The hits just keep coming for Major League Baseball.  The steroid issue looks like it won’t be going away anytime soon.  Lou Merloni who played with the Red Sox from 1998-2002 claims that the Red Sox taught their players how to properly use steroids without abusing them according to a report from the New York Post which should hold a caveat of buyer beware for any of the news they provide.  However the number of steroid stories that have infiltrated to the public lends credibility now to almost every story about steroids.

“I’m in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning,” said Merloni, who was in the Red Sox minor-league system from 1996-97 and played in the big leagues with them from 1998-2002.

“And I walk into that office, and this happened while I was with the Boston Red Sox before this last regime, I’m sitting in the meeting. There’s a doctor up there and he’s talking about steroids, and everyone was like ‘Here we go, we’re gonna sit here and get the whole thing — they’re bad for you.’ No. He spins it and says ‘You know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean, if you’re going to take steroids, one cycle won’t hurt you, abusing steroids it will.’ He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I’m with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said ‘What the heck was that?’ And everybody on the team was like ‘What was that?’ And the response we got was ‘Well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they’re taking it the right way’… Where did that come from? That didn’t come from the Players Association.”

Merloni said he couldn’t remember the name of the doctor or what year the meeting took place. Boston’s general manager at the time, Dan Duquette, adamantly denied the accusations to Boston.com.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s totally unfounded,” Duquette said. “Who was the doctor? Tell me who the doctor is? If there was such a doctor he wasn’t in the employ of the Red Sox. We brought in doctors to educate the players on the major-league drug policy at the time at the recommendation of Major League Baseball. This is so ridiculous I hate to even respond to it.”

Troy O’Leary, who was a teammate of Merloni’s, said he has no idea what Merloni is talking about.

“Don’t really remember anything like that,” O’Leary said. “I remember the normal union meetings in spring training where they’d talk about drugs and steroids, and I remember doctors talking negatively about them, but I don’t remember ever hearing anything like ‘OK, this is the right way to do steroids.’ If that happened I missed that one. I’m afraid of needles so anything involving injection of anything, I wouldn’t have done anyway.”

Merloni backpedaled slightly when questioned by a reporter from the Web site.

“It was like teaching your teenage daughter about sex education,” Merloni said. “The organization acknowledged that there were likely players using steroids and basically ‘If you’re gonna use them this is how you use them so you don’t abuse them.’”

The comparison between steroids and sex education doesn’t really seem to match-up very well.

Since ESPN has had a hold of this story, they have paraded countless experts, analysts and columnists decrying Manny Ramirez for using PED’s (performance-enhanding drugs).  To get the bottom of it ESPN and the rest of the mainstream media is providing misleading and incomplete information.  The substance in question that was found in Manny’s bloodstream, hCG, has been reported correctly by ESPN, to be used a female fertility drug.  In addition it also known to kickstart testosterone production following a cycle of steroid use, generally 5 weeks.

A couple of things are puzzling to me and should be puzzling to everyone following this story.  Why would one of the greatest hitters of all time take a drug like hCG without having any other steroid or PED in his bloodstream?  If hCG is used to increase testerone production after a cycle of use which takes about 5 weeks why in the world is this the only substance that has been reported to be found in Ramirez’s system?

The other aspect of this story that remains a mystery is the misinformation that has been spread by the media and ESPN.  The substance, hCG, has multiple uses, one of which is increasing testosterone levels, but one of the other major uses of the drug that has not been discussed is its use in increasing male sperm production.  Yes, that is correct.  The easy thing would be to dismiss this since he has three kids already, all boys.  It is possible that Manny may have wanted to have a daughter, though perhaps cannot because of a condition he suffers from perhaps?

Ramirez could well be using hCH as a performance enhancing drug.  No doubt about it.  However should ESPN not make more of an effort in researching the uses for this drug and find out all the purposes for its use instead of blindly promoting the idea that Ramirez is unequivocally guilty.  This pales in to the stories ESPN ran on Andy Pettite after he admitted his father had provided the drugs to him and that he had only used it to heal faster from injury to get back on the field and helped his team.  Not only is Pettitte’s story very seemingly understated, but ESPN did not seem very interested in asking many tough follow-up questions.  Within 2 weeks, stories about Pettitte were more about how his honestly had helped turn the page on that chapter of his career and how by telling the truth he had avoided the negative publicity that former users that had been caught had not been able too.

In Ramirez’ situation, he is being afforded no chance to prove his innocence.  Ramirez’ claims he has a doctor’s prescription for using the hCG.  If this is true then Ramirez is merely guilty of negligence in not checking to see if ingesting the drug was in violation of MLB’s drug policy.  It is important here that we give Ramirez the same benefit of the doubt that Pettitte received and take our time in finding out the truth.  If Ramirez was using this drug as performance enhancer then he deserves the vilification he has received.  However, in the case that Ramirez validates his claims, it will be surely interesting to see ESPN and national baseball columnists rectify the vicious blows they have taken at Ramirez throughout this week.

Notes:  Since testing began, of the over 250 players that have tested positive, over 150 have been pitchers.

I will be writing about this as soon as I hear enough about the topic.  It is too early for all the facts to come out or even to be reported accurately.  Of course this has not stopped ESPN from taking Ramirez, one of their favorite poster boys for what is wrong with sports, from tearing him apart as soon as the news broke this morning.  It started with Skip Bayless’ tearing him apart on ESPN 2’s First and 10 followed by near non-stop coverage on ESPN all morning.  It is amzaing how much more coverage has been spent on investigating Bonds, A-Rod and Ramirez as opposed to ESPN’s near invisble coverage of Clemens, Pettite and McGwire among many others.  If you do not think that ESPN and the national media as a whole has not been implicity racist in their coverage of the steroid scandals take a look at these two articles, courtesy of Sports On My Mind (http://sportsonmymind.com/2009/02/08/arod-on-roids-and-deep-throat-defense/ and http://sportsonmymind.com/2008/05/09/roger-clemens-barry-bonds-notes-on-the-media-speak-disparity-between-the-two/).