The Next Generation of Baseball Cheating?

The results of Congress's hearings into steroid use in baseball continue to grow. Baseball has re-worked its new drug enforcement policy so that it now mandates suspension. Barry Bonds, besieged by both questions and injuries, may not play this season. Mark McGwire, once considered a lock as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, is now facing critics who say he does not belong there at all.

But steroids may not be the worst form of cheating that baseball will see. As Wired Magazine discusses, innovations in medicine and technology may produce a new form of advantage that baseball, and other professional sports, will need to regulate:

Let's say you're a big-league pitcher, blessed with a good but not great arm. You've played several seasons in the majors, yet you've never managed to hold down a steady place in a starting rotation, mainly because you can't get quite enough velocity on the ball. You work with different pitching coaches and sports psychologists. You try new exercise and diet regimens. Ultimately, you decide that your innate talents aren't going to take you to the all-star level you've always dreamed of. You need a little help.

So you find a surgeon willing to drill a series of small holes in the humerus and ulna bones at your elbow, slice open your wrist and remove a tendon from it, and then weave the tendon in a ­figure eight loop through the holes. After a year or so of rehab, you're throwing a 97-mph fastball for the first time in your life, and your career is transformed.

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To date, pitchers have opted for the surgery only after suffering ligament damage, but elective-enhancement surgery in baseball is inevitable - and it will show up in lots of other professional sports, too.

The article points out the first of these surgeries that have become common: laser eye surgery that corrects vision to better than 20/20. Should this type of "enhancement," and others that will come later, be prohibited by professional sports? Legally, can it be? The real question may not be these surgeries, but perhaps the next generation of enhancements that now can only be considered science fiction. Sports most likely will have to draw a line somewhere, but where and how will be questions that puzzle scientists, lawyers and sports fans for years to come.

Thanks to TJ Graham for the link to the article.

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