This is simply hilarious. A few minutes ago, the hearing of Roger Clemens on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs before a committee of the House Of Representatives in Washington (reports on New York Times, Boston Globe) finished and I am still amazed about how this whole thing went on.
Let's get this straight, baseball seems to have a drug problem, at least if you believe in what's written in the so called Mitchell Report. For some years a lot of players seemed to have used performance-enhancing drugs and the organization of MLB looked away. In the past few years they seem to have put some serious thought into doping and drug abuse and introduced tests (which seem to be pretty limited though) and seem to go against drug abuse with a little bit more strength.
Okay, here's how things work in Europe. People are very concious about what's happening in sports and although the attendence for the Tour de France is still very large the general interest seems very much impressed with the drug abuse in cycling. When a lot of German cyclists admitted they used doping in their career there was a huge outburst of anger. They weren't expecting any punishment since most of the cases were out of date by then, but they admitted it. In the end they admitted it.
What we have here in the USA is prime time television drama at its best. Those lunatics sit down ina congressional hearing and talk about some soap opera influenced crap instead of what doping does to sports. It's cheating, damnit. Yeah, sure, you hurt your own body with it, but those are growm up men. But they cheat. Results become void because one side had an illegal advantage over their opponents. Whole seasons might be invalid because some athletes decided to inject themselves with drugs. Still that issue is not addressed anywhere.
Now I don't have any proof but there must be drug abuse in football as well. Although some people dismiss the sport as not suited for the abuse of performance-enhacing drugs (now Greece national team coach Otto Rehagel once said that someone who doesn't have any talent won't be a better football player by abusing drugs) I have the suspicion that especially in rehabilitation certain things will be used. And if this bomb blows up one day there will be a lot of trouble for the players involved. And if it does blow up there will be no parliamental hearings but the sports federations and associations will deal with that. That's the way it should be.
Still this story is always good for a laugh... worthwhile to pass the time until the season starts again.
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