For society, McMahon's Senate bid the ultimate steroid test
In the nearly seven years since Barry Bonds entered a San Francisco courthouse to testify about the substances that had inflated his body and batting stats to cartoonish proportions, fans and media have engaged in an anguished debate about drugs in sports.
Do we care? Should we care? Will taxpayers get any real benefit out of federal investigator Jeff Novitzky's crusade and Congressional hearings on performance-enhancing drugs? Can Hall of Fame voters justify excluding Bonds and Roger Clemens, the best hitter and pitcher of their era, because of evidence that they used performance-enhancers?
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| Linda McMahon has won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. (AP) |
Just three days after McMahon won the Republican primary came news of the death of 29-year-old Lance McNaught, who wrestled under the name Lance Cade. He had a history of substance abuse, including a painkiller addiction that is all too common among the battered wrestlers, and died of apparent heart failure. His premature death was hardly unique among the performers who helped Linda McMahon and her bombastic husband, Vince, amass the fortune she is now using to obtain a seat in the Senate.
"We're an entertainment company, we're not a sport," said WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman, making a distinction that has become remarkably important to an enterprise that once clung to the illusion that its events were not scripted. Vince McMahon decided years ago to drop the pretense, a maneuver that conveniently exempted his shows from the oversight of pesky state athletic commissions.
His wrestlers, in at least one respect, are more genuine than actual athletes. Without a competitive legacy to protect, the retirees tend to admit very freely that they took steroids, saying that it was an integral part of the culture.
The performance-enhancers have not been directly linked to early deaths of pro wrestlers; the immediate culprit in most of the recent cases has been prescription drugs, usually painkillers. But the freakish physiques crafted by steroid use could have increased the level of violence in the ring and the chronic pain that followed. The hormonal manipulations also have the potential to cause severe depression, which in turn can generate a dependency on other substances, including sleeping pills.
But because wrestling is not taken as seriously as baseball or football, oversight of its health hazards has been relatively low profile. Congressional investigators interviewed representatives of pro wrestling after they staged the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa-Jose Canseco extravaganza. The wrestling inquiry took place behind the scenes, off camera. No one in the WWE had stolen Roger Maris' place in history or cheapened 500 career home runs. So a public hearing was deemed unnecessary.
But while Congress criminalized steroid possession without a prescription 20 years ago, it still hasn't made a move on corked bats or Gaylord Perry. The cheating element of PEDs wouldn't matter so much if not for associated health risks.
In choosing their nominee, Connecticut Republicans discounted a scathing Hartford Courant editorial written by the father of the late wrestling star Chris Benoit, who killed himself, his wife and 7-year-old son in 2007. Michael Benoit attributed the murder-suicide to brain trauma detected in his son during postmortem testing. (There was also evidence of steroid use.) He blamed the McMahons for demanding excessively dangerous stunts in the ring.
"The WWE and Linda McMahon evade any responsibility for the early deaths that their industry suffers at an astronomical rate," the editorial said. "... I sought to educate the McMahons about the scientific findings on brain trauma and how their wrestling stunts could cause this serious and fatal health issue. They were having none of it."
Even the barbaric nature of the NFL can't quite compare. Pro football players get helmets and health insurance. WWE performers are independent contractors, forced to find insurance on their own. Pro wrestlers also die young at a much higher rate than NFL players, according to research published by USA Today in 2004. The survey compared the two and pegged a wrestler's chance of dying before age 45 at 20 times greater.
The paper's report also quoted research by a Dallas medical examiner, Keith Pinckard, who estimated that pro wrestlers were 12 times more likely to die of heart disease than typical Americans in the 25-to-44 age group. Two years after that report, and shortly after Eddie Guerrero's sudden death at 38, the WWE instituted its Talent Wellness Program, which includes cardiovascular screening, monitoring impact to the brain and testing for both recreational and performance-enhancing drugs.
Linda McMahon's campaign points out that the shows have become significantly safer in recent years, the wrestling body types aren't as universally freakish (read: blatantly steroidal) as in the past and the performers pull down good money -- more than $550,000 on average for an active-roster performer, according to the WWE. The company has paid for wrestlers, including Cade, to go through drug rehab, but ultimately, a campaign spokesman said, the wrestlers must take responsibility for their use of addictive and illegal substances.
"The company tries to balance its position ban on drugs with the belief that people deserve to be rehabilitated," said Ed Patru, the communications director for the campaign. "But everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and the company can't coddle, so to speak, people who refuse to get clean."
Connecticut voters might be inclined to agree and look past the excesses of McMahon's business the way Minnesota voters disregarded Jesse Ventura's acknowledged steroid use and made him governor. Likewise, the public didn't care much about Arnold Schwarzenegger's sketchy bodybuilding past when he ran for governor of California.
The Rock, who said he doped as a college football player, mined a movie career out of pro-wrestling stardom. Mickey Rourke admitted using steroids for his role in The Wrestler, which earned him a decent box office and an Oscar nomination. McGwire delivered a belated confession and got a gig as a major-league hitting instructor. All in all, the doping revelations have brought out a rather forgiving, or perhaps cynically permissive, side of our culture.
McMahon's grand ambitions and her ownership stake in the WWE make her a special litmus test. Should she be held more or less accountable than Ventura? He took the physical risks associated with juicing and endless pummeling. Linda McMahon took only the profits.
The campaign and the WWE try to emphasize the current state of pro wrestling, including the 2006 reforms, but McMahon is running on her entire 29-year record as an executive in the company. The record may be defensible, but is it laudable enough to earn a Senate seat, where she would work alongside legislators who grilled McGwire and Clemens?
If the voters say yes, their judgment should reverberate loudly in the sports world.
Gwen Knapp is a sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
