Reconstructive Surgery: Baseball's New Steroid Comes Without Asterisk

Pitchers frequent surgical arm enhancement these days with the consideration of a face-lift in Hollywood. Arms come back from the junk pile weekly, not just repaired, but much better – a tribute to advancement in reconstructive surgery, the abilities of doctors, rehab and psychology. It saves careers. But maybe it also defines the next proposed asterisk for the record books.

If you won't say "leave the bone chips in," it seems unclear where surgery stops being a repair and becomes a more speculative form of "illegal" performance enhancement. Laser eye surgery seems like a harmless affair, yet may pose a distinct advantage for certain players who end up not having to live with their natural limitation.

A hitter who gets laser surgery may improve 30 or 40 points in average or just see the ball better when they strike out...it is hard to say. No one could say for sure if a stainless steel elbow joint would have turned Elmer Joseph "Doc" Hamann into Jim Palmer. The surgical adaptations are somehow acceptable, while four pieces of bacon daily from a steroid-fed hog is assumed to be "unfair."

“Steroids” have connotations that nearly any baseball fan would see as negative because the fans have been indoctrinated to the opinion by the media that steroids are BAD… Few people can define why. I'm an oddball in that I like steroid use.

Players get to squeeze what they can out of their body before it goes to hell on them. If they take that risk, it is their choice to live with. If it makes them more fragile, or they die, that's the consequence. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. If I accept surgical enhancement and repair — and any surgery has its risks — steroids are just another form of biological modification like diet and exercise.

Surgery to modify the body, and bring back failed bodies and careers is potentially as much a poison to the sport as personal engineering via steroid. Perhaps moreso. Myself, I am looking forward to the 6-year-old girl who gets the first Dr. Catapult arm replacement. Just think of the years of anticipating her debut in the majors. Then, at least, the stadium will fill for the sideshow of freaks and justify the ticket cost.

Baseball's ongoing steroid incident might be closer to being baseball's witch hunt, than baseball's sober look into use of illegal substances and fairness in competition. After all, if I was born without the genes to compete that Albert Pujols got, I should be able to demand that he give his advantage back, that I be able to get what he’s got, or supplant his numbers with a genetic asterisk.

On the other hand, steroids might be the key to bring that genetic factor back into balance: if you don't have the genes, 'roid-up and make a player of yourself. Oh, can't use steroids? Well, that's nothing some surgery can't fix. We should all have the opportunity to feel good about ourselves, after all. We should probably invoke the mercy rule after a specified number of runs, and do away with games having winners and losers. It is all just supposed to be fun, right? Those people who run the kiddie leagues are on to something.

In the end, performance enhancement is the name of the game. Players look to enhance their game to affect their performance, their visibility, and their pay. Driven to compete, they do what they can to maintain and extend their level of play, and we might conclude that involves diet, exercise and practice. Isn't taking a pill part of a diet? Consider vitamins. And how is it cheating to take a pill? Was it cheating when Dock Ellis took a hit of acid and pitched his famous no-no? Certainly it must have posed some type of unfair advantage.

The mechanism for creating the situation (the fan who watches to see the performance; the media and league who set the bar and rules) has taken the high road as critic of steroid use, but fails to define distinctly what is acceptable and fair in competition. In ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction (also known as Tommy John surgery), a ligament in the elbow is replaced with a tendon from elsewhere in the body. A ligament with a tendon? Why not an arm with a leg? Better yet, if there were a third foot attached somehow so that it would allow the pitcher to still have a foot on the rubber, but two feet on the grass... No one would have ever stopped Rudy Santos from playing the game, as that would have been discrimination — and what are a few arms, legs or fingers between friends (see also Pete Gray, Eddie Gaedel, Mordecai Brown, Antonio Alfonseca).

The new steroid scandal may already be here. It probably has not nearly reached its most interesting and fantastic manifestations. The question becomes: What is fair in bio-modification? It is already widely accepted, without asterisk.