Tee It Up With Barry

Like it or not Barry Bond is now baseball’s all-time leading homerun champion with 756 dingers. With a hat size akin to a basketball, and late career numbers that read like they were written on a prescription pad, baseball will not plant an asterisk beside his name even though he maybe be indicted later this year for the BS he told the grand jury.

Sorry Hank.

For an athlete, probably any athlete, the temptation to use steroids or some other kind of performance enhancing drug is obvious and perhaps even rational. In baseball it may only take one great year to get that big contract and the same goes for football. Now you’re set for life, even if that life turns out to be a shorter than expected. But according to Robert Earl Keen, when you’re 30 years old, “The road goes on forever and the party never ends,” or at least that’s the way it feels.

If you’re keeping score, track and field, baseball, football, cycling, gymnastics, swimming, even snowboarding (although those drugs may just be for fun) have all been touched by drug problems… the exception is golf. Is that logical?

Imagine you’re the 125th player on the PGA Tour. You’ve bounced back and forth between the PGA and the Nationwide Tours. You’ve made a few bucks but never enough to make life secure. Rightly or wrongly, you believe that the only thing holding you back is that your average driving distance is 265 instead of 295. Are you tempted?

What would you do for fame and fortune?

Has your doctor ever prescribed steroids? Mine has. There are no needles; in many cases it’s a clear gel that rubs on like suntan lotion. It’s not scary, nor does it feel dangerous, and it definitely doesn’t feel wrong. In my case, the steroid was to build bone density, however I did notice a bit more zip in my step, and over time (six months) I became more aggressive to the point I stopped using the drug on my own.

Perhaps golfers are immune to the temptations, or perhaps the Commissioner is. I suspect that like baseball, golf has figured out that the fans come to see the long-ball, and as good as some of the Punch and Judy players are, what we really want to see is someone hit the ball ten miles. And, just like baseball, as long as you will pay for it (no matter what “it” turns out to be) the sport will do everything in its power to serve it up. You want full contact golf? Well, if you’ll pay to see it, the WWA and PGA will start merger talks tomorrow.

We like to think that we have changed over the past 30,000 years; we’ve become more civilized, after all we now have doctors at ringside, but that doesn’t change the fact that men still hit each other in the head for our pleasure. I say this while fully admitting that I like a good a boxing match as much as the next guy. I don’t know, perhaps it is Neanderthal, brain-stem stuff that draws us to the car-wreck and the long-ball, and maybe it will take another 30,000 years for us to appreciate the finer things that life has to offer. Until then we’ll tee it high and watch it fly.

Are professional golfers using steroids? More than likely. Do I want to see Tiger and the boys peeing in a cup before each round, frankly no. However, I do hope that those players that are tempted will get some good advice from their doctors and others who know the real dangers of steroids.