Will doping strike out baseball?

Wikipedia notes, “The use of banned performance-enhancing drugs in sports is commonly referred to as doping, particularly by the organizations that regulate sporting competitions. The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical by most international sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, although ethicists have argued that it is not different from the use of new materials in the construction of suits and sporting equipment, which can also aid performance and give competitors an unfair advantage. The reasons for the ban are mainly the health risks of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes, and the exemplary effect of drug-free sport for the public. Anti-doping authorities state that using performance-enhancing drugs goes against the “spirit of sport”.

In the most recent “doping case,” with Alex Rodriguez, a New York Yankees’ third baseman, his ban of 162 games plus the post season, relied basically upon the testimony of his supplier, Anthony Bosch, who claims to be a medical doctor and is the father of a Biogenesis Clinic in Miami where he supplied the PEDs. Bosch told Major League Baseball that he was injecting Alex with $14,000 dollars worth of drugs each week.

When asked if he had seen Alex injecting himself, he said, “No, Alex is afraid of needles.”

So what does that make Bosch, aside from being a profiteer and a fraud? In fact, what’s the difference between Bosch and your everyday street corner drug dealer? Also, given his role, is he culpable in any way? Or has he, too, been bought by Major League Baseball and the Yankees, i.e., getting off the hook for hanging Rodriquez? And what is the ethical difference between the supplier and the user or MLB? At the root of it all is money.

For Alex, the suspension will deprive him of some $26 million in salary and bonuses. It’s only through a loophole in his contract that he is able to go to training camp. For Bosch it’s most likely escaping a jail sentence. And for Major League Baseball, it’s a black eye. For the Yankees, it’s a blessing in disguise since it frees it of that contractual money due Rodriquez to use it for younger, more up-and-coming players.

Yet, for Bosch, it’s a chance have his dope and feed it to the next over-ambitious, or aging baseball player who is fighting time and the wear-and-tear on his body. For Major League Baseball it’s one more year to play the game, pretending its players or superstars are clean. In fact, if we use this lens, we can see all the way to pro-football (the NFL), where if we look closely at those leaping fleet-footed iron men taking an extraordinary amount of punishment. Let’s take a pass on basketball, which is also a fast-moving, punishing game, and be bold enough to include it.

In fact, as a fan, I don’t know what those games would be without the PEDs. We are looking for an ethical level playing field in sports that may not be possible considering the sums of money available to the players for their performance. It’s a Faustian premise, to ask them not to sell their souls for celebrity and money. Unfortunately, Rodriguez became the “poster boy” for PED’s based on the number of records he attained as a younger, stronger player. But time flies. And so does the energy, the muscle, the bone, the eye, and the speed.

What’s more is that football, the more physical sports, there has been a wave of early Alzheimer symptoms of defensive players. Men barely out of their forties unable to speak clearly or nearly paralyzed. For Rodriquez, there has been a noticeable slowing in his swing, his running, and his promise to break all the hitting records of the greats who went before him. We sports fans might have to wait for another day for a superman. The fact that Alex has been singled out for chastisement, purposely hit by pitchers, and booed copiously on top of it all, only highlights the hypocrisy. Who is booing Bosch? It seems to this fan that Alex is taking the hit for professional sports. Whatever happened to Lance Armstrong? He was yesterday’s bad boy, walking away with seven Tour de France medals, overcoming testicular cancer that spread to his brain, lungs and abdomen, then having to return the medals. What a price to pay race a bike.

So there are an infinite number of athletes whom we can single out from the crowd of today’s players for public flogging, and sportscasters’ wrath or praise. It would seem that if baseball, football, basketball, wanted an even playing field they would start in their own backyards. Sports are literally a multi-billion dollar industry in America. We have an upcoming Super Bowl on the way, in Met-Life Stadium in New Jersey that will draw worldwide attention and dollars and endless commercials that will torture us nearly to death with their banality. But hey, it’s all for the game. Perhaps Bosch could come up with some super-gum or snack that we could chew on to narcotocize us during the commercials. In any case, be prepared to turn your full mind and attention to the highly paid-for play, non-stop

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.