Should drug use get a professional sports athlete banned for life?

Yes

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by Chris Messner

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Yes, and for more than one reason.

Sadly, as with most things in America, it comes down to money. My knowledge is of baseball more than of other sports, but I'm sure that the chase for big bucks has athletes in all sports willing to chemically enhance their natural abilities.

In baseball, "America's Pastime", until the mid-1970's, major-leaguers were basically just working stiffs, albeit fairly well paid, but only the biggest stars earned enough by playing baseball to avoid having to work at another job in the off-season.

Thanks to Andy Messersmith, Marvin Miller and George Steinbrenner, that all changed, for the worse, in my opinion. Messersmith challenged the system, Miller organized the players' union, and Steinbrenner started throwing money around to buy the best available talent.

We all know that money does strange things to people. They start to believe they are invincible, that the rules don't apply to them, that the "ordinary" people that generate their obscene incomes aren't important. What superstars earn is, apparently, never enough.

They're enticed by the shady hangers-on that, for reasons I don't understand, are allowed to enter clubhouses and put all kinds of ridiculous notions into players' minds. Next thing you know, guys like Ken Caminiti are doing coke AND 'roids to excel, chasing money and glory, and, in his case, to what avail? He gave his body and soul to illegal drugs, and he died at 41 years of age. That's a lifetime ban for you, eh?

Many have argued that, in baseball, statistics from one era are really not comparable to statistics from other eras. There is some truth to that. For example, during Babe Ruth's day, a fly ball that bounced over the fence was a home run. Before the so-called "modern era" of baseball, it took 9 balls to draw a walk. In the early days of major league baseball, many fields had no fences. Equipment was different, strength conditioning was different, the rules were different, parks were much larger in the old days.

Nevertheless, records have been established since the start of the modern era, and they stand regardless of changes in rules, field dimensions, the addition of many more teams, and changes in physical conditioning.

So when Roger Maris managed to hit his 61st homer in 1961, surpassing Ruth's 1927 record of 60, well, records are made to be broken, right? Maris suffered greatly that season. He allowed the press to put great pressure on him by hounding him about breaking the Bambino's most hallowed record. It is well documented that he had trouble eating and sleeping, and his hair fell out in clumps.

Still, he persevered, and on the last day of the season he poked one into the short porch in right for #61, and what did he get for his trouble? He got a lot of crap from fans who didn't want Ruth's record to fall, and he got an asterisk from Ford Frick, the commissioner, who said his total was not really better than Ruth's because, in 1927, the season was only 154 games, while Maris needed 162 games to break Ruth's mark.

That's how a record is supposed to be broken. Maris benefited from a watered-down pitching talent pool because 1961 was an expansion year and there were 2 more teams in the American League, with 2 more pitching staffs that were minor-leaguers just the year before. In other words, Maris broke a record performing under the conditions that existed during his time, and he should not have been penalized for it. But, even though Maris never hit more than 39 homers in any other season, there was never even a wisp of a thought that his achievement was chemically aided.

McGwire's 1998 season was also an expansion year. Sosa benefited from that, as well. But anyone with 2 eyes and half a brain could see that McGwire and Sosa were not the same people they were when they broke into the majors in the late '80s. Although McGwire set a record in his rookie year by hitting 49 homers, by 1998 both he and Sosa had added a lot of weight and muscle.

McGwire explained it by saying he used androstenedione, an over-the-counter supplement. I don't recall Sosa ever explaining how he added about 60 pounds of muscle in less than 10 years, but I'm pretty sure you don't get that way from lifting weights and eating a lot of chicken.

And what a grand spectacle those guys were for baseball. The fans loved it! It was basically a reply of the 1961 home run battle between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and coming just 4 short years after the ugly 1994 player's strike which canceled the World Series, it was just the shot in the arm the sport needed. I have to admit, I enjoyed it because it never occurred to me they might be chemically enhanced.

Looking back on it now, though, I feel that fans who cared about the game, as I did, were played, not only by the cheaters, but by those who make the rules, such as Bud Selig and Don Fehr, and for what? Money, that's what.

Bud Selig? He couldn't care less. I don't know the guy, but I have to believe that if he were truly dedicated to a clean game, he would have implemented a lifetime-ban policy as soon as one guy was proven to have used illegal performance-enhancin g drugs, and to hell with the players' union.

Mr. Selig is a hypocrite. He keeps Pete Rose freezing outside baseball's hallowed gates because of gambling (which, to be sure, is a valid threat to the game's integrity), but allows dopers and liars to play because record-breaking performances put butts in the seats. I see the money connection there, don't you?

Drug use should get athletes banned for life because, well, first of all, it's ILLEGAL, secondly, it sets a bad example by showing that it's perfectly OK to ignore the rules, break the law, and violate the trust of clean players and fans to get what you want, and, finally, it destroys the significance of the meticulously compiled and tracked statistics of the game.

And Bud Selig should be banned also. He knew what was going on, but he decided in favor of money over integrity. Baseball ain't what it used to be. Thanks a lot, Bud.

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