Steroids raid casts wide net, By: Terence Moore
March 2, 2007
Just like that, you have a syringe threatening to burst the bubble of the feel-good story that was Gary Matthews Jr. during last baseball season.
Then you have Richard A. Rydze, a respected team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers, telling SI.com that his purchases of drugs from a shady Internet pharmacy were for elderly patients, not for overly ambitious football players.
You also have SI.com saying Evander Holyfield (or shall we say Evan Fields?) joined Matthews in this new craze of getting steroids online.
Jose Canseco’s name surfaced again this week. So did that of Jason Grimsley, noted more for juicing than pitching.
Plus, to hear the Times Union of Albany, N.Y., tell it, the feds have discovered that performance-enhancing drugs may have been fraudulently prescribed by Internet pharmacies to everybody from current and past NFL and baseball players to folks in colleges and high schools.
Even a former Mr. Olympia champion has been cited in the probe.
Thus the question: Are many of these folks guilty regarding the use, purchase or sale of performance-enhancing drugs, or are most of them innocent? As for the answer, it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s Matthews, Rydze, Canseco, Grimsley, Holyfield or Fields, the names will keep coming, because this isn’t a temporary thing.
This is a forever thing.
When I say “this,” I’m referring to the fact that athletes and their handlers have sought to find an edge forever. Either that, or they’ve been accused of doing as much forever. All you need to know is that more than a few Greeks consumed sheep’s testicles in the shadows with hopes of increasing their testosterone levels before the ancient Olympic Games.
During the modern Olympic Games, U.S. marathoner Thomas Hicks nearly died in 1904 after he sprinted to a gold medal. Down the stretch, he consumed large quantities of strychnine (later banned from the Games) and brandy (not exactly the same as guzzling Gatorade).
Plus, there were those eras when amphetamines became the primary elixir in sports. Baseball players called them “greenies,” and they were as prevalent in the middle of clubhouses as bubblegum and chewing tobacco.
How about Mark McGwire and his fraudulent muscles? Courtesy of his non-responsive testimony before Congress, he suggested that his Popeye arms came from something stronger than the combination of andro and spinach.
Later, cyclist Floyd Landis tested positive for an elevated testosterone level, which means the primary reason he was zipping around so quickly wasn’t because of a good tailwind.
That’s why, when it comes to the use of anabolic steroids, designer steroids, human growth hormone (HGH) or whatever else is rattling around the minds of scientists during this millennium, you have the following truth for the ages: Anybody who does anything in sports at any level and on any part of the earth is a suspect.
Is that fair?
No.
Is that just the way it is?
Uh-huh. So every day, you’ll have somebody new sharing the light of suspicion with Barry Bonds. That somebody for the moment is Holyfield, Fields or whoever we’re talking about here.
According to a report this week on SI.com, law enforcement documents show that the former boxing four-time heavyweight champion of the world used “Evan Fields” as an alias. That report says Fields has the same birth date as Holyfield (Oct. 19, 1962), and that Fields has nearly the same address in Fayette County and exactly the same telephone number as Holyfield.
In fact, when those with SI.com dialed the number listed for Fields, they said Holyfield answered.
Why is this important? Well, according to that report, Fields was involved with one of those Internet pharmacies that have the feds ready to put folks in the slammer.
Holyfield said he never has taken steroids and that this controversy has nothing to do with him. Yes, it does. He’s an athlete, and if you’re an athlete in today’s climate of performance-enhancing drugs, you are guilty until proven innocent.
