Tonight, we look at baseball. Truth be told, I don’t follow the sport much anymore. Haven’t done so since about 1994. Why? Well, that’s a story for another day. Two stories have come up in the last week or so that tie into the topic of doping in “America’s Pastime” and one of the stories has a new, unusual twist to it.
Hey batter, batter, batter…
First story up, is that of Ryan Braun, an outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, who apparently tested positive for an oldie-but-goodie, testosterone. At least, that’s what a number of stories I’ve seen have suggested. No great surprise that a baseball player would come up positive for man-juice. As I mentioned in my book, steroids have been a part of baseball since at least the late 1960s. And testosterone is — you guessed it — the father of all anabolic steroids (as far as performance-enhancing drugs, that is.)
Even though I live in Milwaukee, I’m not a follower of the Brewers to any great extent. Just enough to nod my head when someone at work makes a comment about last night’s game. So that’s a round-about way of saying I’ve noticed the story, but not had much of a reason to write about it until now.
This story has all the usual elements. Athlete tests positive. Someone leaks the results. Sportswriters go into overtime, writing up the story and getting some of the elementary facts wrong.
(Braun failed both the T/E ratio and the CIR tests. Somehow, the vast majority of baseball writers haven’t learned that a high T/E ratio doesn’t automatically mean excess testosterone, it just means the relationship to testosterone to epitestosterone exceeds a certain threshold. The numbers behind the ratio are unknown, so we can’t draw a conclusion about if the levels were “excessive” or not. But if you want a detailed discussion of that topic, see the very first post on this site.)
Somewhere along the way, the athlete denies that he did anything wrong. And maybe that’s the truth. Eventually we get to the rumors and innuendo, which is where the story stands today. When I saw this article posted by a friend on Facebook, my interest was piqued. Jamie Shoemaker writes:
What a nightmare Ryan Braun’s life has become. It’s unbelievable what has happened recently to him and baseball. What do we make of it? Why isn’t his camp saying anything? And the latest rumor swirling is Braun failed the test due to medication his doctor prescribed for Herpes.
If that’s the first time you’ve heard the news, take a deep breath. Try not to laugh. It’s serious business.
Shoemaker goes on to give a brief history of Braun’s fledgling doping scandal. And he digs up an interesting thing that Braun said about Alex Rodriguez:
“The best thing he can do is come out, admit to everything and be completely honest,” Braun said. “The situation will die a lot faster if he tells the whole truth.”
O, the irony.
So here’s the thing about this whole “herpes story.” Herpes genitalia is treated with anti-viral drugs. In doing a bit of research while we were discussing the story, my wife ran across a page that suggests there is a school of thought that high doses of testosterone can keep the virus at bay. This, however, is not the usual treatment.
What I don’t know is whether major league baseball uses the “therapeutic use exemption” concept so familiar to sports operating under the WADA code. But if they are, and if this his how Braun is being treated by his doctor, then testing positive for a drug that a player was known to be using would rate five “duhs” on the obvious-ometer.
While Shoemaker’s article suggests herpes as the medical issue, TMZ merely states this:
Ryan Braun‘s positive test for banned substances was caused by medication he’s taking for a private medical issue — NOT performance enhancing drugs … this according to sources directly connected with Major League Baseball. [formatting from the original]
This gets more interesting. “Private medical issue,” eh? Well, to go into full-scale speculation mode, that could also be low testosterone, which would be extremely embarrassing for an athlete in the prime of his career. And what’s that treated with? Testosterone patches. But again, if this were the case, Braun, the Brewers and MLB would all know about this and it wouldn’t be a big deal (except to those who want to gin up a scandal and sell a few papers/magazines/ads, perhaps). Finding something you know is there isn’t exactly earth-shattering news.
Sounds to me, though, like he should claim that he was either the “victim” of a contaminated supplement, or he was out on a wicked bender the night before he tested positive. Those are two actual explanations that could account for testing positive for exogenous testosterone (the result of the CIR test, apparently). And Braun could attack the science behind the test, though fat lot of good that’s done other athletes in the past (paging Floyd Landis).
But if I may be as bold as to offer Ryan Braun some advice, let me paraphrase Pat McQuaid, head of the International Cycling Union, and the advice he gave to Floyd Landis more than five years ago. “Shut up. Save your money. Accept the suspension.” And, to add a bit more: Be glad it’s only for 50 games, or about one-third of a season. If professional baseball were under the World Anti-Doping Code, Braun would be going on vacation for two years.
Thirty Days in the Hole
Looks like Barry Bonds got off fairly easy. Thirty days of home confinement, 250 hours of community service (just over 6 weeks of a normal schlub’s work schedule), and two years probation. Of course, even the people at the heart of the BALCO scandal didn’t wind up doing much in the way of jail time — with the exception of Bond’s pal Greg Anderson, and the lawyer who leaked grand jury info to the press. Anderson spent time occupying a cell because he wouldn’t rat out his pal Bonds, and the lawyer got significant jail time for passing info to the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who were all over the BALCO story like white on rice.
Victor Conte spent less time in jail than Anderson or that lawyer. And he was at the epicenter of the whole thing, dealing drugs and giving advice to all manner of athletes on how to beat the tests. So somehow Bonds’ sentence seems about par for the course.
I feel no pity for Bonds or the sentence Judge Susan Ilston handed down to him. But I have to wonder how much of a deterrent these high-profile prosecutions have been. Seems like a whole lot of time and money spent for fairly unimpressive results. And over here in Milwaukee, there’s a player caught up in the tangle of testing positive for one of the oldest PEDs in the modern PED playbook. Doping in sports. The story doesn’t change. Only the characters do.
{ 13 comments }


