As I noted earlier in this blog, the Mitchell Commission Report is a sloppy hatchet job. However, the report has had the beneficial impact of prompting more reasoned voices to emerge regarding the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in professional baseball to offset the mainstream’s media’s typical demonization of the players. Here are a few examples:
Eric Walker’s new website Steroids and Baseball is worth a look. Walker provides an interesting analysis of power hitting performance over the modern eras using a time series of power factor statistics. Based on putting the time series together at critical points where there is a change in the baseball or an interruption in personnel from a war, Walker shows that you get a series that does not show any meaningful increase in power hitting as measured by the power factor. Indeed, the power factor in the so-called steroid era is no higher than in other eras after subtracting the cumulative effects of changes in the baseball in preceding eras from the time series. In addition, Walker surveys research on the benefits and costs of steroids on athletic performance and health, and again concludes that the results are not all that clear.
Meanwhile, Radley Balko links to an article by sportswriter Dan Le Batard noting a point that I’ve frequently made in my prior posts on PED use in baseball — the motivation behind the use was to improve the capacity of the user’s body to hold up under the physically brutal and pathologically competitive nature of MLB. Balko concludes with the following wise advice:
At some point, athletes, rules makers, fans, and ethicists are going to have to drop the hysterics, and begin a serious conversation about all of this. Shaming, prison, and witch hunts aren’t going to make these issues go away.
Following up on Balko’s thoughts, this Shawn Macomber/American Spectator article reports on a recent panel discussion over PED use in which Balko participated. Another participant in that panel discussion was Norman Fost, professor of pediatric medicine and director of the Program in Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, who is the subject of this Chicago Tribune profile. Fost believes that steroids should be available, under a doctor’s supervision, to any pro or amateur adult athlete who wants them:
In all the health and morality questions about steroids, Fost said:
“It’s as though the drug hysteria serves as a distraction from more serious issues. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single death associated with steroid use, yet the TV cameras keep showing [Red Sox manager] Terry Francona drooling disgusting spit from something [chewing tobacco] that has a very high cancer rate associated with it.
“You have 400,000 deaths a year due to tobacco and tens of thousands of alcohol-related deaths, a substance heavily promoted by Major League Baseball, yet the president and Congress and the press have virtually nothing to say about tobacco and alcohol in athletics, but lots to say about steroids. A football player spending more than three years in the NFL has an 80 to 90 percent chance, according to one study, of some permanent disability, but the NFL produces films focusing on the most vicious hits. The dangers to health in sports today come not from enhancement but the sport itself.”
Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell builds on his earlier posts on the issue of PED’s in baseball with two more posts (here and here) in which he notes the following:
It is perfectly legal for an athlete to undergo “performance enhancing” eye surgery, that moves him from, say, the 50th to the 95th percentile in sight. It is not legal for that same athlete to take “performance enhancing” hormones that move his testosterone from the 50th to the 95th percentile–even thought the additional advantage of the eye surgery may be greater than the additional advantage conferred by the exogenous testosterone. Now, there may be a perfectly valid distinction between those two interventions. But what is it? Shouldn’t it be spelled out before we drum Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame?
Similarly, it is perfectly legal for an athlete to get painkillers after an injury, so he can continue playing (and, I would point out, risk further injury.) It is not legal for that athlete to take Human Growth Hormone, in order to speed his recovery from that same injury. Again, why? What is the distinction? Why is it okay to play hurt but not okay to try and not play hurt? There may be a perfectly valid reason here as well. But don’t we need to spell out what it is?
I realize that the people running major league baseball and the NFL are not philosophers. But the intellectual sloppiness with which this current crusade has been conducted is appalling.
Indeed, last week’s Congressional hearing over the Mitchell Report included an exchange toward the end that highlighted MLB’s long tradition of indulging use of another type of PED — amphetamines.
Moving on to the legal front, this Maury Brown blog post notes that Rusty Hardin — whose strategy of defending Roger Clemens has been a head-scratcher from the beginning — probably ought to quit giving interviews:
T.J. Quinn: Well, when someone sat and looked at just the numbers for Rogerís career, what conclusions do you think they drew?
Rusty Hardin: Oh, I think, I think they drew incredibly stupid inclusions, uh, conclusions, if they concluded that somehow you can look at his performance and it fits in. For instance, everybody talks about his, uh, doing it in order to extend his career. Think about it, T.J. The guy is supposed to have taken steroids in ë98. In ë97 he won the Cy Young. ë98 he won the Cy Young.
T.J. Quinn: Brain McNamee’s, you know, his story was that Roger had already been taking steroids when he approached him in 1998, which would suggest?
Rusty Hardin: I didn’t remember that. You may, if you’re right about that, I didn’t know that.
T.J. Quinn: Thatís what he said. That was in the Mitchell report and I think his lawyers addressed that as well, that Brian McNamee said, ìI never suggested that Roger take them. He was taking them.So that wouldn’t that explain?
Rusty Hardin: [OVERLAPPING] I never read that. Are you real sure of that?
T.J. Quinn: Quite.
And while many commentators are suggesting that Clemens’ alleged PED use is unprovable beyond a reasonable doubt because it boils down to a swearing match between Clemens and his chief accuser, that is not a prudent bet to make. My experience is that lawsuits and investigations have a funny way of discovering people who have knowledge about swearing matches.
Finally, does anyone else get the impression that Houstonian Chuck Knoblauch may need the same type of mental block that he had while throwing a baseball from second to first base in regard to his upcoming Congressional testimony?
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The beginning of the Major League Baseball season is a good time to check in with Clear Thinkers favorite, Bill James, the father of sabermetric analysis of baseball. Steve Dubner over at the Freakonomics blog recently provided James with this question-and-answer forum and, as usual, James’ observations on baseball are insightful and entertaining. For example:
Sabermetrics Godfather 
