Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Major League Baseball’s leadership showed Tuesday that it has still failed to fully address the issue of performance-enhancing drug use in the sport.
Responding to the damning picture painted in a report by former Sen. George Mitchell, Commissioner Bud Selig and players union chief Donald Fehr told a congressional panel that they could and should have acted sooner to stop the widespread use of drugs. They received praise from some members of Congress for acting to clean up the sport.
Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., however, noted that baseball limited Mitchell’s investigation to steroids and human growth hormone. Off-limits was the use of amphetamines, drugs that players have used for decades to heighten their concentration and improve their performance.
Baseball banned amphetamine use only in the 2006 season, but Tierney said it appears players have been quick to get around the ban. In 2006 28 players received exemptions to use stimulants such as Ritalin for attention deficit disorder. Last season that number rocketed to 103.
Tierney wanted to know why the number of professional baseball players using such stimulants was “almost eight times the adult use in our population.”
No one had an answer.
“When you see the number 28 one year go all the way to 103, it makes you think that we have a loophole here with performance-enhancing drugs,” Tierney told The New York Times.
It certainly does, and baseball officials said they were investigating, but given their record, that is hardly reassuring.
As a professional sport, baseball is certainly not alone in its problems with performance-enhancing drugs, but other leagues have escaped the level of scrutiny baseball has received because Selig, Fehr and others ignored the obvious problems for years. After all, more muscle meant more home runs, which were incredibly profitable.
Fans, however, are tired of records bloated by steroids. They want baseball to come clean, and it is long past time for baseball to take care of this problem once and for all.
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