Interesting Times…

Manny Ramirez Suspended for 50 Games

The first inkling I had that another doping scandal was hitting the baseball fan was a link eightzero posted in  a comment to the previous post. Seems that Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez will be sitting out the next 50 games for either testing positive for a banned substance, or due to evidence  which was unearthed during the investigation of some curious test results that he had been using a banned substance. No official statement seems to have been made about what drug Ramirez is alleged to have used, but a number of media reports have suggested that it was human chorionic gonadotropin, also known as HCG.

In a statement released by the Major League Players Association, Ramirez took responsibility for having used the banned substance and apologized for what happened:

Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.

I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization, and to the Dodger fans. LA is a special place to me and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I’m sorry about this whole situation.

Pretty smart move to take responsibility and to apologize right away. Ramirez avoids a certain amount of drama that would unfold were he to contest the violation. And it sounds like the league had him dead to rights, judging by what The New York Times reports:

Ramirez was ultimately tripped up by medical files that were handed over to baseball officials as the case proceeded.

It was in those files, said people in baseball with knowledge of them, that the officials discovered that Ramirez had been prescribed human chorionic gonadotropin, or H.C.G., a fertility drug for women that men can use to generate production of testosterone after they have stopped using steroids.

Commissioner Bud Selig suspended Ramirez on Thursday for the documentary evidence tying him to H.C.G. rather than for a positive drug test. But the impact is the same. A player seemingly bound for the Hall of Fame now finds himself tarnished, and baseball is left to cope with another damaging drug revelation.

Here’s the deal, had Ramirez gotten a therapeutic use exemption for the HCG, this would have been a non-issue. With a legitimate prescription for a legitimate documented medical need and a TUE issued by the league, Ramirez wouldn’t be looking at a two-month (give or take a few days) “vacation” from the baseball. It’s an expensive mistake, not getting that TUE. Most reports list the slugger’s lost salary in the range of $7.7 million. That’s a sizeable chunck of change, even for a guy with a $25 million salary for the year. Still, Ramirez will still earn something like $17.3 million for the games he will play this season, so it’s a bit hard to feel sorry for him on that score.

One expert on doping doesn’t buy Ramirez’s story. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

HCG is one of dozens of substances prohibited under baseball’s drug policy. Players can call a hotline to check on the legality of any substances, and they can obtain a therapeutic use exemption for any legitimate medical use of a banned substance.

“This is failing more than a drug test,” [BALCO founder Victor] Conte said. “This is failing an IQ test.

“He can call an 800 number to ask about any product that he’s taking. To think that a player who’s making $45 million didn’t do that, or have any agent or any of his numerous advisors check out what he said was a prescribed medication defies belief.”

The Washington Post adds to the puzzle, by explaining what HCG is used for.

[HCG is] a drug most frequently used to treat infertility in women, but in some cases [it is] also [used] for men. However, it is also frequently used by steroids users to restart the body’s natural production of testosterone following a “cycle” of steroids. It has been banned by the international bodies of most sports since the 1980s, and was added to baseball’s banned list last year.

“When you take steroids, they turn off the body’s internal mechanism that makes testosterone,” said Gary Wadler, a physician and influential steroids expert. “So the testicles are basically turned off. They shrink in size, and there is a decrease in the production of testosterone. The way to get around that is to take something like [HCG] to wake the testicles up.”

As Wadler noted, if Ramírez had a legitimate medical reason to take the drug, he could have applied for a therapeutic use exemption (TUE).

Whatever the truth of the matter is about whether Ramirez was doping, he has taken responsibility and accepted the punishment meted out by the system. His case is a good illustration of how some sports have a more measured approach to dealing with the issue of doping. Had he been a track athlete or a cyclist or a swimmer, the anti-doping system would have tagged him for a two-year suspension if he was found guilty of violating anti-doping rules. At Ramirez’s age, that might have finished his career.

The punishment that baseball hands out seems light by comparison to WADA standards. But it still is enough to make the point that there are consequences to violating the rules (or to making preventable mistakes). Ramirez, perhaps, will learn a rather expensive lesson from all of this. If not, then as Victor Conte said, Ramirez will have failed a big IQ test.

As it is, he will finish his career with an asterisk by his name, being (as some articles have noted) the biggest fish caught to date by baseball’s “new and improved” measures against performance-enhancing drug use. A potential Hall of Fame career sullied by a suspension for using banned substances.

Ramirez will have to live with all that for the rest of his playing days and beyond. But come July 3rd, Dodgers fans will get to see their slugger back in the lineup.

Astana’s Last Stand

As CyclingNews.com and a number of other cycling web sites reported yesterday, it appears that Team Astana is in a bit of financial hot water.

The Astana cycling team may be getting its Giro d’Italia campaign underway, but its future in the sport appears to be under question. According to the website Sports.kz, the team is under real threat of financial collapse and has a week to sort things out before the International Cycling Union (UCI) withdraws the professional licence.

From what’s been reported, a number of sponsors who are part of the Kazakh consortium bankrolling the cycling team have refused to chip in the amount of money that they committed to the team. Things have apparently gotten so bad that riders weren’t being paid, and that the UCI’s mandatory $2 million bank guarantee has been exhausted and must be replenished in short order. In a later story, Lance Armstrong weighed in on the financial challenges the team is facing:

“I don’t have any concrete answers, but I suspect we can find some funding that would get us from June to the end of the year,” Armstrong told the Associated Press. “It could be a combination of people that have a shared interest in Livestrong and want to see Livestrong promoted around the world and believe in what we’re doing.”

“Maybe the situation gets resolved, and the guys start getting their dough,” continued Armstrong. “Otherwise, I think the license ought to be transferred to [team director] Johan [Bruyneel], and we try and start a team in the middle of the season.”

Armstrong expressed his frustration with the Kazakh backers of Astana.

“I don’t know them, I don’t have a personal relationship with them, but I get frustrated,” said Armstrong. “These Kazakhs, they don’t return phone calls and there’s not a lot of clarity about what is going to happen.”

Armstrong’s comments led to a clarification that it wouldn’t be the Livestrong organization assuming sponsorship. Interestingly, in an article from just a couple of days ago, Armstrong said he might like to own a team in the near future. As CyclingNews.com reported on May 4th:

“I would like to have my own team: to be the owner, director and… cyclist. Because if I have a team I also want to race. It does not necessarily have to be the Giro and Tour, but only when I have the desire,” he said in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport after the Tour of the Gila stage race in the USA.

…

“The name? That of the principal sponsor. Its probability? High. You will know it in July. Even if it is hard to convince sponsors to give money with the economic crisis and news of doping.”

Then again, as Tom Fine pointed out in a comment to this article, Armstrong may have been kicking around the the idea of owning his own team for quite some time, and this situation may present the opportunity to get into the game. As the Associated Press reports:

Armstrong indicated Astana’s [new] sponsor would come from a U.S.-based multinational company.

“You’re not going to find one in a week and say, ‘By the way, we need 10 million bucks, please come on.’ They don’t jump that quick,” he said.

Armstrong said he and Astana team director Johan Bruyneel, the architect behind his Tour wins with the U.S. Postal and Discovery Channel squads, have been “kicking around the idea” of taking over the team for the last eight or nine months, and could commit themselves to the sport for “close to 10 years.”

“We have to find $15 million. It’s never a done deal until you get the funding from someone or a consortium of people,” Armstrong said at a news conference. “But we think we can organize the best cycling team in the world — like we did for 10 years.”

Given the developments of the last day or so, I suspect that we’ll know a whole lot sooner than July. For the moment, though, Team Astana needs to find a way to stay afloat until the end of the Giro. Something tells me that — even if a bit of drama occurs between now and then — somehow, some way, the team will live on at least that long.