No Steroid News - Where have they gone?
It has been many months since we have heard the word “steroids” in the world of professional sports, a fact that would have obviously brought many smiles on the faces of doping and sporting officials. It was way back in February this year that some anonymous sources reported that Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) had made use of some performance enhancing drugs to deliver dramatic performances on the field. After some months, there were claims of lawyers involved in the BALCO investigation that David Ortiz was one of the players who had tested positive in 2003.
From News.Yahoo.com:
It is no coincidence that, for the most part, sports writers broke their steroid stories during the off-season when there is not much baseball news around. Of course, when an anonymous source dumps the Ortiz leak during the season, it must be played when it appears. Red Sox fans were worried about Big Papi’s failure to start playing the game until two months into the 2009 season. The drug testing story offered an explanation for Ortiz’s lackluster performance. It happened to all players who had to go off “the stuff.” The faithful rallied to Papi’s side. Since then he has had his usual spectacular year, although his batting average never recovered. No one has bothered to say “never mind” about the drug accusations.
The only steroid news since the shameful accusations against David Ortiz has been the court ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August on a suit brought by the Major League Baseball Players Association. Federal authorities had seized all the 2003 drug-testing records as part of their BALCO investigation, although their subpoena only referenced information related to ten players. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, normally a staunch conservative on criminal matters, castigated the Bush henchmen: “This was an obvious case of deliberate overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable cause.” Perhaps the government could not tell the difference between ten records and a hundred. It is refreshing to know that the Fourth Amendment is still part of the sacred covenant that is our Bill of Rights.
It seems like that the news pertaining to use of steroids is often broken down during the off-season to evoke public interest. After all, publicity, good or bad, has proven to be working these days and people with intentions to stay in the news have used publicity to generate interest.
