Young Athletes Face Mixed Messages About Steroids

Barry Bonds, we may have met your legacy.

His name is Mark Mansa and he is , among other things. Authorities also suspect high school athletes were among his clients.

, which probably means he didn't have clients all the way up here. The simple truth is obtaining steroids doesn't require a trip from north central Connecticut all the way to Bethel. They can be found easily enough over the internet and obtained through the mail. If that doesn't work there is always someone local willing to do what Mansa is accused of doing. A University of Michigan study in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of high school seniors said steroids were either “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain.

The main point is you don't have to be Mark McGwire to get them. Put another way, parents, your job just got a little tougher.

Years ago, Charles Barkley glowered out of our television screen and insisted he was not a role model, which made it seem as if the position were voluntary and not part of the responsibility that comes along with getting millions of dollars to put a round ball in an iron hoop.

This is pretty much the argument used on sports talk radio whenever someone wants to include Bonds, McGwire and Alex Rodriguez and all the other cheaters in the Hall of Fame. Most parents would consider themselves lucky if the worst influence their kid succumbed to was sports talk radio but the airwaves are routinely populated with opinions that minimize steroid use.

In this case, the argument goes like this: Who cares what Barry Bonds does to his own body? If he wants to make his head grow three sizes and shrink his testicles by the same amount in order to hit a baseball farther, so be it. Let him in the Hall of Fame. Let him skip on the perjury charges. Let him babysit your kids. Who are we to argue?

Well, I'm here to argue.

Leave aside the quaint and simple matter of fair play. Let's leave the fact that if Bonds cheats it forces the pitchers who want to get him out into a dilemma between cheating and losing their job. Leave aside the fact that McGwire's comic book forearms make it impossible to actually tell who the best players during the needle era of baseball were. Chipper Jones may have been clean (there were never any whispers) and in another era he would have been a dominant player. But he played with cheaters and so we'll never know. Leave all that aside.

Come back to Mansa and those who do what he is accused of doing. No product ever had better free advertising than steroids and Bonds and McGwire and A-Rod are the reason. Barkley can push back all he wants and insist that parents should be role models but every parent knows that sooner or later kids decide that their parents are just not cool.

Homeruns are cool. The old commercial used to say, “Chicks dig the long ball.” Thanks to these three men there is irrefutable proof that steroids will help you hit homeruns. They will help you get stronger. They will help marginal players make whatever team they are trying out for and this is their allure for high school students struggling to make the team or to get noticed by college scouts.

How is a parent supposed to compete when the information on the other side comes from men in white coats who never make it to national television and warn of long-term consequences? These are teenagers. Thinking about long-term consequences is not cool.

Well, let's think about them anyway. Most often, when people talk about steroid use, they also talk about the associated risks but this is the wrong way to think about it. Teenagers like risk.

A better phrase would be the dangers of steroid use.

Most of the serious dangers, which include elevated cholesterol and enlarged prostate will make no impact on most teens. Put this another way, mom and dad, how old were you before you started worrying about elevated cholesterol?

The superficial side effects, which include stunted growth, shrunken testicles and hair growth all over the body except the head, are the ones that will make teens take notice. Seriously, if you want to be a short, muscled man with hair on your back and tiny testicles, then steroids is the way to go.

The bad news for parents is that teens remain teens and no amount of information is certain to lead them to make a logical, healthy choice. The best hope is prevention and here is where politics comes in to play.

The CIAC is often criticized, as any organization charged with making rules for such a vast endeavor as high school sports is certain to be, but their stance on steroid use is excellent. They are against it, for one thing, and while they don't mandate random testing of high school athletes it's clear they think it's a pretty good idea.

The problem is random testing is expensive and athletic department's are increasingly turning to pay-for-play to stay afloat, which means the responsibility for keeping our sons and, yes, daughters off the juice falls back on the parents.

They'll get no help from Charles Barkley or Barry Bonds. They'll get no help from talk radio. And they'll get sympathy but very little help from the schools.

Yes, parents, your job just got tougher.