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C.: d.c., you sure are putting some strange pictures at the beginning of our blog. Why did you make the opening picture an asterisk? I suppose you have a good reason for it, like printing the picture of a tombstone at the beginning of our blog yesterday.
d.: I do. Throughout its history, Major League Baseball seems to want to find a way to discredit its record-breakers. Billy Crystal even wrote a book about it. The name of the book is Asterisk. I haven’t read the book, but I understand the gist of it is how Roger Maris was discredited after he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Some people wanted Maris’s record to sport an asterisk, denoting the fact that he hit the one more home run (61-60) playing eight more games than The Babe did. Since then, that record has been broken many times. However, many want to discredit Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa because they all played in the so-called “steroid era.” McGuire admitted to taking them, Bonds has denied it, and Sosa has pretty much avoided the subject altogether.
Yes, these players played in an era when more was known about nutrition and weightlifting to build strength and stretching to help flexibility. They probably all did take steroids, as the pitchers pitching to them probably did. The use of anabolic steroids is more widespread in sports than most people realize—
C.: Aren’t there tests to determine if players are using them? And won’t those players face suspension if they’re caught?
d.: Yes, but those tests are highly subjective. To reap maximum benefit from taking anabolic steroids, the user takes them for one month, then goes on an “off cycle,” not taking the steroids for one month. That allows the player’s muscles time to recover from the micro-tears that lifting heavy weights causes. The tests are almost always administered by the players’ teams during an “off cycle.” I suspect those that are caught have somehow fallen into disfavor with someone of importance on their team. Then, that person could request a drug test during the player’s month of taking the steroids, ensuring a suspension.
C.: Is this a new thing, d.c.? It seems to have gotten a lot of attention in the last twenty-five years.
d.: No, Cal.E. Unfortunately, it is not. The Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in six years. One of their strengths was their offensive line. None of the starters on that line are alive today. There were no tests for anabolic steroids at the time the Steelers won their championships. In fact, in the 1970s, a doctor could legally prescribe anabolic steroids to someone looking to gain weight and muscle. I know this to be true from personal experience. When I was a preschooler, my mother was worried that I had no appetite and wasn’t gaining weight. She took me to our family practitioner/pediatrician (before medicine was so specialized). He prescribed me a small, bitter pink pill. I didn’t like the taste of them, so my mother would hide them in my breakfast food.
I found out later that the bitter pink pill was an anabolic steroid. It did increase my appetite, and I grew. In fact, when I was a freshman in high school, my coaches believed that I would grow to be around 6’4”, judging from my frame. I was already within one-half inch of six feet. Since I could run, they thought I would be a good candidate to be a linebacker or tight end, so they started me on a weight-lifting program at the age of fourteen.
I hurt my knee (among other injuries) and lost my speed. I didn’t grow to the height the coaches thought I would (or even the height my baby book proclaimed I would be-6’2”). I only grew one inch through high school and college.
C.: Well, you were a little kid, and your doctor probably didn’t know how dangerous steroids were. Why would someone knowingly take something that they know will shorten their lives and cause severe mood swings (among other things)?
d.: A sports radio station in Houston asked their audience (80% men) if they could take a substance they knew would kill them in their mid-fifties if they knew that they would never be caught. The question was would they take that substance if it allowed them to play professional football for a living, knowing it would shorten their lives. Eighty percent of the audience answered “yes.” The only more positive response the radio station ever got to a question they posed was to name the show this line came from, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
C.: "WKRP in Cincinnati’s" famous Thanksgiving episode! The station manager dropped frozen turkeys from a helicopter as head (hapless) newsman Les Nessman reported that people were getting hit in the head with frozen turkeys! That was THE funniest television show ever!
d.: Yes, Cal.E. I believe everyone on the face of the earth saw that episode. The radio station had to ask people to stop calling (several times) because so many called in with the correct answer.
Well, that’s all the time we have for today, folks. Please join my co-host and me tomorrow for another episode of Cal.E.’s Corner.
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