2/25/03 - This rant is occasioned by the unfortunate death of Orioles' pitching prospect, Steve Bechler, at the ripe old age of 23 years. Let me make a few things clear at the outset:

I value human life.

Nothing that has been reported about Steve Bechler's life and behavior would make me believe that the world is a better place without him in it.

I am sorry for the grief that must be felt by his parents and his wife and for his as yet unborn child who will grow up without its biological father.

I know some of the things that I will say later on in this rant may seem harsh, but none of it is directed at Steve Bechler nor is it aimed at people who strive to have the career to which he aspired. I do have a problem with the professional wailers and the professional spin-meisters that immediately come out of the woodwork every time there is some tragedy that will permit them to bask in some limelight not of their making.

It is tres chic at the moment to call for a ban on ephedrine containing substances in baseball – as there is a ban in football and in some other sports. It is also de rigueur at the moment for other people to assert the fundamental freedom of all people to decide what they want to do with their bodies as long as it involves substances that are legal. And to all of these people, here is what I have to say:

Enough already!! These are the same tired arguments you have put out there in every instance of this type in the past. If you have nothing new to say, then please shut up and spare us the rhetorical gas!

Look folks, ephedrine-containing substances are considered to be legal for sale in a variety of formulations that claim to be everything from weight loss concoctions to "pick-me-ups". The fact that it is legal to buy such stuff does not make it smart to put it in one's body. You can buy Drano legally; ingesting it is very stupid; ingesting it in any quantity is not something that many people can do more than once. So for all the professional and amateur civil libertarians out there who say that it is the inalienable right of anyone to put anything they want into their bodies, please go and drink about a pint of Drano so that we don't have to hear your tired arguments anymore. Leave behind all of your arguments in some deathless prose so that we can refer to them whenever we feel the need to do so – but recognize that our need to do so will be extraordinarily rare. Ephedrine is not something that is good for athletes to be taking when they are preparing their bodies for a season of professional exertion. There have been too many "incidents" recently to say that it is "no big deal".

The most odious people on this side of the argument are the Players Union in baseball. One of their brethren has just died; there are a couple of football players that have died in recent years from similar situations; this is an issue of safety for the members of the union. Yet the union chooses to use rhetorical gambits and spin control to try to make this into an issue that needs to be negotiated with the baseball owners as part of a collective bargaining agreement. If these people really and truly represented the best interests of the workers in their union, they would be howling and yelling for owners to get off their asses and ban the use of ephedrine substances immediately because they represent a workplace hazard for their members. Imagine the screeches the union would emit if the padding were taken off the outfield walls and it were replaced with metal pointed spikes. Holy impaler, Batman. That would be outrageous. Well, it is just as outrageous that union members can be allowed to work under conditions where their lives are at risk due to what goes into their bodies. And it is the union that has to be the ones to protest and demand change. Unfortunately for baseball players, it is their union that is preventing the change from happening.

It is also a gross miscarriage of human decency for Peter Angelos to use the death of an Oriole player to call for the banning of ephedrine substances. Excuse me, but Peter Angelos made his fortune by suing the hell out of people who allowed their workers – or the general public – to be exposed to harmful substances. He has won asbestos suits and tobacco suits, so if there is anyone who should have known - long ago - that this kind of stuff is bad for workers, it is Peter Angelos. But this gasbag has just gone along with all of it until now when he sees an opportunity to take center stage for a moment and to take a stance that will make him look like a benign employer as opposed to the scurrilous ones he has sued. Now he uses the tragedy of the death of a 23-year-old player to do some grandstanding.

Everything I said here that relates to ephedrine and athletes goes for steroids – in spades. It may take a while to call this up from memory, but please recall the appearance in his final days of Lyle Alzedo whose life ended miserably early after a life on steroids. Then recall some of the other tragic cases of lives ended too soon and in less than comfortable circumstances where long-term and high-level steroid use was implicated in the process. Yes, these things enhance physique and possibly performance; yes, these things can bring big contracts; yes, the athlete has the ultimate choice in the matter. No, they should not be allowed and therefore the choice should never be one that needs to be made.

I've suggested this before and I'll use this opportunity to suggest it again. If baseball players think it is necessary for them to use diet supplements to help them add muscle along with weight lifting workouts or to take things that help them to lose weight or to take things that control pain, then they should do so. But what they should take is a "medication"/"concoction" that is as effective and as safe as possible for them. The way for that to happen is for their union to be the one that evaluates the products and certifies them and distributes them to the players. And the way for the union to overcome the cost of such an undertaking is for the union to market those same "medications"/ "concoctions" to the public under the aegis of the baseball players union. Sales to the public will cover the costs here and probably put some coins into the union coffers – until such time as the NFL players union decides to cut in on the action and dominates this market.

One verse of a folk song from the 1960s went:

"How many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died?"

So this is the question to pose to the unions that represent the baseball and football and basketball and hockey players in the year 2003. How many of your members will have to die taking things that are "available over the counter" before you will realize that some of those over the counter things are not good for people undergoing the stresses and strains of professional athletics? How many of the people you are paid to represent and protect from unsafe conditions will have to die and/or suffer long term health degradation before someone accuses all of you of malfeasance in your duties as their advocates? How many people will have to die and or suffer just because you don't want to do something that might be "unpopular" and choose instead to turn the issue into a public relations/spin control operation?

In case the baseball players union has difficulty coming up with answers to any or all of the above, they need only to consider the next verse of the folk song that posed the overarching question here:

"The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind; The answer is blowing in the wind."

In short, when are the players unions going to stand up for a safe workplace? Isn't that one of the foundation issues of unions in American history? Too many of the people heading these players' unions today are more interested in being able to get a new "Beemer" every two years than they are in forging a safe and sane working environment for the members that pay their salaries that buy the new "Beemers". And let's just say that most – not all, but certainly most – of the athletes they represent are not of sufficient intellectual prowess to realize that their union leaders are more responsible for selling them down this unsafe river than anyone.

As H. Ross Perot is prone to say, "It's just sad…"

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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