Performancing-Enhancing Drugs, Part II

Malcolm Gladwell can seldom give up an argument with me, so now he's back to ask what would be so bad about this example:

"An aging pitcher is suffering from a variety of persistent injuries. They are healing slowly. He is depressed and lethargic, and anxious about his career. He goes to see his doctor. The doctor finds that the patient's testosterone count is low. He prescribes the pitcher a small dose of testosterone, as part of his rehab. The patient is desperate, and the doctor agrees to experiment with testosterone, and see if it speeds recovery."

He argues:

"But since the league's policies clearly can't govern drugs prescribed legally by a physican--particuarly if they are undetectable-- it has the effect of only preventing the use of drugs obtained illegally."

Sure, baseball will always have a hard time preventing marginal cheating. But baseball's big problem over the last dozen or so years has not been players taking modest doses under a doctor's supervision.

That's a problem, but it's hardly as big a problem as the full-fledged circus freak shows that have overwhelmed baseball going back to 1988 when juicing evangelist Jose Canseco became the first player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in one season, and led the Oakland A's to the first of three straight World Series. Other freak shows include the late Ken Caminiti suddenly starting to take mega-blasts of steroids at the All-Star Break in 1996 and carrying the Padres on his acne-scarred back to the World Series and himself to the MVP; or McGwire and Sosa "returning the innocence to the game" in their ultra-hyped homer record duel of 1998; or Barry Bonds, with his head the size of a basketball, breaking the career homer record last summer; or Roger Clemens having the best ERA of his career (relative to the league and adjusted for park effects) at age 42 in 2005.

So, if the rules that baseball has finally put into effect could keep players down to the levels of juicing that a legitimate doctor might prescribe, baseball could still spare itself a lot of these humiliations in the future.

Of course, none of these guys suffered from some sort of innate deficiency in testosterone production that kept their testosterone levels below that of the average male and thus medically justified a prescription. They were all studly specimens to begin with.

Indeed, that's why baseball is a big business: it's a showcase for masculinity.

If Malcolm was looking for a better example, he could Google "golfer beta blocker."

Beta blockers are completely legitimate drugs that save huge numbers of people from dying of heart problems. They also seem to have the side effect of calming the jitters, which could be very useful in putting. Beta blockers are said to be used by classical musicians with stage fright. A number of professional golfers, especially on the age 50+ Champions Tour where "the yips" making putting troublesome, have beta blocker prescriptions. The Tour doesn't want to ban beta blockers because it doesn't want players keeling over on the green because they aren't allowed to take the medicine. (Some players who have taken beta blockers complain that they make them too calm, and hurt their tee-to-green game.)

The differences between beta blockers and testosterone, though, should be fairly obvious: First, beta blockers make the people who need them healthier overall, such as extending life expectancies. Second, they don't make players better than they would be if they didn't have a specific medical problem. (Nobody starts taking beta blockers and suddenly has years better than in their prime.) Third, like laser eye surgery, the side effects are not such that only fanatics would use them. They are used by millions.

Fourth, most popular sports are to some extent, in effect, a test of testosterone. (The Geezer Golf Tour ranks pretty far down the list of popularity, in part because of that.)

Fans admired Roger Clemens because he is a fine specimen of rampant masculinity. If he had had a low testosterone count to start with, he never would have put on the 235 pounds of solid muscle that allowed him to go 24-4 in 1986. When Clemens's testosterone count naturally dropped with age to the point where he could no longer compete up to his standards, he should have retired to the golf course and let the young bucks have their day, just as his elders once got out of the way and let him have his day.

Friedrich at 2Blowhards put his finger on part of the reason why we object to juicing:

The best answer I've been able to come up with is an evo-bio one. To wit, that most people unconsciously view sports as a display of reproductive fitness, not merely one more entertainment option among many. And those people don’t want their athletic displays of reproductive fitness being fiddled with by chemical means.

If you make this assumption, it sorts out what is really different about performance-enhancing drugs from other training aids. It’s okay to allow athletes to train for competition, because the discipline and capacity for hard work are also sexually desirable, inheritable traits. It’s okay to build up your body with weights, because the ability to maximize your muscularity is again an inheritable trait. And being crafty about your training regimen is a tribute to the athlete’s intelligence, another capacity transmittable to one's offspring.

Steroids, on the other hand, are clearly not inheritable and thus 'cheating'. A less reproductively fit athlete, one likely to produce less capable offspring but who is taking steroids can appear better than a more reproductively fit athlete who isn’t juicing.

Friedrich says:

Granted, if you would allow all the athletes to juice, presumably the most genetically gifted would still shine through relative to the other elite athletes.

No, because ever more juicing, Ken Caminiti-style, would still be tempting, so baseball becomes just a test of foolhardiness.

The best policy is to ban the major performance-enhancing drugs outright and institute rigorous testing. There will still be cheating, but it will be on a less ludicrous scale and the honest players will still have a chance to make the team without cheating.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer