The Fix Is In, page 6
NASCAR’s chairman Brian France declared its drug testing policy as the toughest in all of professional sports. In a very real sense, it should be. France said, “It’s our responsibility to protect the drivers, the fans, other participants within the events. We have a very unique challenge relative to all sports, which is the inherent danger of somebody impaired on the racetrack.”10NASCAR doesn’t just test its drivers, either. They test everyone on a race team, from crew chiefs down to the pit crew. However, some of NASCAR’s drivers openly wonder about the league’s testing policy because they claim that NASCAR doesn’t provide anyone with the complete lists of banned substances. So in essence, no one being tested by NASCAR knows what is or isn’t allowed by the racing league. All that seems to be clearly known about NASCAR’s secret list of banned substances came from driver Jeff Burton in an ESPN.com article. He told reporter David Newton that “the list is three inches thick and close to 500 pages” in length.
While routine testing for such a laundry list of banned substances should make one feel safe about going to the track, NASCAR chairman French told the Associated Press, “People frequently test positive for one thing or another. It happens very, very frequently. It’s very rare, though, that we do a suspension, because that’s a very serious matter. We realize the seriousness and implications that has to an individual, to a race team, to their careers. It’s why the policy has some built-in flexibilities.”11 So NASCAR has a hard line against drugs, yet it’s flexible, too? Is NASCAR’s policy really that stringent then?
The NFL has a history of looking the other way when it comes to its players taking illegal drugs. Baltimore Colts all-pro defensive tackle Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb died from a heroin overdose in the offseason of 1963. Ten years later, in a widely forgotten fact, the U.S. House Commerce Committee investigated drug use by professional athletes. Its recommendation, made some 35 years ago, was for leagues to test their athletes for illegal drugs and attach harsh penalties for those caught via testing. Every professional league ignored these congressional suggestions. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle went only so far as to institute a “reporting program” in which teams were to rat out their own players. Not surprisingly, this program was an utter failure.
The poster boy for the NFL’s inability to combat drug-abusing players was clearly Lawrence “LT” Taylor. Taylor began using cocaine in his second season. Was this a secret habit? Hardly. As New York Giants offensive lineman Karl Nelson is quoted as saying in LT’s own book, “He [Taylor] was standing on top of the hill watching practice one day. Harry Carson saw him and got down on his hands and knees and started snorting the white lines on the practice field. LT just laughed it off.”12 By 1984, Taylor was addicted, regularly smoking the drug. “I went from using about half a gram every two to four weeks to an eighth or more in one night. I used to buy a gram, then all of a sudden I was buying an eightball—that’s three grams. Then I stopped buying eightballs and I’d buy a couple of ounces a week. Go through an ounce in a day or two. It got to the point where there would be times when I’d be standing in the huddle and instead of thinking about what defense we were playing, I would be thinking about smoking cocaine after the game.”13
LT wrote that the first time his urine turned up “dirty” was before the 1985 season. Yet he didn’t receive “strike one” in the NFL’s drug testing program until 1987, three years after he started using the drug because he was able to fool the NFL’s drug testers with urine that wasn’t his. Somehow LT coasted along using and abusing until 1988 when he tested positive a second time. He was hit with a four-game suspension. Realizing that “strike three” meant he was out of the NFL, Taylor stopped his cocaine habit cold until he retired from the game.
That was the 1980s. Today, the NFL’s drug program isn’t much better. In the 2007 NFL draft, three of the top prospects in the country—WR Calvin Johnson, DE Gaines Adams, and DT Amobi Okoye—all admitted to using marijuana when asked during interviews at the NFL combine. How did this surprising honesty affect their positions in the draft? Not in the least, as Johnson was selected third overall by the Lions, Adams went fourth to the Buccaneers, and Okoye was taken 10th by the Texans. In July 2008, Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Matt Jones and two others were arrested when caught cutting up cocaine with a credit card inside a parked car. Jones was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. What did the NFL do in response? Nothing. He had apparently never tested positive. When Jones was allowed to enter a drug rehabilitation program in October that would erase the charge against him if completed, did the NFL act to punish Jones? No. It took the NFL another week to respond to an arrest that occurred three months earlier, and then the league simply handed down a three-game suspension. Jacksonville later released Jones after the 2008 season.
Does any professional sports league have a drug policy that works? Seemingly, fewer and fewer athletes are testing positive for drugs because of more and more testing. At the same time, every league’s policy has clear and open loopholes that players can walk through. In his book You’re Okay, It’s Just A Bruise, former Oakland Raiders team doctor Rob Huizenga, M.D. tells of one player who tested positive for cocaine 10 times with no action taken by the league.14 He also recounts the story of an unnamed member of the Denver Broncos who was going to be suspended because of a second positive drug test. Yet he never was. In fact, he was in the lineup the following week. According to Huizenga, “I knew then that something was wrong with the new drug penalty system. Either the fix was in at the commissioner’s office or some major legal roadblock had been thrown up.”15
Part of the blame again rests in each league’s players’ union which assists their athletes by limiting most of the constraints leagues may try to impose. It was the unions that bargained down the amount of testing while keeping punishments from being too harsh. And it is this lack of serious punishment that is keeping any testing policy from being truly effective. If a “lifetime” ban winds up being a five- or 10-game suspension thanks to appeal processes and arbitration, where does responsibility go? As long as the unions consider that protecting their members from drugs means sparing them from any lost playing time and the money associated with it rather than helping these players avoid the actual use of drugs, no relief is in sight.
In the book Bloody Sundays, author Mike Freeman details a video he witnessed taken during an NFL players’ union meeting in 1999. The most frightening revelation was when the union’s assistant executive director Doug Allen tells those assembled that “the union was informed by the NFL that a significant number of players had failed drug tests and faced suspensions….Because of a private agreement with the league office, the players would not be suspended.”16 Freeman related that a source told him the “significant number” in fact totaled 16 players who were given free rides by the league in cahoots with the union. How many other secret, under-the-table deals between the leagues and their players take place? The knowledge that just one took place should destroy any faith held that these tests make any athletes accountable for their actions. Truly, how can anyone believe that drug testing in professional sports actually works as advertised?
PERFORMANCE ENHANCERS
“Do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?”—Mark McGwire on The Simpsons
In October of 2005, an article appeared on the New York Times website entitled “Drug testing in the NFL appears to be working well.” As the title suggested, the NFL’s testing program seemed to be working properly. However, like the NBA and its failure to test for marijuana, the NFL had a secret, too. It hadn’t been testing its players for amphetamines.
“Frankly, we didn’t see amphetamines and methamphetamines as a big issue, as a big problem in the league,” said the NFL Executive Vice President of Labor Relations Harold Henderson in a June, 2006 article. He added, “Now we’ve come to learn that at least in other sports, and maybe in our sport, too, people believe it is a performance-enhancer.”1 Clearly, Mr. Henderson didn’t know his league’s history, as amphetamines have long been used as a NFL player’s performance enhancer of choice.
Bernie Parrish played eight years in the NFL in the 1960s as a member of the Cleveland Browns. Once out of football, he wrote one of the first negative and damning books against the NFL entitled They Call it a Game. In the book, Parrish documents his and other players’ use of amphetamines. He wrote, “Despite the claims of doctors and trainers to the contrary, it [Dexedrine, a stimulant] did improve my performance.”2 At the end of his career, Parrish claimed he was “taking 10 or 15 5-milligram tablets of Dexedrine” before each game.3
In 1973, Washington Redskins center George Burman made a startling revelation to Newsday. He claimed that one third of his teammates regularly took amphetamines before games. He never named names, but this opened a NFL investigation into the subject. Nothing ever came out of it publicly.
Flash forward 10 years, and amphetamines were still in regular usage. Lawrence Taylor, on top of his cocaine and drinking habits, utilized amphetamines to get “up” for games. “Many times I’d be out all night, and then have to take a lot of that over-the-counter speed truck drivers take to stay up.”4
A drug user of a different sort, Bill Romanowski treated his body like a chemical testing laboratory, taking anything and everything he could to stay on top of his game, including amphetamines. He wrote in his book Romo: My Life on the Edge how he, in the midst of the 1989 season (his second season in the league), discovered Phentermine. The drug is an appetite suppressant yet it increases the amount of adrenaline in one’s system which, according to Romanowski, “is why Phentermine was so popular [in the NFL] before it was banned.”5 Romanowski loved the stuff so much, he nearly went to jail for fraudulently obtaining it. It was only once he made headlines for his and his wife’s drug-related arrest that the NFL banned the substance in 2001. So apparently the NFL did realize its players might be taking forms of speed, regardless of Mr. Henderson’s claim.
Despite the fact that various forms of amphetamines were being taken by its players throughout the league’s history, it took the NFL until the start of the 2007 season to add amphetamines and methamphetamines to its list of banned substances.
The NHL, however, doesn’t feel it needs to test its athletes for such substances at all. Stephane Quintal, a 17-year veteran of the NHL, begged to differ. He claimed shortly after he retired in 2004 that over 40 percent of the players he encountered used stimulants. World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) chairman Richard Pound said that stimulants were the “drug of choice” for hockey players and that the league’s testing policy was riddled with loopholes.6 Pound seemed incensed that the NHL wouldn’t adopt WADA’s stringent anti-drug code which includes a ban on certain stimulants, considering how the NHL sends its top athlete to play in the World Cup and the Olympics. In November 2005 Islanders defenseman Bryan Berard and Colorado Avalanche goalie Jose Theodore both failed tests administered by their respective national anti-doping agencies prior to international competition, yet neither player received any disciplinary action from the NHL, and to date the league stands pat on its policy.
Major League Baseball stepped up to the plate against amphetamines, but not until 2006, again long after a problem was recognizable. Stories have been told of baseball clubhouses having jars full of “greenies” out for players to indulge as needed. John Milner, a 12-year veteran who testified in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trial, stated under oath that Willie Mays took amphetamines in the form of “the red juice.” During that same trial, both Dave Parker and Dale Berra testified that Willie Stargell had handed out amphetamines to his Pittsburgh Pirates teammates. It was just the way baseball was played.
What drove the “greenie” jar underground was most likely the story of the 1980 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. A doctor on Philadelphia’s AA team in Reading was charged with 23 counts of illegally prescribing amphetamines to clients. Who were among the good doctor’s clientele? None other than the Phillies’ Tim McCarver, Larry Bowa, Steve Carlton, Greg Luzinski, and Pete Rose. During the doctor’s trial, Rose claimed he didn’t even know what a “greenie” was, even though he had admitted in an earlier interview in Playboy magazine that he had taken them in the past. Steve Carlton magically disappeared and couldn’t even be served with a subpoena to show up in court. McCarver claimed he never asked for or received any such pills. Only one Phillies player implicated in the case, pitcher Randy Lerch, admitted to requesting and receiving the drugs. In his testimony, he called his teammates liars and claimed that all of those named used the drugs regularly. Lerch was traded to Milwaukee after the trial ended.
Amphetamines didn’t disappear from major league locker rooms. Some 25 years later in the Congressional Report on the Investigation into Rafael Palmerio’s Testimony (which we’ll get to later), tales of amphetamine use were buried in the report. The first involved former Texas Rangers head trainer Dan Wheat, who worked for the Rangers from 1985 through 2002. He claimed that amphetamine use was “rampant” in the league. He would often hear players asking each other for them before games. Once, he asked a player, “Of the nine players on the field, how many took greenies today?” The response from the player was “eight.” Also in the report was an interview with an unnamed player concerning amphetamines. This player claimed amphetamine use “is part of the baseball world.” As frightening as it sounds, he even claimed he couldn’t drink the coffee in the clubhouse because players would sometimes spike it with speed. “I can guarantee you there has [sic] been players, when a team is struggling or a team is going through a bad streak, they will spike the coffee.”
Perhaps this report provided some motivation to the league to finally include amphetamines on its banned substance list. A second influence came directly from the league’s doctors and trainers. In an address to the Baseball Writers of America, Commissioner Bud Selig told the audience, “They said, ‘If you don’t do something about this, somebody’s going to die.’”7 What I want to know is, was this warning acted upon out of the players’ best interest, or out of fear of the PR nightmare that would ensue from a player’s death linked to amphetamine use?
With the new policy in place to battle the rampant use of amphetamines, how many players did MLB ensnare? Officially, through 2008, one middle-infielder, Neifi Perez, has been caught. Perez, a 12-year veteran of the league, was in fact caught three times. Perez received an 80-game suspension in August of 2007 for a third positive test for a banned stimulant. Neifi’s first positive result, according to the league’s policy, was to be kept confidential. Though no news has appeared identifying any other players that tested positive, somehow another player’s first positive test leaked out and made headlines. That was baseball’s all-time home run king Barry Bonds, who according to a New York Daily News report, tested positive for amphetamines sometime in 2006. The New York Daily News’ sources informed the paper that having tested positive and due to MLB policy, Bonds had to undergo treatment and counseling as well as be subjected to six further tests a year. But it wasn’t amphetamines that many fans wanted Bonds to get busted for; it was steroids.
Though steroids have been around since the mid-1960s, baseball players seemed to shy away from them. Players felt they didn’t need the muscle mass of weightlifters to hit a baseball, they simply needed a good eye and quick wrists to make contact. When Jose Canseco made his major league debut in 1985 all that changed. Because of his instant success in the game, along with the fact that he credited it to steroids, Canseco very well may have single-handedly changed the face of the baseball.
The self-titled “godfather of steroids in baseball,” Canseco won the AL Rookie of the Year award in 1986 and was named baseball’s Most Valuable Player in 1988. When other players inquired about his training regimen, Canseco was happy to oblige by sharing the secret of steroids. As Canseco wrote, “I was the first to educate other players about how to use them, the first to experiment and pass on what I’d learned, and the first to get contacts on where to get them. I taught the other players which steroid has which effect on the body, and how to mix or ‘stack’ certain steroids to get a desired effect.”8
Canseco was fingered in Sports Illustrated for using steroids in 1988. Baseball did nothing. When Canseco was traded to the Texas Rangers (which he felt had something to do with his steroid usage), his boss became George W. Bush, managing general partner of the team. As Canseco wrote, “It was understood then that teams knew all about steroids in the game. There was no question that George W. Bush knew my name was connected with steroids…but he decided to make the deal to trade for me anyway.”9 Bush didn’t do anything about steroids in baseball until 15 years later when he was president of the country.
Fay Vincent, who was baseball’s commissioner from 1989-1992, was quoted in Newsweek in 2008 as saying, “Look, I was there, I was part of the problem. I never thought steroids was going to be as big an issue as it became because I thought it was a muscle-building drug. I looked at [Hank] Aaron and [Willie] Mays and they weren’t muscle guys. It was all about quickness. I thought it was a football problem. I thought Jose Canseco was an anomaly.”10 Vincent was not just wrong, but incredibly naive.
Baseball considered implementing a program that tested for steroid usage, but the players’ union managed to delay its approval until 2005. “The Players Association was as complicit as the owners in the explosion of steroids in the game. They knew as much about it as anyone, because they dealt with the players all the time. To those of us on the inside, there was no mystery over why the union took such a hard line against steroid testing, for example. Their concern was always making money for the players, and if the players were remaking their bodies using steroids to do so, the MBPA never lifted a finger to stop it.”11
