Brent Musburger
Who knew that sportscaster Brent Musburger’s views on sports steroids are nearly as permissive as those of Victor Conte, the mastermind of the BALCO drug scandal?
Musburger, whom ESPN calls “one of the most recognized and prominent voices in the history of sports television,” was talking to journalism students at the University of Montana last week when the topic of doping in sports arose.
“I think under the proper care and doctor’s advice, they could be used at the professional level,” Musburger said of steroids, according to the account of The Missoulian, the local newspaper.
He also said: “I’ve had somebody say that, you know, steroids should be banned because they‘re not healthy for you. … Let’s go find out. What do the doctors actually think about anabolic steroids and their use by athletes? Don’t have a preconceived notion that this is right or this is wrong.”
Back when
Conte was trying to corrupt elite sports with undetectable steroids, he might have retorted, “Who needs a doctor?”
Otherwise, the venerable play-by-play man and the confessed steroid dealer from the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative are on the same page.
An alternative perspective on drugs and sports comes from Denise Garibaldi, a Petaluma clinical psychologist who says she lost her sports-star son to a suicide brought on by steroid use.
“I wish he could have heard the rest of the story,” she says of Musburger.
Taylor Hooten Foundation photoRob Garibaldi
Rob Garibaldi was one of the finest prep baseball players in California. A hard-hitting, slick-fielding high school All-American, he had a single flaw, according to his coaches – he was skinny and couldn’t gain weight.
Mark Fainaru-Wada and I recounted in our book on BALCO, "Game of Shadows," how Rob, in emulation of his baseball heroes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, began injecting himself with Deca-durabolin and Sustanon.
He became state Community College Player of the Year, went to the University of Southern California on a baseball scholarship and helped lead the Trojans to the College World Series in 2000. The book describes what happens next:
Over the next year-and-a-half, Rob’s life fell apart as he struggled to stop using steroids. He became violent, delusional and despondent in what his parents later concluded was an adverse psychological reaction to the powerful drugs. In 2002, when he finally confessed his steroid use, Rob explained he was just modeling his big-league heroes. First he told his mother, calmly explaining that in order to make it to the majors, a player had to take steroids. Barry Bonds was doing it, Mark McGwire was doing it, so surely he had to do it …
'I’m on steroids, what do you think?' Rob (told his father). 'Who do you think I am? I’m a baseball player, baseball players take steroids. How do you think Bonds hits all his home runs? How do you think all these guys do this stuff? You think they do it from just working out normal?'
On Oct. 1 2002, while sitting in car parked around the corner from his parents’ home, 24-year-old Rob Garibaldi shot himself … His suicide occurred five years after he had begun using steroids. His parents blamed the drugs for the crashing depression that led to his death.
Since then, Denise Garibaldi has worked long hours to educate parents and young athletes about the risks of steroid use. (Her eloquent testimony before Congress in 2004 was overshadowed by that of slugger Mark McGwire, who ducked questions about his drug use by saying, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”)
None of this is to suggest that every boy who takes steroids will take his own life, or will suffer the grotesque ailments that afflict many the former East German Olympians who were subjected to the state doping program in the 1960s (Their plight is described in Steven Ungerleider’s book, "Faust’s Gold.")
But the drugs are powerful, they work wonders in improving athletic performance and they have any number of short and long-term side-effects, physical and psychological. Some are described in the Merck Manual – acne, baldness, shrinking of the testes, mood swings, surges of anger, reduction of libido and the risk of liver damage and prostate cancer. Others are still unknown.
Young athletes emulate their sports heroes.
And when Musburger advocates legalizing banned drugs at the professional level, isn’t he also encouraging ambitious teenagers to see steroids as the ticket to a pro career – and put their health on the line in hopes of living the dream?
Or, as Denise Garibaldi asks, “Do we really want gladiators for sports heroes?”
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