Written by: Mike       

Mark McGwire finally admitted to the world what we already knew; he used performance enhancing drugs throughout the 90′s, including 1998 when he set a then Major League Baseball record of 70 home runs in a single season. This naturally raises the question of whether or not the steroids helped him achieve the success he had. To that McGwire said

I’m sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn’t take any and I had bad years when I didn’t take any. I had good years when I took steroids and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn’t have done it and for that I’m truly sorry.

Everyone knew he was lying...

When a man faces the nation and admits he cheated, that takes balls. One could argue that he should have done so during the congressional hearings a few years back, but that’s water under the bridge. While I don’t condone what he did, I can certainly appreciate when a person owns up to their faults. It’s not easy to do in the 4 walls of your own home, let alone in front of a camera broadcasting your confession to the world.But that’s about as far as I will go in defending him. The bottom line is he knowingly cheated the game of baseball.

Baseball purists, analysts, newspaper columnists and others will surely parade his head around on a stick, and make an example of him; someone who cheated to get a competitive advantage and will now pay the ultimate price of not being elected to the Hall of Fame. But if you don’t elect McGwire in, you need to refuse Bonds, Clemens, and ARod (just to name a few). The question now becomes whether or not the voters have enough balls to stick by their guns and refuse all of them.

Electing one, and not the other is sending the entirely wrong message to kids, and the mainstream public who pays good money to watch the product MLB puts on the field. Elect all of them, and you’ve basically said “we don’t care about the fact they cheated, everyone did, so no one really had an advantage”, but tell that to the players who have seen their records disgraced by cheaters.

The only option the Hall of Fame has is to flat out refuse anyone who has publicly admitted to taking steroids. If you’re a young kid and getting very good at baseball (good enough to get drafted) seeing an entire era of players get denied the sports ultimate honor because they took PED’s would surely deter you from even trying them.

What about the Mitchell Report you ask? Anyone’s name who has come up numerous times as an alleged steroid user who is being considered for the Hall of Fame should have to go through the equivelant of a criminal interrogation. I’m talking lie detector tests, one-on-one interviews with top interrogation experts, background checks with former clubhouse attendants and trainers. If you pass, you’re in, if not, you are denied with no chance for appeal.

While all of this may seem a bit extreme, it’s the only way in my mind to clean up the game for future generations. By denying the sports ultimate personal honor to those who disgraced and belittled the sport where statistics mean so much, you are sending a clear message that America’s Pastime is a sport we can all trust.

 Written by: Mike       

While everyone in the country is concentrated on the growing number of alleged mistresses coming forward claiming they had a romp with the worlds #1 golfer,  a new plot is developing, one in which Woods may be in the thick of.  The transgressions Tiger admits to, while disturbing from a family and personal perspective, are nothing new to society. All women in think men cheat on them and every few months when there is no news, the gossip magazines just make up a story about Angelina Jolie breaking up with Brad Pitt.

But today a Canadian doctor, who is linked to supposedly working with Tiger, is under investigation by the FBI and Canadian Mounties for a stop at the border where Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in Galea’s bag in the car (according to the NY Times)

As you dive deeper into the story, and how it’s related to El Tigre, Dr. Galea, visited Woods four times in February and March to provide platelet-rich plasma therapy as he recovered from knee surgery.  This therapy involves taking a blood sample, removing red blood cells that leave the platelet rich plasma, and re-injecting into the patient to expedite the healing process.

Of course, Tiger was not the first athlete to undergo the therapy. Early in 2009 Hines Ward, a Super Bowl MVP sprained his MCL in the AFC Championship game. By all estimates of traditional medicines, it was unlikely that Ward would play 2 weeks later in the Super Bowl. He did the therapy (after reviewing it’s history), and rigorous rehab. He played at least 2 weeks before playing if he had done a traditional recovery, yet the story went largely unreported. Perhaps it will take a mega-star like Tiger to bring this into our collective conscious.

With that said, the debate of the 2010’s may be just exactly what is a steroid or performance enhancing drug? In the 2000’s the media and congress went after baseball.  Society was painted a picture of artificially created pharmaceuticals that players were hiding in their lockers and going to seedy ‘clinics’ to get the drug administered. The reality is we may now see legitimate procedures being done on athletes by credited doctors who are pushing the boundaries of scientific medicine.

The line between what is and isn’t a performance enhancement is blurred more than ever. On one hand, what they are putting in your body with this particular treatment was created by your body, nothing artificial about it. On the other, your body never produced the platelet rich blood; it had to be modified in a lab to get the desired result.

As we learn more about this, and other therapies, opinions will form and lines will be drawn. Professional leagues will have a new, but all to familiar issue to deal with; defining what is acceptable for its athletes to do in terms of personal fitness. The talking heads on TV will likely be varied in their opinions, and everyone with a twitter account will chime in with their 140 character take.  But at the end of the day, it will ultimately be the athletes themselves who push and influence the policy. It just remains to be seen to what medical extremes they are willing to go in order to achieve athletic success.