The devil himself was brought into the congressional hearings on baseball players using steroids.
This troubling specter did not answer a subpoena but came courtesy of Rep. Paul Kanjorski. The Pennsylvania Democrat posed the most pertinent question at the Thursday hearings and not surprisingly the one most overlooked. It came straight from the bargain that Dr. Faustus struck with the devil in that German forest near Wittenberg.
“I’m going to give you an analogy that’s, I think, bothered me, and I don’t expect that anybody would have an answer,” said Kanjorski, gazing out over the subpoenaed athletes in the hearing room.
“Supposedly somebody came out with smart pills and that smart pill could make you 10 times smarter than you are right now. And they may put a warning on there, it could cost you five or 10 years of your life expectancy. How many people would be tempted to try and win a Nobel Prize and take that smart pill?”
Dr. Faustus was too far in the past for Mark McGwire, the retired slugger, who repeatedly made it clear to the congressman that “I’m not here to talk about the past.” The free-swinging Jose Canseco, on the other hand, whiffed at Kanjorski’s question, though he gave no hint that he knew of its origins.
“You know, that’s a very tough question,” Canseco said, “because we don’t know if we’re going to be around tomorrow or not. We don’t know if our futures are guaranteed or not, but the smart pill guarantees something, meaning that you’re going to win a Nobel Prize. It’s a tough question to ask.”
Canseco’s answer would have pleased Mephistopheles, the name that Goethe gave to the devil in his drama about the legend of Dr. Faustus. It is not likely, however, that the former Oakland slugger’s answer pleased the invited parents in the hearing room. They had testified that steroids had driven their athlete sons to commit suicide.
Donald Hooton Sr. testified that his son, Taylor, was told by his coach that the 11th-grade student needed to “get bigger” to make the varsity team. Unbeknown to his father, young Taylor resorted to steroids to grow muscle mass and in so doing was reportedly driven to depression and finally suicide. “The behavior of our major league athletes is affecting the lives and the health of our kids,” Hooton told the hearing. “I encourage members of Congress to deal with it in such a manner.”
Hooton’s son was among an estimated 500,000 high school student athletes across the country who use steroids in an attempt to enhance their performance on the playing field. Congress conducted its one-day public hearing to nose around the problem of steroid abuse among major league baseball players. Seven big-name stars — including Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling — testified under subpoena with a mixed bill of particulars filtered through the Fifth Amendment.
Sosa and Palmeiro flatly denied using illegal steroids while the Boston Red Sox pitcher Schilling did not even stand accused. Despite Canseco’s hot book currently trumpeting — and even promoting — his personal use of steroids and the widespread abuse and denial of the drug by other players, Canseco backed away from this position before Congress. The slugger’s lawyers clearly got to him and he may also have been affected by the parents of youngsters who cut a deal with Mephistopheles and, like Canseco, now await that knock on the door from the devil.
This clearly seemed to have been Kanjorski’s point, drawn from the experience of Dr. Faustus and the literature the legend has produced over the centuries. For those who don’t recall the yarn: Arriving in a storm, the devil drew up and signed a pact with the doctor’s own blood that, in exchange for full knowledge and fun for 24 years, Faustus would give up his body and soul. After two dozen years of luxury, debauchery and comfort, the devil once again arrives in a terrible storm. Following an orgy of horrible screams, all that his students discovered of Dr. Faustus were splatters of tissue, blotches of blood and a scattering of organs and teeth.
If, instead of the Nobel Prize, the congressman appeared to be asking, would a young athlete bargain with the devil to achieve, say, the Most Valuable Player award with feats of prowess otherwise well beyond his reach? In exchange for this on-field accomplishment, would the athlete, as Kanjorski proposed, be willing to give up five or 10 years of his life expectancy?
Canseco leaned heavily toward accepting the meaningful accomplishment promised by the Dr. Faustus pill because, as he said, “we don’t know if we’re going to be around tomorrow or not.” This goes to the very heart of the question. Steroids promise greatness and sometimes the devil indeed delivers. But he is sure to return in a frightful storm with his terribly swift and deadly sword.