Major League Baseball's new drug of choice is testosterone

Baseball seemed to have cleaned up its act. Players, who once sported cartoonish physiques, were smaller. So were their statistics.

But the recent suspensions of Giants star Melky Cabrera and A's pitcher Bartolo Colon have resurrected feelings of disillusionment among fans and concern that the game has suffered a relapse with performance-enhancing drugs.

It's unclear whether Cabrera and Colon are isolated cases, or the harbinger of another scandal. But anti-doping experts are certain of this much: Old-school synthetic testosterone is creating the new mischief as the drug of choice among athletes willing to cheat.

Testosterone creams and patches created for legitimate medical purposes are being used by

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unscrupulous athletes as fast-acting performance-enhancers that are difficult to detect. Both Cabrera and Colon received 50-game suspensions after testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone.

"Nothing has changed with synthetic testosterone, but what has changed is the delivery system," said Dr. Gary Wadler, one of the country's leading authorities on sports drugs. "The doping gurus looking at these products said: 'This is great for us. We can give very low doses to athletes and it doesn't last very long.' "

And it works.

"It's a proven performance-enhancer," said Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "If there was no drug testing, testosterone and its chemical cousins are what athletes would use.

And it's an ideal choice for athletes who still think they can get away with using it."

Colon and Cabrera got caught. Both players, given up on by multiple other teams, were having outstanding seasons, fueling feel-good stories beyond their fan bases.

Cabrera, 28, was having the best year of his career with a .346 batting average, second-best in the National League. He was named most valuable player of the All-Star Game last month and had become such a fan favorite at AT&T Park

that some fans were dressing as "Melkmen" and "Melkmaids."

Colon, recovered from years of serious arm trouble, was having an age-defying season at 39, sporting a 10-9 record and a 3.43 ERA.

Now it all appears to have been a chemical charade. Cabrera and Colon are among five players suspended this season for using various illegal substances. That's the most since 2007, when there also were five. And that number doesn't include Ryan Braun, the National League MVP whose 50-game suspension in December for elevated testosterone levels was overturned on a technicality.

This has produced a new round of soul-searching about baseball's cleanliness, and whether more needs to be done to assure fans that they can believe what they're seeing on the field.

"You want baseball to be played with legitimacy and integrity," said Dale Murphy, a retired two-time MVP for the Atlanta Braves. "But right now baseball is being used as a punch line and a joke. I don't think drug use is as widespread as people think, but that's not the perception. And the issue is the perception of the game."

Doping is a scourge that plagues all sports. At the recent London Olympics, a Belarus shot-putter was stripped of her gold medal for using anabolic steroids. And just last week, cyclist Lance Armstrong lost claim to all seven of his Tour de France titles when he announced he would no longer fight the drug-use accusations from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that have hounded him for years.

Baseball has been especially tarnished by drugs, and the Bay Area has been at the center of the story. From the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, now commonly known as the Steroid Era, players with cartoonish physiques put up cartoonish numbers. Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, three years after Mark McGwire had hit 70. In the previous hundred years of baseball, only two men had hit 60. A 50-homer season had happened 18 times. Then it happened 18 times from 1995 to 2002.

Fans loved the long ball ... until the show proved to be too good to be true.

The investigation into Victor Conte and his infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) in Burlingame helped reveal the dirty truth of steroid use throughout sports. It ultimately led to the 2011 conviction of Bonds for perjury and resulted in Conte serving four months in jail and four months of home detention for steroid distribution and money laundering. It also pushed baseball to adopt a more aggressive attitude in combating performance-enhancers.

With the implementation of a stricter drug policy in 2005 that now includes mandatory urine and blood testing at spring training as well as additional random tests, baseball had earned praise for making progress in curtailing drug use.

Although the Wild West attitude of steroid use is gone, recent news suggests that a more subtle form of cheating is occurring. Tygart said players no longer will risk using long-lasting designer steroids such as THG, which was at the heart of BALCO's programs, because testers are looking for those.

But as Colon and Cabrera show, some athletes have turned to an old standby: testosterone. It's a naturally produced hormone that builds muscle mass. The synthetic version is used to treat ailments in men who are testosterone-deficient or patients coping with diseases such as AIDS or cancers.

For athletes?

"Testosterone is the granddaddy of all anabolic steroids," said Conte, the BALCO founder who said he now wants to help clean up sports. "It promotes muscle growth, strength, speed and is excellent for recovery. Testosterone is a huge muscle-enhancing drug. It makes a tremendous difference in performance."

With patches and creams, testosterone can be administered in small doses that allow athletes to derive benefits with the confidence that the drug will be gone from their systems within hours, before a test can detect it.

Baseball's primary test is a urinalysis that measures testosterone-to-epitestosterone levels. A sample that exceeds a 4-to-1 ratio is considered suspicious and automatically prompts a second analysis, called a Carbon Isotope Ratio test, that can determine if the testosterone is naturally produced or synthetic.

Baseball officials say the punishments of Cabrera and Colon demonstrate that its crackdown on cheaters is working. MLB has issued 31 suspensions since 2005 for players who violate the league's drug prevention and treatment program.

Still, MLB spokesman Patrick Courtney acknowledges that the drug users forever will be trying to outsmart drug testers.

"That's the world we live in," Courtney said. "All sports struggle with this problem. We rely on the experts as well as our professional baseball athletic trainers and doctors to tell us what's going on with our program, and they all tell us we're in the right spot."

Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones, whose 19-year career spanned much of the Steroid Era, hopes the culture will change.

"I've been seeing a lot of articles saying people are still cheating in baseball, and with the positive tests in the last couple of weeks it's still an issue," Jones said. "But rest assured, those who are doing it will be caught. It's a shame, because baseball's obviously had enough black eyes over the years, and we need to get past it and get back to a level playing field."

Conte believes that won't happen until baseball adopts a tougher policy. He recently said "maybe as much as 50 percent" of players are using something -- a claim that was quickly followed by a joint statement from MLB and the players association that much public commentary about testing protocols "has been inaccurate."

Still, Conte contends there is not nearly enough random testing in the winter months when players are likely be doping to gain strength for the long season ahead. He also said every urine sample should be subjected to Carbon Isotope Ratio monitoring, which he calls "the nail in the coffin test" because of its infallibility.

Conte called the current testing program "a joke and propaganda. The back door is wide open with loopholes and that's where the players are going through. If you understand how to do it," he said of staying under the 4-to-1 ratio, "it's like stealing candy from a baby."

In the A's and Giants clubhouses, where each team now is entering the pennant stretch minus a key contributor, players express a mixture of surprise and resignation that some people are continuing to look for an edge.

"I don't know how you're going to stop people from trying to better themselves one way or another, even if (cheating) is involved," said Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum. "It's human nature. Obviously, I don't want it to happen and I'm upset when it does. It's kind of embarrassing. But with that, it's just always going to be out there."

A's pitcher Travis Blackley said if players are using something, they're being quieter about it.

"If people do it, they do it hush-hush," he said. "You look around the room and you just don't see what you would expect from someone on that kind of substance. You don't see the big, huge, obvious-looking guys like you used to see back in the day."

Both the Anti-Doping Agency's Tygart and Wadler would like to see baseball turn to an independent testing organization as a way to ensure greater transparency. And while Wadler believes baseball has made significant strides, he understands those who fear that the Steroid Era isn't dead but merely has a new drug of choice.

"When you start seeing all-stars and MVPs getting caught, then you start scratching your head and wondering what's going on here?" Wadler said. "Now, two were just caught, and that's good. But you wonder how many others haven't been caught."

Staff writers Joe Stiglich and Carl Steward contributed to this report. Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@mercurynews.com and Daniel Brown at dbrown@mercurynews.com.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/athletics/ci_21395355/major-league-baseballs-new-drug-choice-is-testosterone?source=rss

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