Sluggers strike out in steroid hearing

By Dwight Jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Mar 22, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Steroids on the brain: nThe House Government Reform Committee last week asked each player who appeared before it if he thought using steroids was cheating. Nobody asked Sammy Sosa if using cork in his bat was cheating.

• In some ways, Sosa’s performance was just as appalling as Mark McGwire’s. The guy with enough command of this language to do every commercial he can get his hands on, suddenly turns into Garrett Morris on “Saturday Night Live” Ñ you know, “Baseball been berry, berry good to me.”

• Congress said nothing about how it was going to do its part Ñ like figuring a way so that when you run an Internet search for “buy steroids,” you don’t get 3,019,393 Web sites that help you purchase the illegal drug without identification or prescription.

• Seriously, I’m wondering what’s worse for your body, steroids or large quantities of amphetamines? I keep saying it, and several other writers around the country do, too, but baseball players’ drug of choice for decades has been “greenies” Ñ pep pills. Commissioner Bud Selig would be wise to look into it before this one breaks big.

• I feel so sorry for people whose children die from reasons connected to use of steroids. But if they die from heroin overdose, do we blame Kurt Cobain? Monitor what your children do. Pay attention. And if your child gains 25 pounds of muscle in three months, please know he didn’t do it naturally.

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