Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175 Author: Matthew Engel BOMB THE COCA FIELDS AND IGNORE THE GROWING SICKNESS AT HOME It is the American equivalent of the snowdrops. Though the northern cities are still being pinched raw by snow and ice, there is this faint waft of warm southerly breeze in the papers - news of baseball spring training. In frost-free Florida and Arizona, the players have gathered in the sunshine to prepare themselves for the season, which starts at the end of March. But in this sombre and frigid winter, even this happy harbinger of summer has come draped in black. Steve Bechler, a fringe pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, turned up at the club's Florida camp two weeks ago 10lb overweight and was predictably given a rollicking. As he undertook his third work-out he collapsed, was taken to hospital and died. At first it was thought to be sunstroke. An autopsy, however, found no solid food at all in his system, which was strange; instead there was Xenadrine, a diet supplement billed as "the most potent fat burner on the market". Bechler was 23; his wife is seven months pregnant with their first child. The active ingredient of Xenadrine is ephedrine, which is said to work as both a stimulant and an appetite-suppressant. The makers claim their product has been used safely by more than 20m Americans which - blimey - would mean about one-tenth of the adult population. As ma huang, it has been part of Chinese traditional medicine for generations; one Chinese letter-writer said that those who oppose it are the same "racists" who refused to countenance acupuncture. And it will also be contended in the inevitable court case that Bechler had a history of health problems, so who knows whether it played a part in his death. But this is not an isolated case, and the real sickness seems to be in baseball. Though the game is incredibly pernickety about its standards in some areas (eg betting) it has always been lax about drugs, of all kinds. Twenty years ago cocaine was endemic; one player, Tim Raines, used to keep a vial in his back pocket and reputedly would slide into base head-first rather than feet-first to make sure it didn't break. In the late 1990s the great home-run hitting binge started. Everyone loved it and 1998, the year when two players, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both smashed the old record of 61 in a season, is remembered as one of the greatest years ever, which rejuvenated the sport and its finances. No one cared to probe too deeply, but it later emerged that McGwire took androstenedione, which many claim is effectively a steroid. Every wannabe in high school copied him. One successful slugger, Jose Canseco, admitted taking anabolic steroids himself and said half the hitters in baseball did the same. There is no evidence, but the stage whisper of "Barry's on 'roids" goes round the stadium every time the present home-run king, Barry Bonds, plays an away game. The drug culture in baseball appears to have been preserved because of the strength of the players' union. Under the deal done last year, which averted a strike at the last minute, there is to be a testing regime, but a very lenient one. The union's general counsel, Gene Orza, claimed only a couple of years back that it was "debatable" whether steroids were performance-enhancing. The sport has just never got interested in the problem, which is why the authorities failed to follow the Olympics, international soccer and American football in banning ephedrine, even after it was implicated, inconclusively, in the death of a Minnesota Vikings lineman, Korey Stringer. Baseball is just an extreme example of the prevailing attitude in American sport. Look at basketball and American football, where physical freakery is often, if not a prerequisite of success, then something very close to it. Lord knows what the footballers take to bulk up, but I don't think it's bangers and mash. Even the racehorses here are drugged up like the beef cattle. And, as Duncan Mackay reported in these pages last month, an American gold medallist from the 2000 Sydney Olympics who had previously tested positive for steroids has managed to keep his (or her) medal and reputation, because the Americans have got away with keeping the identity secret. It is rumoured to be someone very well known. This is a country that bombs Colombian coca fields in a lunatic attempt to stop the unstoppable. It still persecutes the terminally ill for taking marijuana to ease the pain. Yet confronted with blatant drug problems they could solve, Americans look in the other direction and do nothing. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex