What's Wrong With HGH?

The recent kerfuffle over Peyton Manning reportedly -- but not convincingly so, at least not yet -- using human growth hormone (HGH) to recover from the serious neck injury that sidelined him for all of 2011 is a trenchant reminder that most folks don't understand why athletes in professional sports are prohibited from using steroids and other drugs.

Contrary to popular opinion, the problem with steroids, HGH and their cousins is not that they are "performance enhancing." There's nothing wrong, or new, with athletes consuming substances to improve their performance. Orange juice, lean meat, ibuprofen and caffeine are all "performance enhancing," and yet no one is suggesting that they be banned, or that athletes who consumed these substances be blackballed.

There's nothing inherently wrong with an injured athlete taking HGH to recover faster. Who could blame him? It's not "cheating" others or gaining an unfair advantage to recover faster from an injury.

The problem with steroids, HGH and their ilk is that they can do serious damage to the human body (and mind) -- up to and including death -- with long-term use. Fearful that young athletes would choose the short-term benefits over the long-term ravages, government banned their use, and many governing bodies in sports followed.

The unfair advantage comes into play when athletes decide nonetheless to take potentially harmful substances that others are dutifully avoiding. It also creates a strong incentive in others to use those "performance enhancers" to keep up. 

This is exactly the story attached to Barry Bonds' descent into steroid use: the best baseball player in the world, he resented the adulation that steroid-enhanced Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa received with their prodigious home run counts in 1998. To reclaim his crown, he launched his own steroid adventure.

The new question, of course, is whether a regimen of steroid use carefully monitored by a physician is indeed harmful to long-term health. We appear now to have a large number of professional athletes who have dabbled in the dark arts without any new Lyle Alzado or Ken Caminiti stories. There may come a time -- we might already be there -- when steroid use should be allowed under a doctor's care.

That would raise new issues involving role models and under-age athletes, issues beyond the point of this discussion. The point is that the use of "performance enhancing drugs," in and of themselves, is neither unusual nor unfair.

Top Sports Hypocricies of 2015

Major college and professional sports are presented to us by the leagues, the schools and their broadcast partners as noble competitions that distinguish the emotionally tough from the emotionally indomitable. While that is often an element of the games, what characterizes every single major sports contest is the pursuit of money, and ever more of it.

Money underlies the raging hypocrisies that gird our most popular sports today. Let's look at the big one:

1. The NCAA -- A fraud wrapped in a lie engulfed in a sham. The so-called "student athletes" competing in major college football and basketball are often functionally illiterate young men forced to support their sponsors' lies about high school "graduations" and  class "attendance" at major American research universities-- until the moment they are released to seek recompense for their labors. Everyone involved in the games -- except the NCAA, of course -- refers to their trade in work terms, such as coaches demanding that players "do their jobs." For this, athletes from low-income families not only get nothing of value (a university education is worthless to someone at a fifth-grade reading level) but are prohibited from earning income by working side jobs. Heck, they can't even get a free ride home from a coach or a fan.

2. The NFL and domestic violence -- Beat your girlfriend mercilessly behind closed doors; serve a short suspension and then sign a lucrative contract. Punch your now-wife once on video and earn the endless enmity of humankind, not to mention an effective lifetime ban from the game. And how about the NFL puking all over itself on the issue, initially all-but dismissing the incident, then over-reacting and violating the policy it had literally just written.

3. Hoopla about the NBA (and NHL, among those who care) regular seasons -- which are as meaningful as clown candidate policy pronouncements. Here are the conference playoff seedings of the last seven Stanley Cup Champions -- 4-6-1-8-3-2-4. Media coverage of these games would have you believe that teams are straining to win every contest down the stretch for the highest seed possible, when in fact they are trying to avoid strains so that their players are healthy for the two-month marathon that actually determines the champion.

4. The brainless patriotism attending the Olympics, World Cup, Rider Cup and Davis Cup -- Nothing swells our USA pride like millionaire professionals from the States defeating amateur Angolan hoopsters. Take that, ISIS!

5. Our varied responses to cheating in different sports -- In NASCAR, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'. That was the credo of the most beloved driver ever. In football, we could hardly care less who's juicing. In basketball there's an overt understanding that the rules are more lenient for big stars. But in baseball, the Wrath of God is unleashed upon those who take substances that make them better players.

6. Gambling laws -- After 30+ years of asking, I have yet to hear a coherent, much less convincing, argument supporting the prohibition. It's particularly indefensible that the laws are so gauzy that gambling is actually quite encouraged by law, except when it's not.

7.The anti-geek crowd -- Employing mostly red herring arguments, they dismiss the advances made to baseball analysis that have been adopted by every Major League organization and rely instead on old stats they're comfortable with but were discredited nearly 40 years ago.

8. The geek crowd -- Make no mistake, there's plenty of culpability on that side of the ledger too.The stat guys are starting to learn the algorithm for humility and it's about time. Their differential equations offer a 5% edge in a game where swings come in 20% packages.

My Day At Spitball Stadium

I went to a Major League game at the Ballpark last week. The home nine was taking on the team in dark uniforms for first place in the North. It was quite a tilt.

The opposition's lead-off hitter, facing a 3-1 count, tried to cop a walk by ducking away from a slider on the inside edge. The wily veteran had nothing on the experienced arbiter that day, who called strike two.

He squared on the next delivery and laid a roller along the third base line, which the hot cornerman could only watch roll to a stop. He really exploited the defense. Man on first.

The next batsman smacked a one-hopper to the shortstop who flipped to second. The base runner came barreling in six feet from the bag, cleats exposed. He reached back his hand in a token effort to suggest that second base was his intended destination while he upended the sprawling keystoner, disrupting the relay to first. A hustling team player, he saved the hated opposition an out.

Next up, the dangerous #3 hitter. An inside curve ball bounced beside the plate and skidded into the dugout while the batter insisted to the umpire that he'd been struck. His manager, a cagey baseball man, surreptitiously scuffed the ball against his shoe and raced onto the field with the marked ball aloft. The ump, over-ruled by the evidence, awarded the hitter first base.

First and second, one out. Our hurler was born on a day, but it wasn't yesterday. He worked over the newly-supplied ball meticulously while the next batter took his warm-up swings. Hidden between his ring and middle fingers was a tiny emery board, which he applied to the ball in order to destabilize its path to the plate.

Sure enough, his next three pitches fluttered home in thoroughly frustrating patters, sending the burly cleanup hitter to an early seat back in the dugout. He always has something up his sleeve to keep hitters off-balance! A crucial second out to douse the rally.

The inning ended without incident and our side got its licks.

The first offering from the visiting club's ace made a beeline for our speedy table-setter as he began his swing. He spun out of the way as the ball caromed off him, shaking his aching hand something fierce. He jogged to first while the replays showed the ball had, in fact, ricocheted off his bat. What a great actor! Those are the kinds of intangibles that make him an All Star.

Our number two hitter worked the count to 3-1. A slider fizzed wide of the strike zone, but the catcher had set up wider yet and framed the pitch a few inches lean. "Strike two!" bellowed the flummoxed umpire. It's sublime receiving skills like that that make our backstop one of the best in the game.

With the count full and the runner alight, the lefty-swinger pulled a two hopper to second. The second-baseman scooped the ball and backhanded it towards the bag in one motion, allowing the shortstop to slide his foot across second base, catch the ball six feet into the baseline and rifle a twin-killer to first in the nick of time. It's tough to avoid the double play when Timkers and Evers are out there in middle infield.

Our best man with the stick stepped to the plate and worked the count full before taking a fastball knee high. As the man in blue contemplated whether the pitch had cleared his kneecap, he began trotting to first. That evident confidence convinced the ump to let him go.

That brought up our slugging clean-up hitter. He dug in in the right hand batter's box while the hurler straddled the rubber and looked in for a sign. The runner took his lead as the first baseman awaited a pick-off throw. The outfielders played deep and around to left. The stadium lights twinkled and the...hey, what's that? The first baseman pulled the oldest trick in the book, tagging our runner with the ball hidden in his glove. We were all so deflated as he led his team trotting off the field. End of inning.

It continued in that manner for eight innings. Our crafty closer, who has beguiled the media with winked half-admissions about a Vaseline-aided knuckler -- the wascally wabbit! -- fired BBs past the first two batters and then faced that barrel-chested all-or-nothing pinch hitter who's been dogged by allegations of chemical use. Our fireman bewildered him with a diving slider and an infuriating change-up before leaving a 96-mph two-seamer up in the zone. The masher plastered it into the upper deck in right for the lead.

Cheater! User! The run shouldn't even count! He's bulking up illegally. He should be banned from the Hall of Fame, no matter how many games he's won for this team. It's a blight on the game. It's ruining tradition.

The home uniforms succumbed in the ninth and we dropped to second place. Our manager should protest the game. We can't have cheating in baseball.

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