Baseballhead:
Sex, Booze and Pills

Michael Cox

This week we take a break from the glorious spectacle that is the Baseballhead seasonal predictions to look into recent developments of note—and of course I mean Strikethree.com's fifth anniversary. I'm still recovering from our gala celebration, which featured celebrities, live music, and a short stocky guy dressed as Captain Morgan.

Oh, there's nothing that fascinates the American public like scandals and tales of debauchery (except maybe freakishly tall Chinese basketball players), and we had them in spades over the past couple of weeks. The latest was that peculiar concoction—the tabloid fabrication, in this case a New York Post Page 6 gossip item that went something like this: "a Hall of Fame baseball hero...cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep secret that he is gay."

Of course, the only Hall-of-Famer with a current best-selling biography happens to be Sandy Koufax, who not only happens to be smart enough to realize when someone's talking about him, but apparently also does not appreciate being mistaken for homosexual, uh, not that there's anything...well, you know. Long story short, Koufax has disowned the Dodgers, which are owned by the same dysfunctional parent company as the Post.

Breaking a long tradition of insisting that what they print is actually true, the Post quickly retracted its piece, and Rupert Murdoch has no doubt instructed that the subject be debated into the ground on "The O'Reilly Factor."

Lost in the hubbub is the fact that the publisher of Koufax's bio, Harper Collins, is also owned by Murdoch's News Corp. conglomerate, leading to the inevitable question: was the whole rhubarb, or at least the public retraction, intended to sell the Koufax book? Sure, if you believe that any publicity is good publicity (and having watched Bud Selig attempt bad publicity for years, I can tell you that isn't always the case).

Hopefully, before long the Post can get back to its usual business of competing with the Daily News over who can write the wittiest drug-related Mets headline.

Moving on to a pitcher who's never been afraid to let it all hang out (so to speak), the new David Wells autobiography pulls no punches (so to speak), up to and including the startling revelation that a guy who probably couldn't safely operate a motor vehicle could still throw a perfect game against the 1998 Minnesota Twins.

People incensed by this startling confession include:

• Various columnists outraged about the incredible fall of our sports heroes, and all apparently blissfully unaware of the book Ball Four;
   
  
• Teammate Ron Coomer, who was one of those 1998 Minnesota Twins;
   
  
• Teammate Derek Jeter, who bore the brunt of the Boss' wrath this past winter despite showing up to all of his games stone sober (at least that's my assumption until Jeter writes his book).

And Wells' book hasn't even come out yet. He's already told reporters that some of the material in the galley proofs will be changed, including the oft-quoted estimate that up to 40 percent of players are on steroids, and possibly the recipe section.

Really, it's one guy with one book that illustrates how interesting and different a baseball player can be while at the same time excelling at a team sport, so let's not make a federal case out of it.

A federal case is exactly what people are trying to make out of the sad tale of Steve Bechler, the Oriole prospect who died of heat stroke early in spring training. Everyone from the coroner to his wife's lawyer have declared Bechler's cause of death to be the ephedra-based Xenadrine supplement he had been taking as a part of his crash weight-loss scheme, despite the fact that no one knows yet whether the substance was even in his bloodstream at the time of his death.

I won't spend time defending ephedra as an effective thermogenic supplement used by millions (and as a treatment for asthma and a non-drowsy allergy medication, millions more) with no direct proof that it kills otherwise completely healthy people (true), or condemning it as a potent substance that can perhaps be abused too easily for the average, doctor-avoiding person to be allowed near it (also true). Instead, look at the other circumstances that could easily have come into play to cause Bechler's death:

• He had a history of borderline high blood pressure, abnormalities in his liver, and previous episodes of heat stroke;
   
  
• He was so out of shape he could not complete earlier running drills—drills described by Orioles officials as designed to "ease" players into spring training;
   
  
• He had been personally chewed out by manager Mike Hargrove for being out of shape, yet the Orioles organization apparently did not have a doctor-approved plan for weight loss, resulting in Bechler's personal crash diet, including his having eaten almost no food during the two days prior to his death.

In fact, if I were to lay any specific blame for this tragedy, it would be on the Orioles themselves for not prescribing a safe regimen for Bechler once it was clear that his weight and conditioning were a real problem. Left to his own devices, Bechler trained hard in heat and humidity, ate almost nothing, and worsened matters by not only taking the Xenadrine, but taking it in higher than recommended doses.

Even without the ephedra, Bechler was pushing the envelope, and I can't tell you how irresponsible it seems for anyone—much less the coroner himself—to place all the blame on one factor. The avalanche of sportswriters who suddenly fancied themselves eloquent warriors in the good fight against evil ephedra reminded me why I place sportswriters just below Post gossip columnists and high-tech analysts in the food chain.

Instead of singling out egregious examples of nincompoopery (you know who you are, Jayson Stark), I'll point out that there were a few practical voices, including SI's Michael Silver, who came to the same conclusion I did: when you've got young guys who are competing for roster spots, some are going to go overboard because they believe it's expected of them.

Don't get me wrong—If I were King Bud, I'd probably try and ban ephedra, not because it's inherently dangerous in itself, but because too many younger players are apt to abuse it. It's not like I'd be banning something guys actually need, such as those anti-glare cheek strips with the name of the manufacturer in glare-inducing white letters.

It's just unfortunate that we love righteous indignation almost as much as we love scandals and tales of debauchery, because the truth may well become little but collateral damage along the way.

about the author

Michael Cox is back to the drowsy allergy medicine. Wake him up at mc@strikethree.com.