly getting results. For all you know, everyone's on the juice.

Who's to say the temptation wouldn't be irresistible? Who's to say you wouldn't talk yourself into one of those "everyone's doing it" type of things and, in your own mind at least, justify taking the plunge?

It's a scenario that apparently has been playing out with some regularity in recent years, given the revelations this week concerning widespread steroid abuse in the bigs. It's a hot topic and one that won't be easily dismissed.

Baseball has a steroid problem because, unlike the National Football League and National Basketball Association, it does not ban the drug nor test for it. That's a loophole which obviously needs to be plugged and will be -- maybe in increments -- in upcoming labor negotiations between the players' union and owners.

But for the short term, there are those who do, those who don't and those who have yet to reach the threshold. Players in the minor leagues can be and occasionally are tested for performance-enhancing drugs, but once they reach a major league clubhouse the restrictions on steroids are lifted and they're on their own.

I can see how it would be easy to succumb to the lure of larger biceps and, on the plus side, the consequence of additional extra-base hits. A young person devotes his life to reaching the majors, and to get there or to the brink of that goal and to realize there's a substance that may assure your continued presence on a big-league roster would be an eye-opening experience.

Weigh the options: resisting and relying solely on your natural ability may result in a trip back to the minors, especially if you're a marginal talent; while relenting and submitting to the steroid ritual may add to your statistics, albeit at the expense of probable long-term physical repercussions.

You could ask 100 men on the street today if they would trade five or 10 years playing in the majors for a shortened life span and how many would answer in the affirmative? Fifty? Ninety? Maybe all 100?

Moral conviction carries only so much clout. If a young player perceives that it's to his benefit to be doing steroids and the penalties are minimal if nonexistent for the short haul, he's apt to whisper his desire and make connection with someone who can deliver the goods.

This week's Sports Illustrated presents a landscape in which as many as half of the players in the majors are doing steroids, although that's apt to be an exaggeration (if only because the drug is counterproductive for pitchers, who form some 40 percent of a team's roster). But the message is equally clear: Baseball has to do something to circumvent a problem that, at best guess, is shared by some 15 percent of its participants.

The era of a front-office edict now long gone, the only solution is through labor negotiations. The simplest remedy may be to grandfather in the current users, with stipulations, of course, and impose an outright steroid ban for everyone else.