No good argument against steroids

I covered sports for the first 17 years of my journalism career. From 1979-96, I wrote stories about youth sports, high school and college athletes and professionals who had reached the pinnacle of their world.

I met wannabes who had a chance and plenty who didn't but still wouldn't give up on the dream of someday being somebody, of being special enough to play at the highest level.

Some of them took steroids. Some admitted it, some didn't and more than a few of them probably never got caught.

I've heard all the arguments against it. It's cheating, for one thing. It can cause serious harm to your health, for another. NFL great Lyle Alzado, who died some years back of brain cancer, was convinced that his steroid use had caused the cancer.

Here's the problem, though. The rewards of being able to play a sport at the highest level have become so outrageous -- both in terms of money and fame -- that they outweigh the negatives. It isn't even close.

Some years back, there was a study that showed former linemen in the National Football League -- the really big guys -- were living about 20 years less on average than ordinary American males. They were doing so much damage to their bodies that they were sacrificing two decades of life.

So I asked some friends of mine this question:

If you could play in the NFL, make a lot of money and be famous, knowing you would live 20 years less in the end, would you do it?

You would be surprised at how many people didn't say no.

Most of us have heard the famous Henry David Thoreau quote about men leading lives of quiet desperation, but I wonder how many of you have heard the whole quote.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

Pretty profound, huh? The average major league baseball player makes between $3 and $4 million a year. Manny Ramirez, who just received a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug regulations, was scheduled to make $25 million this year.

Would you do steroids and risk damaging your health if you could make $25 million a year and be worshipped by baseball fans?

When I graduated from high school in 1967, a minimum-wage employee working full-time made $1,300 a year. The average major leaguer made about $19,000. Decent money, but hardly a salary that separated players from average folks.

Now someone making the federal minimum wage as of this summer will earn $15,080 a year. Not even in the same galaxy as the average ballplayer anymore. In fact, playing two months for the average salary, a ballplayer earns more than a minimum-wage worker will earn in a lifetime.

That'll pay for one helluva song.

So if you tell some kid whose only future is in sports not to do steroids, you'd better come up with a better reason than they've managed to come up with so far.

Unless you're one of those old-fashioned types who makes decisions based on whether something is right or wrong, the pluses outweigh the minuses by way too much.