Every year about this time the debate whether steroid era
players should be in the Hall of Fame or not gets heated but do people really
know what they are talking about? That’s not meant to be an insult or a
questioning of your intelligence by any means but I’m serious, do people
actually know what these steroids are and do people actually know what they do
or do they follow along with the other sheep and baaaaaa all the way to the
pasture? I like to think of myself as a leader and a trendsetter but also an
educator when I can and I will attempt to do the latter today as I try and
explain what exactly “Andro” is and explain why it is banned by Major League
Baseball.
The word Andro, or Androstenedione, is a hormone that you
used to be able to buy over the counter at any local GNC or pharmaceutical
company that was made famous when Major League Baseball added it to its banned
substance list in 2004. This was long after a reporter saw a bottle of it in
Mark McGwire’s clubhouse locker in 1998 when he went on to save baseball from
the strike and when he went on to break the single season home run record held
by former Yankees All-Star Roger Maris and long after Mike Piazza admitted to
using it in a 2013 autobiography he wrote. Why did sluggers like McGwire and Piazza
want to take this? Well it was a muscle builder that promised it could increase
your testosterone levels by as much as 400%. Andro also reportedly keeps your
red blood cells healthy, enhances your recovery and shortens your recovery time
from injuries and exercise and heightens your sexual arousal and performance
but Andro does not come without its risks.
Those risks led then President George W. Bush to sign into
law the Anabolic Steroid Control Act in 2004 which added Andro to the list of
banned non-prescription steroid-based drugs. It was then that MLB, the NFL,
college sports and the Olympics followed suit also banning Andro from their
games. Andro is dangerous as a sudden spike in testosterone levels could
absolutely destroy your liver for example while the drug also significantly
reduces your “good” cholesterol number which could increase the risk of heart
disease in longtime users. But if it works it is worth it right? Well according
to a study done by Iowa State the stuff didn’t even really work anyway on its
own.
Iowa State students and scientists did a study on Andro in
1999 with 20 healthy men as their control unit. Ten of them took Andro and 10
of them took a dummy pill made of rice flour while both sets of men underwent
eight weeks of weight training and the gains in muscle bulk and strength were
recorded. At the end of the eight weeks the numbers were almost identical.
Either rice flour should be banned as well from MLB or Andro, again as a
stand-alone drug, was a bust.
Which leads me to my conclusion, Andro is good for one and
not to other? When I say “good” for one I mean Mike Piazza who was just elected
into the MLB Hall of Fame with the other being Mark McGwire who has not yet
been elected and was damned from baseball for a few years after his retirement.
Scientists don’t even think Andro is worth a damn, again by itself, and yet
we’re still keeping players out of the Hall of Fame because of it? Instead of,
and this is directed towards the BBWAA, thinking you’re God, judge and jury how
about you take a second to read a book and become educated on the matters
before altering the course of MLB history because you think Andro altered it
first.
This concludes another steroid-laced Hall of Fame rant by
Daniel Burch.
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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)