CALDWELL'S TAKE VIP - CALDWELL: Mitchell Report exposes widespread misunderstanding of steroids era (PWTorch #1003) Dec 18, 2007 - 1:07:52 PM

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The Perspective with James Caldwell
By James Caldwell, Torch columnist
Original Headline: Reaction to Mitchell Report exposes widespread misunderstanding of steroids era
Subheadine: Real pro wrestling story is mid-level athletes looking for an edge over close competition
Torch Newsletter #1003 (Originally Posted 12-20-07)

"I knew my role as a player. It wasn't to get big and strong. My role was to be fast and quick. ... I knew what my job was. It was never to get stronger or bigger. It was to be on the field and play."

-- Fernando Vina, a 5'9", 170 lb. former MLB infielder, admitting to HGH use in 2003 to recovery faster from injury, after his name appeared in the Mitchell Report on steroids in baseball.

Thursday, Dec. 13 will be remembered historically as the best or worst day in professional sports lore. If people in a position of power - team owners, executives, general managers, players, commissioners, and media members - understand the true message in former Senator George Mitchell's report on steroid use and abuse in professional sports, then it will be a necessary turning point in our culture.

If those same people miss the message, and focus on records and big name individuals, it will go down as another painful and embarrassing chapter in the voluminous story, "How Everyone Misunderstood the Steroids Era." I'll touch on how this affects the professional wrestling industry in the second-half of this column. But, let me paint this baseball picture first.

This steroids era in baseball and pro wrestling - with wrestling always being a step ahead in setting the trend for use, abuse, and understanding - isn't about big names and big stars doing big things. The mainstream sports media paints a different picture, though, as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Hulk Hogan have received significant publicity when discussing steroids in professional sports. They're big names. They're larger-than-life. They fit the fantasy image of cartoon characters playing professional sports.

But, it's the Fernando Vinas and Funakis of the sports world that are being overlooked. When casual sports fans and uneducated media members looked at the names of lesser-known baseball players in the Mitchell Report, they came up with laugh-out-loud conclusions that steroids must not work since these guys didn't start hitting 50 home runs per season.

They're simply missing the point. Anyone in a position of authority in sports should focus on the marginal benefit to a professional athlete through continued use of steroids and HGH.

Vina said it in his confession. His job wasn't to hit 50 home runs. It was to be on the field, hit singles up the middle, catch groundballs on the infield, and be fast enough to beat out a slow ground ball to first base.

That's how players were able to keep their jobs. If they had injuries, HGH provided a faster recovery time. Andy Pettitte said in his "confession" that he took HGH for two days because he wanted to help his team by recovering from injury faster. But, the media focus has been on whether anyone should believe Pettitte, not looking at "the why" behind major professional athletes trying to gain an advantage by any means necessary.

Seeking an advantage is a product of competition. Free agency comes up. Hey, this guy looks like he's injury-prone. His stats are down. Maybe he's lost a step. He gets overlooked as a free agent, but eventually signs for less money with a small market team. He loses about $2 or $3 million because he couldn't recover faster from injury or continue to produce at a high level.

Contrast that with a player who took HGH to recover from injury faster. Maybe he took a little more than "the doctor" prescribed and he liked the results. Instead of being out with an injury for four weeks, he was back in two weeks. Wow, what a recovery. He's hitting 95 MPH on the radar gun when he previously only hit 93. Free agency comes up. Guess who's hitting the market and getting offers left and right? Now he's looking at $2 or $3 million more because his upside just increased.

This isn't about breaking records or winning endorsement deals from Nike. It's about mid-level professional athletes looking for an edge over the next guy. Some media members have caught onto the unnatural aspects of the competition in the professional sports culture, but those voices are quickly drowned out by the usual rhetoric of "sacred records" and "the integrity of the game" in a Fantasyland that distracts from the real issues at hand.

Fernando Vina, in defending himself, touches at the heart of the real issue with his quote. He defends himself, saying that he was just trying to do his job and help his team. But, what is he defending himself against? His rationalization for taking HGH was to recover. But, his framework is that he took HGH not to become a Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire hulking star to break records, but to be able to play his position as an average-sized roleplayer.

Without even realizing it, Vina summed up the entire issue at hand. Even baseball players focus on the make-believe, Fantasyland goals to become a huge star, break records, and make tons of money. The "mid-carders" like Vina are defending themselves by saying, 'I didn't want to be Barry Bonds; I just wanted to play my position.'

That's the culture that was created. Suddenly, steroids took on a life of its own as a ticket to superstardom. Along the way, people forgot that steroids isn't just about hulking stars, but mid-carders trying to make a team, recover form injury faster, get a better contract, or stay in the game another five years, competing at a higher level.

What the vast majority of mainstream individuals do not understand is that superstardom is a fallacy that professional sports builds up, markets, and hypes as the ultimate goal for professional athletes. And so many people have bought into it. Unfortunately, too many people still do, even after the Mitchell Report spelled out the issue.

I have to catch myself as well. Both as a wrestling columnist and sports fan, I often get sucked into Fantasyland - focusing too much on star ratings for wrestling matches or getting worked up on the latest trade for the Astros.

The bigger picture in wrestling is looking at the presentation of the product. Who's getting pushed? Whose body looks different? Who's shrinking and who's getting bigger? What's the correlation between push and size?

And not just looking at the body sizes of the big main event heavyweights. That's part of the misdirection in Fantasyland. The key is......


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