USA: Baseball's real drugs are found in pill form

For all the publicity and congressional hearings, the drugs of choice in baseball never really were steroids.

At least not on a wholesale scale.

That dubious honor belongs to amphetamines - the little pep pills known as greenies, beanies, uppers or any of a half-dozen other disarmingly cute names.

Amphetamines have been illegal, except with a doctor's prescription, since 1970, two decades before steroids were placed under the same restrictions.

Because they're illegal, just about everyone in baseball's tightly guarded inner circle is reluctant to talk about amphetamines, now more than ever given the ongoing high-profile crackdown on steroids.

But the reality is amphetamines have been for six decades, and still are today, a wink-and-nod constant in professional baseball - an important driving force in the game.

"These little buggers will open your eyes, sharpen your focus and get your blood moving on demand, over and over again, right through a full 162-game season," former Yankees and current Red Sox pitcher David Wells wrote of amphetamines in his 2003 book, Perfect I'm Not.

"A lot of guys will buy them in a seasonlong stockpile at one time. We're talking about hundreds of pills. With that in mind, it really ain't hard to get connected. Stand in the middle of your clubhouse and walk 10 feet in any direction. Chances are you'll find what you need."

Earlier this year, former Diamondbacks pitcher Brian Anderson, now with the Kansas City Royals, said he'd describe amphetamine use in baseball as "widespread."

Three bills pending in Congress, one by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would toughen drug policies in professional sports, including adding amphetamines to the list of banned substances and creating an independent body to oversee testing.

Expanding tests to include amphetamines already has met resistance from the Major League Baseball Players Association, which currently negotiates drug testing with owners.

In 1970, the year amphetamines were banned, former pitcher Jim Bouton caused a brief national stir by writing in Ball Four, his classic book on clubhouse culture, that "a lot of baseball players couldn't function without (greenies)."

At least five current and former players have joined Bouton in recent years admitting amphetamines are widespread in baseball.

Future Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn agreed with Wells and Anderson, telling a reporter last month that "greenies" were "everywhere" before he retired in 2001.

But Diamondbacks General Manager Joe Garagiola Jr. thinks the trend is waning.

"Players are getting more sophisticated about the use of these substances in the sense that they understand they're not benign, that there are side effects," Garagiola said.

"There are long-term issues that nobody really knows about. So they're not going there."

Dangers of 'greenies'

Amphetamines first were manufactured in 1887 as a sort of synthetic adrenaline. They became widespread during World War II when the U.S. Army gave them to soldiers to ward off fatigue, increase alertness and maintain aggression.

Greenies moved into baseball clubhouses for pretty much the same reasons.

"I remember the warnings we got years ago about amphetamines," says Roland Hemond, who has been in professional baseball 54 years, including 23 as general manager of the White Sox and Orioles.

"It was considered a minor drug in people's minds. They would say: 'Don't worry, this is not dangerous. It won't affect you, but it could lead to players experimenting with other drugs.' "

That remains the prevailing sentiment within baseball. Many players and some front-office personnel consider amphetamines on par with aspirin, coffee or the high-caffeine energy drinks that pack clubhouse coolers.

Medical experts disagree.

Charles E. Yesalis, a professor of health policy and sport science at Penn State University who testified before Congress this spring as an expert on performance-enhancing drugs, says he believes amphetamines are worse than steroids.

"I'm not saying steroids are safe, but I think amphetamines are demonstrably more dangerous," Yesalis told The Republic. "With anabolic steroids we have suspicions, but we (still) have to do an epidemiologic study of their long-term health effects, namely what happens to you, five, 10 or 15 years down the road.

"Amphetamines, we've been studying their effects since the mid-1930s. We've established they are highly addictive. And we've established that they have a number of serious, acute long-term effects, including fatal arrhythmia, stroke, heart attack."

Other side effects include paranoid delusions, compulsive and repetitive behavior, nerve damage and destruction of blood vessels.

Wear and tear

Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and lead author of the acclaimed book, Drugs and the Athlete, says baseball players take amphetamines for one reason: because the pills do what they are supposed to do.

"They improve reaction time, increase arousal, enhance endurance, mask pain and boost self-confidence," Wadler said. "They put you in the zone."

Yesalis, who is writing a book on amphetamines, agrees players pop pills largely because they work, but believes that in some cases "beaning up" is simply the thing to do.

"Literally, since World War II, amphetamines have been part of the culture of baseball," he said.

Despite the longstanding legal prohibition, some baseball insiders take a tolerant view.

"You have to remember this is the only sport in the world where you have a 162-game regular-season schedule," said a major league front-office executive who agreed to speak only if his name were withheld.

"People don't understand the wear and tear and grind. Baseball's like nothing else. You might have a night game on the West Coast, get on a plane, land at dawn with a three-hour time change, then have to go out and try to hit a 100 mph fastball in front of 50,000 people in Yankee Stadium."

Opponents of drug use in sports are equally passionate.

"I hear the 162-game thing all the time and it falls on deaf ears," Wadler said. "First of all, these athletes travel first class and stay in first-class accommodations. They have the best food and training facilities. How does that compare to someone who's holding down two or three jobs at the same time and working 20 hours a day? Are you telling me he or she should be taking amphetamines? I don't have any sympathy for that argument.

"With estimates that as many as 80 percent of these guys out there have used them at one time or another - it's almost as if you don't use them you're not a good teammate."

No one really knows how many professional baseball players are using amphetamines. The evidence is mostly anecdotal.

One-time Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, in a story about how he's cleaned up his life, admitted he used hallucinogenic drugs between starts and took between five and 12 pep pills before every game he threw for 12 years.

And ex-Cubs outfielder Brian McRae said he always had to be careful which of two coffee pots he drank from in the clubhouse before a game - one that contained regular dark roast and the "leaded" pot that held a simmering soup of uppers.

Fans unconcerned

Those revelations have done little to raise awareness about amphetamines. Most fans remain oblivious or indifferent.

A half-dozen people stopped in downtown Phoenix last week said they didn't know enough about amphetamines in baseball to even offer a comment. The one fan who ventured an opinion said he knew amphetamines were illegal, but couldn't care less.

"I'm sure they all cheat, so it's not cheating," said Greg Davey, 26, of Tempe. "If we're gonna start nitpicking about every single athlete, where does it stop?"

Under an agreement negotiated in January with the players union, Major League Baseball now tests for steroids, ephedra and recreational drugs such as cocaine. But not for amphetamines.

Players in the minor leagues, who don't have the protection of the union, are tested for a wide range of performance-enhancing substances, including amphetamines. Offenders are suspended and their names made public.

However, baseball refuses to release the names of minor league players suspended for amphetamine violations.

The reason, league officials say, is consistency.

Starting this season, major leaguers who violate the new drug policy are suspended and their names made public. The same happens in the minors. But because nobody in the majors can be suspended for amphetamines, the names of minor leaguers caught using amphetamines are withheld. They are suspended for a minimum of 15 games, but their names aren't released.

Get-tough climate

Commissioner Bud Selig, an outspoken opponent of amphetamines, used his power to impose the tougher drug-testing policies on the minor leagues several years ago. And he took advantage of the political climate to put the players association into a position where the union was forced to abandon its long-standing opposition to mandatory, random steroids testing earlier this year.

Now Selig is manipulating the same get-tough political climate to try to end six decades of complacency on amphetamines at the major league level.

"It's time to put the whispers about amphetamine use to bed once and for all," Selig wrote in April to Donald Fehr, head of the players union.

Selig proposed a 50-game suspension without pay for any player caught using steroids or amphetamines, 100 games for a second offense and lifetime suspension for a third.

In addition to three bills already pending in Congress, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., a former pitcher and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, said this week he plans to introduce a fourth, which would impose Olympic-style penalties on professional sports. Amphetamines are banned from the Olympics.

At least one of the four bills is virtually certain to pass unless Major League Baseball and the other professional sports toughen their drug policies, including cracking down on amphetamines.

"Now is the time for the leagues and their players unions to adopt more stringent and credible drug-testing policies," McCain said in a statement Wednesday. "They owe at least that much to their fans - and especially to the children and teens who see professional athletes as role models."

Baseball can't do that, however, unless the players union reopens negotiations on its collective bargaining agreement for the second time in six months. Normally, that would be unthinkable. But with Congress threatening to act, times aren't normal.

Major League Baseball owners wanted to include amphetamines in the January negotiations but were more concerned about steroids at the time. Their lead negotiator, Rob Manfred, said if he had pushed the amphetamine issue he likely wouldn't have been able to get the tougher steroid policies in place this year.

Those new policies are scheduled to say in effect through the 2008 season, but baseball's current collective bargaining agreement expires in December 2006.

As of late last week, Fehr had yet to formally respond to Selig's April letter, but the commissioner and union boss have had "informal discussions" about a tougher drug policy.

Fehr might agree to discuss a stricter drug policy as part of the next collective bargaining process, but indications are Congress may not wait that long.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org/amphetablog.html
Pubdate: 03 July 2005
Source: The Arizona Republic
Author: Joseph A. Reaves
Website: http://www.azcentral.com/
Copyright: 2005 azcentral.com


The Arizona Republic
Jul. 3, 2005 12:00 AM