Tour de France v. American Pro Sports

Great column from Jemele Hill today. She says exactly the point I'm trying make, exactly what Tour de France veteran commentator Phil Liggett believes: that the Tour de France is at the forefront and very possibly the downslope of the anti-doping curve.

The key point:
"There is no way American sports are any cleaner than cycling. In fact, if our sports were held to world anti-doping standards, the cycling's scandals would seem mild by comparison."

Accepting that, though, brings us back to an older topic of discussion in the Sauna: do Americans care? A lot of people care that the most hallowed record in baseball is going to go to a player who, by the Tour's standards, would have been banned from his sport a couple years ago. Far, far less people seem to care about PEDs in football.

To the flip-side then: why do Europeans care so much about cycling being clean? To understand that you have to understand the sport. I've said it many times before; the physical suffering these cyclists go through - in the Tour de France, in the lesser Tours of the cycling year, and in their off-season workouts - is incomparable to any other major pro sport. The effort IS the sport. That's why millions line up on the roads of France to cheer them on. That's why the camaraderie of the peloton is such a beautiful thing. These guys are a couple hundred Forrest Gumps 6 out of 7 days for three weeks. If they dope, they are cheating on the very thing that they are admired for. They are cheating the suffering. It doesn't hurt Barry Bonds to hit a home run, HGH or no HGH. Football hurts, but that's not the main reason why Americans love football.

Look at it this way: the best games in most major sports almost always involve exciting finishes, but the best Tour de France stages are also the least exciting at the end. The most exciting stage finishes are the flat ones, when half a dozen sprinters are battling in the final seconds. But the most famous stages are in the mountains, and the most famous rides are made by individuals who suffer for four hours but manage just a little bit more pace than everyone else.

Vinokourov and Rasmussen and the others suffered, but they did something illegal to manage their suffering. So the very specific thing they are admired for is diminished.

Crazy insane or insane crazy?

Let me be clear: I don't hate Barry Bonds. But, if Barry Bonds were hanging by his fingertips over the side of a dangerous cliff, and next to him the New York Yankees were similarly hanging, and I was the only person who could save one of them from certain death, I'd forgive New York the 2001 ALCS and their decade plus of pure evil, and I'd save the Yankees.

So, there's my bias.

I thought it was a widely held one, but then I saw this survey. No doubt you did, too. About 48 percent of American baseball fans don't really care if Bonds breaks Aaron's career HR record? Fully 37 percent of them wish that he would? Wow. Crazy.

We are clearly in the steroids era. Trying to keep Bonds out of the Hall of Fame would be a mistake, I think. Even if he gets caught with steroids, I'm not sure you can ban him from the Hall completely. At this point, with the wide and varied list of cheaters, I think baseball fans should operate under the assumption that just about every player was dirty. And if that is true, it is hard to punish even those who are caught.

But, that doesn't mean that we cannot root against Bonds' 756th HR. He's the poster boy for an era that embarrasses me. I'm even afraid of ARod and Pujols, who might be poised to shatter whatever figure Bonds could post. Even those guys seem too closely connected to baseball's dirty present for me to feel comfortable with them in any serious baseball record book.

I'm OK with a record book dominated by hitters from the steroid era. Hell, dead ball era pitchers dominate that half of the ledger still. But, I don't want cheaters to establish records that aren't likely to ever be broken.

Mets Clubhouse, Steroids, and "Northern District of California"

The list of Kirk Radomski's clients has not been released, and is not being reported. But, The Smoking Gun has a copy of his plea agreement with the feds, and it contains a piece of information that I 100 percent guarantee that every journalist in the country is trying to track down:

From pages 3 and 4 of the plea agreement:

"Over the course of time that I was distributing anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, I regularly received payment in the form of personal checks for these drugs from the players and associates to whom I sold. I deposited these checks into my personal bank account at North Fork Bank and paid my home mortgage from this account. In particular, on January 24, 2005, I deposited a check for $2,000 that was payment for anabolic steroids into my personal bank account at North Fork Bank. I agree and admit that this check constituted payment for a shipment of anabolic steroids I sent to an address in the Northern District of California, and that the check itself was sent to me from an address in the Northern District of California."

Is that Bonds? Is that Victor Conte? Why is that piece of information -- which is the only information that would tie to anybody specific -- not being reported?

Interesting.

Notent Notables

OK, I'm back after my hiatus. To be fair, I was in Bulgaria for 8 days in the last month working at an orphanage with high schoolers. I have a great life.

• A Mets employee pleaded guilty to distributing stuff*. My immediate reaction: at least 50% of Mets between 1995 and 2005 were using stuff. My second reaction: oh well... Go Mets!
• The 1st leg of the Man U-AC Milan Champions league game was the best match I've seen since I moved to London. Both teams passed great and both had control of different stages. Milan took the 2-1 lead by supplementing their typical Italian League skill on the ball with some excellent passes. Man U won by taking over the midfield in English League fashion. Is Christiano Ronaldo the best player in the world? I'll buy it. Is Kaka hot both as a player and as a male? Sure. Is Rooney, with 6 goals in his last 5 matches including one of the biggest of his career, back? I hope so.
• Unless you're Kate Schardein, I was listening to Maximo Park before you. Add them to the short list of bands I liked before they were really big (Gym Class Heroes is the only other one I can think of). The latest band that Kate, my British band insider, introduced me to is Young Knives. They're good too.
  
• I hate the Bloody Sock story. If you think there was anything except blood on the sock, you're a deluded Yankees fan still bitter about being on the wrong end of the biggest choke in the history of sports. That's not my opinion, that's a fact.
• I missed two of my favorite English sporting events while I was in Bulgaria. The Oxford-Cambridge boat race has been gripping stuff in recent years because both teams are so elite that they're always close at the end. And the Grand National horse race is to the American Triple Crown what the gladiator fights in the Roman Coliseum are to modern day boxing.
• Also missed the Masters, but wasn't shocked that Zach Johnson won. I hate it when a guy who everyone who follows golf knows is good but just isn't a star wins his first major and the media feels obligated to write the standard Cinderella Story piece. At the very least, this guy is going to be David Toms: perennially towards the top of the money list and competing for majors every once in a while.
• Speaking of golf, here's a little prediction that I feel strongly about: at the end of his career, Geoff Ogilvy is going to be more popular than Greg Norman ever was. Sometime in the last year I read a little column on espn.com saying that the media love Ogilvy because he gives a great quote and always puts tons of thought into his answers. Since then, almost every golf story I read has an Ogilvy quote in it. Apparently, he's a really bright guy, he's incredibly candid, he's Australian and he's wicked good at golf: everything a golf reporter could want! I think I've finally found one guy I might root for over Tiger.
• Here's to David Halberstam. Amazing life.
• Finally, just in case you're curious, and because its fun to think someone might be interested, I'll leave you with my 2007 Keeper Fantasy Baseball League Roster. * denotes my 4 keepers coming into the season. Three things to note: 1) My other possible choices for keepers were John Lackey, Jermaine Dye, and Francisco Rodriguez...nothing too great. 2.) I'm in first place right now, insanely. 3.) In addition to standard 5x5 stats, we also count Ks and Errors for batters and L's and Complete Games for Pitchers. I highly recommend that format, although the CGs are a bit of a wildcard.

Listed in the order I acquired them...
2B - Chase Utley*
SS - Derek Jeter*
C - Brian McCann*
SP - Scott Kazmir
OF - Bobby Abreu
RP - Joe Nathan
SP - Cole Hamels
OF - Alex Rios
DL - Jason Schmidt
1B - Todd Helton
OF - Magglio Ordonez
RP - Francisco Cordero
P - Chris Capuano
Util - Jeff Francouer
P - Jason Isringhausen
Bench - Moises Alou
Bench - Daniel Cabrera
----All Below were acquired after the draft off the free agent wire----
P - Al Reyes
Bench - Ian Snell
3B - Morgan Ensberg
Bench - Bronson Arroyo
Bench - Rocco Baldelli

It's a very typical team for me. Somehow I always end up with the batters who get tons of RBIs but not a lot of HRs. And I tend to prioritize Ks over Ws for pitching. Capuano, for instance, has been on my team for three years without me having to keep him. I also drafted hoping to get some guys who turn into keepers. I could see Hamels, Rios, Snell, or even Francouer making that leap this year.



*Stuff, you'll recall, is what I've decided The Sports Sauna will call performance enhancing drugs.

Finally...something informative

Daniel Engber writing for Slate's science page actually gives some hard facts about HGH. There's also a bunch of other related articles linked at the bottom.

I was aware that HGH was not a steroid, hence my frequent use of the terms "performance enhancers" and "stuff." I think we should all agree to call performance enhancers "stuff" and know what we're talking about. It's just easier.

As for the Engber article, one of the points it makes is not a new one. Jose Canseco, of course, claimed that he took steroids safely, without ill-effect. Engber claims that HGH is even safer than steroids. He also believes it's much less effective, though he doesn't dismiss the idea that it could help pro athletes.

Which brings us right back to Fyall's question over what should or should not be legal. If HGH is not dangerous and only helps a little, then what's the difference between it and a better pair of baseball spikes? Culturally, HGH is frowned upon, just like cannabis is frowned upon more than tobacco even though it's less dangerous.

So I say... ban steroids definitely. Testing is pretty reliable, though it's still hard to catch careful users. Ban HGH for now. If further tests prove that it really, really doesn't do that much, let it go. There's tons of legal drugs out there that athletes use anyway.

NFL Steroids

Killing time before the NCAA picks back up on Thursday, and lacking any semblance of a Cinderella in the phony 2007 NCAA tournament that could make for some good filler stories, ESPN.com is leading with a Page 2 essay by Chuck Klosterman on steroids in the NFL. It's a thoughtful if uninformative summary of what no one is saying.

I mean, at this point, we've got pretty solid evidence inplicating 2 of the last 8 Super Bowl teams as being entirely on steroids: the 2004 Panthers and the 2006 Steelers. Let's face it. The NFL is riddled with steroids. CERTAINLY they must be more widespread than in the MLB. As Klosterman notes, "football is more about intangible masculine warfare..." Bigger and stronger is ALWAYS better. If you want to hit another person more effectively, drugs would help. There is a bit more to hitting a baseball.

I think that the anti-steroid backlash by baseball fans has helped prevent performance enhancing drugs as well. Nobody wants to be seen as a villain. Any baseball player connected with steroids is a villain.

To answer Klosterman's implied question, I am going to think about the NFL similarly to how I think about the Tour de France. I'd much rather see guys completely drug-free, but I know that almost no one is. So I just shrug my shoulders and enjoy the entertainment.

Baseball, on the other hand, IS different. I really feel like there are guys out there who aren't on steroids, which let's me think of baseball players as innocent until suspiscion of guilt. And I can really get behind the Griffey Juniors out there who I really believe are drug-free.