To Baseball?s Chagrin, Steroid Era Continues

It came to be called the steroid era, an inglorious decade or so of cheating by major league baseball players and a lack of action by baseball owners.

But the attempt to establish start and end dates for all the dishonesty was always a bit na?ve. Athletes just don?t stop cheating. Performance-enhancing drugs just don?t go away. The steroid era, as baseball has learned anew this month, is more likely to be a permanent state of affairs than an ugly chapter that can be closed.

Barry Bonds is convicted in 2011 for being evasive about his links to illegal performance enhancers, and Roger Clemens is acquitted in 2012, and perhaps many people conclude that the drug issue is finally behind the sport.

But meanwhile, Ryan Braun, the fresh-faced most valuable player of the National League, tests positive for elevated testosterone last fall. Then, last week, Melky Cabrera is suspended for 50 games for a positive testosterone test, although his suspension may not keep him from a big award of his own ? the National League batting title.

The asterisks multiply, the positive tests keep emerging, with five so far this season, the latest being the 39-year-old pitcher Bartolo Colon, who was given his own 50-game suspension on Wednesday for testing positive for an elevated level of testosterone, the same offense committed by Cabrera.

The testing program that baseball has put in place over the last decade, late in coming and only gradually toughened, now appears to serve less as a real solution and more as a vehicle for reminding everyone that drug use manages to endure, sowing mistrust, ruining careers and embarrassing the national pastime.

It was on Jan. 11, 2010, that baseball?s commissioner, Bud Selig, felt emboldened enough to declare the essential end of steroid use in the sport. Selig spoke out immediately after Mark McGwire, the retired slugger, belatedly admitted that he had used performance enhancers to help him hit all those home runs.

?The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today?s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown,? Selig said that day. ?The so-called steroid era ? a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances ? is clearly a thing of the past.?

Indeed, in 2010, only two major leaguers were suspended for using performance enhancers, and there were only two suspensions in 2011. But the five this season, along with the uneasiness created by the Braun case ? he avoided a suspension only because of the disputed manner in which his test sample was handled ? has undermined Selig?s assertion.

?What you realize is that no matter what the risks of cheating, no matter what the odds of getting caught, some percentage of athletes are still going to cheat,? said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

Although Tygart and other antidoping experts used to criticize baseball consistently for essentially ignoring the issue of performance enhancers, that is no longer the case.

When baseball and its players union agreed last November to begin blood testing for human growth hormone, making it the first major professional sports league in North America to do so, praise came from former critics.

?This is very significant,? David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said at the time. ?At last we are in a position where we can say that Major League Baseball is taking a leading role.?

Tygart echoed that sentiment on Thursday, saying baseball had ?made great strides, compared to where they started in 2003,? even moving to increase what had been considered a relatively meager number of drug tests conducted out of season.

Tygart speculated that the recent positive tests could even be a response to baseball?s more aggressive approach to drug use in recent years because testosterone cream has a reputation as something that leaves the system quickly and is thus harder to detect.

?It?s a potent performance enhancer, it?s not that expensive and it?s relatively easy to obtain,? Tygart said. ?For the players willing to take that risk, it?s something that has a lot of bang for the buck.?

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9dfb831f1f358415bf09fe697f7b9226

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