Schilling, Clemens and Congress. The Strange Webs Steroids Weave

When another writer hits on a fabulous and unexplored tangent that's right in front of everyone, sometimes you just have to top your hat to them.

There should be a lot of tipped hats in the direction of Tommy Craggs, who deftly connected the Roger Clemens hearing on Capitol Hill - and the Rocket's alleged illicit steroid abuse therein - and Curt Schilling and his perfectly legal steroid use of cortisone as part of his "conservative" Red Sox rehab program.

Last week, a famous pitcher likely bound for the Hall of Fame was reportedly injected with a steroid in an effort to prolong his career. This news, however, was not greeted with any widespread clutching of pearls. There were no calls for Congressional meddling and no inquiries about any palpable growths on his hindquarters. There was no talk, either, of the sanctity of the record books, and no earnest invocations of The Children, those poor souls sent down a wayward path because Nook Logan might've dabbled with growth hormone. In fact, it was all perfectly legal. The pitcher's injection, according to the Boston Globe, was part of a "conservative treatment plan" laid out by his team's medical staff. The headline: "Schilling receives shot of cortisone."

Sure, it's just another spin on the traditional drug legalization argument, i.e. "why is enhancement through steroids different than lots of Aleve or - the argument holds - Lasik eye surgery? Well, in a way it's not. But in a different way, from a purely legalistic sense, it's completely different.


Craggs uses the Schilling comparison to allege that all the attention being lavished on Clemens - or lasciviously put upon him, as the Rocket might claim himself, is the result of a media hype machine that has spiraled out of control. The interesting thing, of course, is that today, Democrat Henry Waxman, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee which called the meeting, agreed with Craggs.

"I'm sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it," Waxman told the New York Times.

That statement, of course, begs the question of just who the hell was in control of this circus. If Waxman and his cohorts - notably retiring Virginia Rep. Tom Davis - couldn't see the partisanship that erupted Wednesday coming well ahead of time, then who could be expected to do so?

And that's the real point of this latest chapter of the ever-evolving, disgraceful steroids episode: If the government can't even rein in its own oversight of steroids, than why is it being trusted to oversee the illegal drugs in the first place? It's a legitimate question, and one that, by its very existence, may indicate that perhaps the government should step back and let baseball police itself. As more and more criticism has zeroed in on MLB, the league has stiffened its drug policy twice. What's more, the man doing so, Commissioner Bud Selig, has all but accepted a significant amount of the onus put on him and the league for its past failings. Does Selig deserve a life's worth of grief for his past inaction? Absolutely. Does he deserve commending for trying to promote tougher standards after the fact? Absolutely.

Of course, there is a solution that Waman, Davis and co. could universally impose that would actually make much, if not all, of this debacle better: They could mandate WADA anti-doping regulations that match the severity of the punishment meted out on professional cyclists and track and field stars. A life of indignity and shame seems to be starting to trickle down and cool the petri dish in which athletes of those sports have been cooking up new, designer steroids and hormones.

If you don't believe it, you don't have to go too far into Capitol Hill's past hearings to see its affect. Or you can visit a Texas prison. There's an inmate there named Marion Jones who'd be happy to tell you she'd do things differently if she got the benefit of a Round 2.

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