Watch Out For the Law of Unintended Consequences

Baseball, to much self-congratulatory acclaim, has finally agreed to a drug program that includes significant penalties. The commissioner’s office and the players’ association have agreed to stringent penalties for steroid users, with a 50-game ban for a first offense, 100-game ban for a second offense, and a lifetime ban (subject to a right to seek reinstatement after 2 years) for a third offense. The plan also includes additional penalties if a player is convicted of (not charged with) possession or distribution of steroids.

The steroids story gets the headlines. Of greater interest to a broader array of players, however, will be the new penalties tied to amphetamines. Use and abuse of “greenies” and other amphetamines is legendary in baseball, going back decades. The baseball season, with its two months of spring training followed by six months of travel and games almost every day, is lengthy and boring enough to have led players to all sorts of stimulants over the years. It has long been one of baseball’s open secrets, a sort of victimless crime.

Now, however, players will be tested for amphetamines for the first time. The penalties start gently, but become significant quickly. A first positive test will result in a mandatory second test. A second positive test, however, carries a 25-game suspension, 2.5 times the severity of the current first-level penalty for steroid use. A third positive test results in an 80 game suspension (50% of a season’s worth of games), and a fourth positive test will result in a review by the Commissioner of the player’s ongoing status as an active player in Major League Baseball. There are also penalties for convictions for possessing and/or distributing amphetamines.

Baseball players appear to be getting the message about steroids. With several high-profile players caught in the net, and others surely to come, baseball seems to have caught up with the problem. Time will only bring more developments in the doping world, which will require additional, new testing regimens, but baseball finally has a system in place to handle the issue.

Testing and penalties for amphetamine use, however, presents a very interesting wrinkle in the plan. This one cuts deeper into the culture of professional baseball. For that reason, I suspect that there are many players who will be swept up by this new ban. We may also see very poor late season performance from more players than usual as players stay away from uppers of all sorts. I don’t know much about the chemistry behind the testing for amphetamines, but I suspect that we may also hear a lot from players about false positives, stimulants that shouldn’t be banned, and other hair-splitting.

I foresee a lot of warning track power, more numerous ineffective relievers (really, who is more hopped up than the guy who comes in at a pressure-filled point in the game to retire one or two batters), and sagging August and September statistics. Still, it’s about time. Baseball fans deserve better than the cartoonish figures they have been presented over the last decade. I loved the summer of 1998 for the McGwire/Sosa home run spectacle, I still think Barry Bonds has the most amazing eye-hand coordination in the game (regardless of whether his power was artificially enhanced), and I dig the long ball as much as anyone else. But when a player like Brady Anderson suddenly looks like he joined the WWE and knocks almost thirty homers more than he had in any single season prior to then or at any other time in his career, something’s clearly wrong. When Ken Caminiti suddenly bulks up and puts out huge, out-of-character numbers, then dies a lonely, drug-addicted death at the age of 41, something’s clearly wrong.

The pressures on minor league players to make “The Show” are immense, which led many, if not most, to dabble in all sorts of questionable potions just to keep up with the next guy (or so they told themselves). Here’s hoping that the ban on steroids and other performance enhancements will level the playing field once again.