Steroids In Sports

[Guest guest]

I'm curious to hear reactions to this article I read

on ESPN.com today:

The " Canaries in the coal mine " story is located at

http://espn.go.com/magazine/assael_20020606.html

June 6, 2002

Canaries in the coal mine

by Shaun Assael

ESPN The Magazine

While Ken Caminiti was making headlines for admitting

that he used steroids to become an MVP, you could

barely find a mention of the death of 39-year-old

Davey Boy .

, a former Intercontinental champion for the old

WWF, rose to fame by draping himself in the Union Jack

and wrestling as the super-buff British Bulldog. He

also was part of the first and most dysfunctional

family of Canadian wrestling -- the Harts. Last year,

his ex-wife published a tell-all book in which

she accused him of " doping my juice " and raping her

while she was unconscious. Needless to say, they

divorced and Davey took up with the estranged wife of

's brother. Late on the evening of May 17,

died of a heart attack while beside her in bed; the

medical examiner suggested that prolonged steroid use

was to blame.

Maybe I shouldn't be amazed that his death barely

registered in the U.S. (It was much bigger news in

Canada and England.) After all, was central

casting's version of the drug-addled, sex-freak

wrestler that everyone rubber-necked around, waiting

to watch die. Three of his running buddies --

Pillman, Rick Rude and Louie Spicolli -- all expired

before they passed 40.

Ask most reporters if their definition of " news "

includes the early death of a wrestler like Davey Boy

and they'll roll their eyes, as if to say, " Call

Stern. " But the truth is that 's death has

just as much bearing on baseball as Caminiti's mea

culpa. Why? Because wrestlers are the canaries of the

steroid-soaked coal mine.

Long before Slugger Zero got his first homer from a

vial of bol, wrestlers were mixing meds like

amateur chemists. Superstar Graham used to

enthuse to anyone who asked him, " Just lay in bed and

you'll feel yourself grow. "

Graham turns 59 on Friday. And he's been spending a

lot of time in bed lately. The man who had The Body

way before Ventura is on his sixth hip. His

immune system is shot from all the infections that are

feasting on one another. He has virtually no movement

in the ankles. He's lost four inches from his 6'4 "

frame because of a collapsing lower spine. And his

liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is leaking like a

sieve.

Superstar didn't want to talk about Caminiti this

week. " He wants to leave that part of his life

behind, " says the wrestling columnist Mike Mooneyham,

who spoke with him Wednesday to deliver the news that

he'd found a liver donor.

Unfortunately, Mooneyham's good news didn't last long.

The Mayo Clinic of sdale, where Graham is being

treated, doesn't accept partial liver transplants from

untested " good samaritans " like the one Mooneyham

found. Graham could move to a clinic that does, but

doesn't have the money or strength to make the trip.

So he's stuck waiting for a Mayo-approved liver, his

voice too hoarse from harsh medicine to complain in

more than a whisper. If it were stronger, though, he'd

sill decline to talk about Caminiti. His doctors give

him three years to live without a new liver -- too

little future to spend living in the past.

In a curious way, Superstar was one of the lucky ones.

When he started dropping his drawers for needles, the

drugs were still relatively simple. But the generation

of athletes that started experimenting with more

potent cocktails has paid a more lethal price. As

their muscle mass got too big for their frames and

they started getting the typical steroid-related

injuries -- pulled hamstrings, strained muscles,

ruptured tendons -- they upped the number of pain

pills they downed. Two days before Davey Boy's death,

another wrestler, 350-pound " Big Dick Dudley "

Rizzo, founder of The Dudley Boys, expired of kidney

failure at the age of 37. The medical examiner blamed

pain-killers. As with , Rizzo's death pretty much

went unnoticed.

The conventional argument is that you can't compare

wrestlers and " real " athletes. Plenty of major league

baseball players think they can juice themselves

safely. Dr. , an exercise physiologist,

told The Magazine's Jeff Bradley he could put " any

athlete on a cycle of anabolic steroids … and his

perfomances would go up, with no side effects. I

guarantee it. Your players are not tested, you know

anabolic steroids aid performance, so why not use

them? "

But ballplayers who put on circus-like muscles are

just kidding themselves if they think they're not in

danger. A study recently published in the

International Journal of Sports Medicine found that 62

Finnish power-lifters suspected of using steroids died

at a rate five times higher than average. As

Alvarez points out in the new issue of his Figure 4

wrestling newsletter: " The causes of death were

strikingly similar [to wrestling deaths]: Three

committed suicide, three had heart attacks, one passed

away after falling into a coma (likely drug-related)

and one died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "

Baseball hasn't had a record like that yet. But it's

still early in the game. Which brings us to another

bit of symmetry.

Vince McMahon routinely gets hammered for allowing

steroid abuse to run rampant in his company. But I

really don't believe that he's ever forced anyone to

" go on the gas. " What I do believe is that he's

dangled buckets of money in front of those that do.

And so has baseball. Caminiti neatly summed up the

rules of steroid engagement in mainstream sports when

he told SI: " If a young player were to ask me what to

do, I'm not going to tell him it's bad. Look at all

the money in the game: You have a chance to set your

family up, to get your daughter into a better school.

So I can't say, 'Don't do it,' not when the guy next

to you is as big as a house and he's going to take

your job and make the money. "

It's easy to dismiss wrestling as a make-believe freak

show. But when it comes to steroids, it's the one

place we can see the future clearly. Athletes who

started to juice heavily in the '80s and '90s are

starting to die in their late thirties and forties.

They're the canaries in the coal mine. Will baseball

heed the warning?

Shaun Assael a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, is

the co- author of Sex, Lies & Headlocks, a biography

of Vince McMahon to be published by Crown next month.

E-mail him at shaun.assael@....

Vince Nuckels

San Diego, CA

__________________________________________________