The High Court

Deep Thinkers Only...

The Big Gavel—Sheriff McCain

May 30, 2005

 

If you are standing as you begin to read this, please sit down.  Take a deep breath.  Remain calm.  WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A NATIONAL CRISIS!  Or so Senator John McCain would have us believe.  McCain, playing pied piper to his monkey-see, monkey-do Congressional colleagues, helped introduce the Clean Sports Act of 2005 on Tuesday.  Sheriff, er, Senator McCain is going to clean up this rampant steroid mess running roughshod over professional sports (is it really?), a mess which is apparently threatening to take down Western Civilization.  Joining McCain on Capitol Hill for another round of grandstanding were House Government Reform Committee Chair Tom Davis of Virginia and ranking committee Democrat Henry Waxman of California.  If those two gentlemen and their committee sound vaguely familiar to you, there is a good reason for that.  It was their committee that held the hearings where we saw Mark McGwire reduced to tears and to silence as to whether he might have ever used steroids.  I liked to call those hearings “Congressional Idol”, and it is clear that Representatives Davis and Waxman would just love to get as much face time as Sheriff McCain.

 

The proposed bill, and I will let you investigate it further on your own after you have read everything here at the High Court, would make professional athletes in the four major U.S. professional leagues (has anybody told the NHL we need a fourth?  I’m just saying…) subject to two-year bans for a first positive test for banned performance enhancing substances (no word as to whether Cialis or Viagra will be on the list) and subject to a lifetime ban for a second positive test (assuming they still had a career after the first ban).  Congressman Davis’ House sponsored legislation allows for reduced penalties in some cases.  One such scenario would be if a player was willing to provide information on someone else violating the drug policy.  And you thought Joe McCarthy was dead…

 

Let me run that last part back to you one more time, just in case you thought you were living in 21^st century America.  Players, under this legislation, could potentially have their penalty reduced for ratting out other violators.  Now we know that this drug policy would fall under the jurisdiction of the White House drug czar, but who would be doing the rat squad work, the Gestapo?  I mentioned Joe McCarthy in the previous paragraph and this smacks completely of his efforts to stamp out the so-called Communist menace in the 1950’s.  Called before Joe Mac’s committee?  Need to avoid the scandal of having to testify?  Then just drop a dime on some other potential commies (whether they really were or not).  Presto.  You are off the hook.  Hey Congressman, what will keep guilty parties from throwing suspicion onto completely innocent players?  You have an answer for that one, wiseguy?  I would love to hear it.

 

Now these imminently wise legislators want an independent agency to handle the testing.  The likely candidate would be the U.S. Anti-Doping agency.  I would guess that unless this agency is working for free, there will be some costs involved.  In fact the entire project will be quite costly.  I saw initial estimates that guessed it might take between 11 and 17 million to get the program up and running.  The distinguished gentleman from Arizona says he is hopeful that the professional leagues will be ready to pony up some dough to help pay the freight.  And of course they all have their checkbooks out and ready, because clearly Congress has treated them with a great deal of respect as they swoop in and cut them off at the knees.  If I am Bud Selig, David Stern, and Paul Tagliabue (I can’t even bring myself to type Gary Bettman with a straight face), I am writing my checks to anybody willing to run against John McCain, Tom Davis, Henry Waxman, and company in their next elections.  And oh by the way, anything that somebody else doesn’t pick up on the cost of their drug testing…that is headed to you and me, the American taxpayer.

 

You know, reality TV is all the rage right now.  So why doesn’t somebody do us a favor and give John McCain his own show.  Maybe TBS’ The Real Gilligan’s Island would be a good spot.  Just make sure they stay on the island.  If this guy had any more screws loose I would expect his head to simply topple off the next time he slipped in front of one of his beloved cameras.  His political agenda reminds me of Nuke LaLoosh’s pitching style (if you don’t know what comes next, go rent Bull Durham again. Now.).  But to say that he is all over the place would be kind.  His Quixotic windmill-tilting once came off as sort of noble and principled, but now he seems to be something way beyond eccentric.  Like dangerous.  And I can’t believe that he hangs onto the Republican Party tag.  I half expect him to show up on the Presidential ballot with the Reform Party, or perhaps better yet (to reflect his megalomania), the McCain party.  Because that is all that McCain’s photo op politics are about:  Keeping himself squarely in the national public eye for the 2008 Presidential race.

 

Perhaps the most sickening thing about McCain (and the Government Reform Committee) and his politicizing professional sports, is the unmitigated gall he has shown in using the pain of the parents who had lost children to the effects of steroids as his own broadsword to cut and hack his way to a heroic posture.  He referenced them specifically in his comments on Tuesday.  “The parents, the grief-stricken parents, whose children had committed suicide…These parents talked about how their children believed that was the only way (using steroids) they could make it into the major leagues.  I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.”  And there you have it.  Thanks to the Government Reform Committee who used these parents for their gut-wrenching testimony on national television, and McCain, who continues to evoke them, these people are seeing their pain used not necessarily to help other families, but rather to further the political agenda of some very questionable characters.  McCain and his brethren have turned families’ grief into theater to advance his position.  Somebody pass legislation to outlaw that.

 

I am a former college baseball player.  I was thisclose to being a professional player.  I knew people who used steroids, although none of them were baseball players.  But maybe steroids would have put me over the top.  Helped me be just a little quicker, a little faster, a little stronger.  I didn’t choose to use them.  And I made that choice without John McCain to protect me.  Whew.  I am a father.  I do not want my son to ever use steroids.  But if he should ever make that mistake, I will take responsibility.  He will take responsibility.  That is parenting, that is life.  We won’t blame Jose Canseco, or Jason Giambi, or John McCain.  For children that do not have parents actively involved it should fall to coaches to help show kids the right way and the right choices.  I suppose, given the fact that Congress is only targeting the Big Four, should your son or daughter juice up to be a professional golfer or tennis player, nobody will care.  At least not until it can get these parasites some press coverage.  Somebody tell BIG GOVERNMENT to stay out of that part of our lives.  Professional sports leagues are just that, professional.  Let them handle their business.  No matter what you think of Bud Selig, he loves baseball more and knows much more about the game and the business than John McCain or the Government Reform Committee.

 

Look, I wish I had John McCain’s schedule.  He is apparently so devoid of having actual government business to take care of that he had to branch out.  I hope everyone will join me in contacting him and letting him know that if he is interested in regulating pharmaceuticals, we would love to see him develop a plan to see that my grandmother doesn’t have to sell her house to see that she has her medicine and some food on our plate.  Let him rid the country of illegal drugs, feed the hungry, house the homeless.  Work out this Social Security deal.  Protect our homeland from terrorists.  I tell you what, Senator, if you get all that done in your lifetime, then you can police the world of sports.  In the meantime, if you want to do investigative work, stop by a local maximum security prison and do cavity searches.  I have a feeling you are up to the job.

 

The Chief Justice is ruling…and he finds John McCain and the House Government Reform Committee guilty of sticking their collective nose where it doesn’t belong.  Their sentence is to back off of the sports community, and in the future remember the Al Gore rule.  If you have an idea that sounds vaguely like something that Al Gore might say or do, banish it from your mind and run away screaming.  Then go do something useful, like, inventing the internet.  It worked for Al.  Court is adjourned.

 

 

Contact The Chief Justice at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com.

Did somebody say photo op?  That means another appearance for Sheriff McCain and his steroid posse.  (AP)