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June 22, 2005

Under The Knife

Darts and Laurels

by Will Carroll

HBO has done it again. Armen Keteyian's piece on the most recent "Real Sports," analyzing the long-term use of steroids in adult males, turns the major media take on anabolic-androgenic steroids on its head. Keteyian admits that he's doing a 180 on some of his own reporting from his days at Sports Illustrated, unafraid to admit that he was part of the misinformation. His talks with Bob Clapp and John Romano, as well as the bright light shone on how Gary Wadler reacts in the face of facts, are enlightening. I can't recommend this show or the HBO Sports programs in general--"Real Sports" and "Costas Now"--highly enough.

In other steroid news, the NBA's freshly inked but unfinalized CBA includes increased drug testing. Players will now have four annual random tests for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs, with penalties for steroid users rising from five to ten games for the first offense, increasing up to a lifetime suspension on the fourth offense. Those sound familiar, though you can effectively double all penalties when equating them to baseball due to the length of the season. Given the NBA's inability to deal with marijuana usage, among other problems, I see no reason why they'll take little heat about something that comes in clearly under the proposals of the various Congressional steroid bills.

Powered by the new Nickel Creek album, on to the injuries:

• It's not like we didn't see this coming. Finding something interesting to say about the news that Eric Gagne will have a second round with Tommy John surgery is hard now. Perhaps the worst news is for the Canadian World Cup team. The Dodgers were prepared, checking Yhency Brazoban into the closer role and looking to fill out the space in front of him. Gagne joins an "elite" club of second time TJs, a group that is experiencing good results and quicker rehab. Some of this has to do with changed rehab protocols and some is just the mere knowledge that they've done this before and understand the process.

  The more interesting idea, put forward today in the comments from Gagne and Frank Jobe, is that there might be an expiration date on a replaced ligament. Quick: who had TJ done in 1997? Expect Gagne back sometime around the ASB of 2006.

  The Dodgers also lost Paul Bako to ACL reconstruction. Bako will have a cadaver ligament transplanted into his injured knee and should be back in time for next year's spring training. Ken Gurnick notes in an MLB.com article that Darren Dreifort has some sort of degenerative disease. I'm working on finding more about this, but this type of "tissue issue" is one that came up during last winter's ASMI Injuries in Baseball Conference.

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