Major League Baseball balks on releasing drug testing information

Last year, Jason Giambi flunked a drug test – but not for steroids. He failed for greenies – amphetamines.

Following baseball is a side effect of my current profession. I didn’t grow up watching it, although I did play it quite a bit (living in Union City, everyone played baseball in a parking lot once a week). But watching baseball was never my thing…until I really started researching it. So, when Major League Baseball announced that they were going to reveal the names of players who tested positive for amphetamines, I was interested.

They still won’t release the names of players who test positive for everything in their drug testing program,  but I was at least interested to see who was using uppers. It turns out I won’t be finding out anything.

To be frank, the use of uppers in Baseball is pretty well documented, although I would actually bet it’s on the decline. Back in the day, they were a necessity beginning with the start of taking planes (instead of busses and trains) to games.

Flying to games allowed players to cross more time zones, and consequently, we can now see players crossing several time zones in a single week. Naturally this wreaks havoc on your internal clock, and you can’t play your best game (or a double header, or a series!) when you’re jet-lagged.

This is why baseball players use uppers (and some use sleeping meds too). It’s the result of Major League Baseball’s own schedule, and crossing so many time zones – if we look at the ball players who played before planes were used to get from game to game, we see that there was virtually no amphetamine use (they were pretty busy drinking and smoking though).

In the end, the lifestyle is to blame here, and the absurdly long season…I’m not saying that the players aren’t to be held accountable, but I think looking at the reason amphetamine use is so pravalent in baseball is just as important as looking at HOW prevalent it is.

And what happened to Giambi when he tested positive for amphetamines? Not much. . So is baseball really trying to clean up the sport, or just trying to hide what’s really going on?

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