Posted Messages

Message #: 15095
Message from: Billy Vanson
Sent: Feb 26, 2007
Subject: You tell em dale....screw barry and mac

By Alan Schwarz	E-mail this article
February 26, 2007	Print this article

It seems simple enough: Taking steroids is cheating.

Can simple be powerful? That's Dale Murphy's hope. This January, the two-time National League MVP started "I Won't Cheat!", a grass roots, national organization to help teach young athletes the dangers--and unfairness--of taking steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Murphy spoke from his Utah home in February about his new venture, his distaste for Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, and the guilt he feels over not doing something sooner.

ALAN SCHWARZ: How would you define cheating in baseball?

DALE MURPHY: Well, there's any number of ways to cheat. The purpose of the foundation is to focus in on what is going on in the game now as far as steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. We want the foundation to help educate kids--young kids, high school kids, college kids. Everybody is a kid to me now--I'm a grandpa.

SCHWARZ: Dale Murphy is a grandpa? I think I have to go crawl into a corner now. But it does appear as if you're discussing steroids from a pure "cheating," competitive-fairness standpoint, rather than a legal or health angle.

MURPHY: Well, we're hitting it from both angles: Steroids and other performance- enhancing drugs are cheating yourself, the game and the fans, and it is unhealthy and it is illegal. People don't like to say it's cheating, but let's call it what it is. It's not the right way to play. You're going down the wrong path in the face of what a kid sees as the advantages. We've got to counteract that somehow.

SCHWARZ: Your literature states something very interesting: "There will always be ways to cheat if a person wants to." It sounds like you're trying to attack the problem at the desire, rather than beef up the punishment or deterrent.

MURPHY: That's what we're trying to do--help coaches and parents develop relationships of trust and respect so that when a kid is faced with this decision, people he has respect for tell him there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. And this is the wrong way.

SCHWARZ: You were a star player, as inside as inside can be through the early 1990s, when steroids were becoming part of baseball. A lot of people claim to know about steroids--whether they're journalists or congressmen--so what did you see as the steroid culture then, personally?

MURPHY: I mean, it was obvious it was going on. We didn't address the issue as strongly as we should have. Everybody who covered it, everybody who watched it, everybody who was playing, everybody who was in the front office. Baseball, as an industry, we just buried our heads in the sand. So now what we've created is not only unhealthy players, but the temptation so real for college, minor leaguers, and high school kids. If you see dollar signs and people getting away with it, you're going to be tempted to do it. The more I read, and the more I understand of the challenge that high school kids are having, the more upset I get at the lack of what we did.

SCHWARZ: How do you get that message out to all the millions of kids who are playing baseball, other than having old friends at Baseball America?

MURPHY: One kid at a time. For instance we got approval from the Utah High School Activities and Athletic Association. They gave us approval if we can find sponsors to give the pamphlet to every kid in high school, every athlete. So that's one way to get the word out.

SCHWARZ: But how do you get coaches to understand? How do you get parents and kids to understand?

MURPHY: We're starting. Our plan, first of all, we're here in Utah--so we've got approval to give this to every high school athlete, so the details of how that's going to be put in their hands, we don't know yet. We've got to find someone who will help us print 50,000 or 60,000 of them in Utah alone. We're going to produce some public service announcements. Maybe a mandatory session of one day during two-a-days in football or each sport where you take an hour or two or whatever it takes to educate and to encourage, and have the coach say, "Here's how I feel about it and here's what the doctors are saying." We're producing a 20-minute DVD.

SCHWARZ: You had a squeaky-clean image as a player--Mormon, didn't drink, didn't smoke. How do you deal with young people not wanting to come off as wimps, as goody-two-shoes? There's peer pressure here, too.

MURPHY: Maybe this will lead to some positive peer-pressure of little clubs in each high school--"I Won't Cheat" clubs. Our vision, maybe it's too Pollyannaish, is to bring up a new generation of guys who are going to say, "I see that guy in Triple-A that's doing this, and I'm in single-A, but I'm not doing it." Maybe what we can create is more positive peer pressure--you're going to feel ostracized if you go down that route. I don't think kids want to go that way. What we're seeing above them, that's the problem I think.

SCHWARZ: What will your reaction be when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's record this year?

MURPHY: To me, Barry Bonds' career will always be, "Yeah, but."

SCHWARZ: "Yeah, but" what?

MURPHY: Steroids. He took steroids.

SCHWARZ: You realize he's never failed a steroid test.

MURPHY: That doesn't mean anything to me anymore. When a guy says to me "I've never flunked a test," that doesn't mean anything to me anymore. Guys are passing them. You've got to be an idiot not to pass the test. Part of me doesn't like to say that to kids because then they think, "Well, really?" So I don't like to publicize that part of it.

SCHWARZ: But not publicizing it doesn't mean it's going to go away. You might as well confront it head-on and treat it as a reality.

MURPHY: You're right. It's reality. The thing is, when Barry says he's never flunked a test, it doesn't mean anything to me.

SCHWARZ: What was your reaction when Mark McGwire did not get elected to the Hall of Fame?

MURPHY: That's the way I would've voted. Because I think he took steroids. He didn't say yes or no, but I don't need proof. I'm not a court of law. I see what I saw, and I heard what I heard, and that's my opinion.

SCHWARZ: Arguably the biggest reason for no steroid testing for years, and relatively weak testing until recently, has been the staunch privacy-rights approach of the Players Association--of which you were a prominent member. How do you reconcile that?

MURPHY: We made a mistake. In the efforts to protect our rights, which is what the Players Association representatives have always tried to do, we've created something that has been hurtful for the game--for the players, for the youth of America. So what can we do now? This can change if it comes from the players.

SCHWARZ: The major league players?

MURPHY: They say, "Dale, you played in the 1980s, why didn't you guys say something?" Well, OK. We didn't. We made some mistakes and it was wrong. If the player reps said, "We want to get rid of this because of the way we're being portrayed and the direction our industry is going," the players could have the ultimate impact because, yeah, you've got to waive some rights. That's just the way it is. Part of this is an effort to make up for lost opportunities.

For more information about Dale Murphy's "I Won't Cheat" foundation, visit www.iwontcheat.com.

You can reach Alan Schwarz by sending e-mail to alanschwarz@....


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