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Baseball needs teeth
in combating steroids

THE ISSUE A congressional committee heard testimony about Major League Baseball's policy for banning steroids.

CONGRESSIONAL theater can be useful, and the spectacle of baseball stars lining up to deny the use of steroids -- or not -- can only help alert young people to the dangers of such performance-enhancing drugs. Major League Baseball has failed to take adequate measures to eliminate illegal drugs and needs pressure to toughen its policy or be subjected to federal legislation.

Several members of the House committee investigating steroid use cited a report by the Centers for Disease Control that says 500,000 American teens take steroids, emulating their sports heroes. It would be naive to believe that Hawaii sports is devoid of such drugs and their deadly potential.

"I'm sick and tired of having you tell us you don't want to be considered role models. You are role models," testified Donald Hooton Sr., whose son Taylor, a Texas high school football player, used steroids, fell into depression and consequently committed suicide.

Baseball created a steroids policy only three years ago but has kept it under wraps. It purportedly required a 10-day suspension for a first offense, but a copy obtained by The New York Times says a first offender instead may be fined up to $10,000, a paltry amount for multimillionaire players, and avoid public exposure. Baseball officials now insist a fine and confidentiality are no longer acceptable consequences.

Members of Congress were understandably angry upon learning that baseball had excluded some steroids, human growth hormones and amphetamines that are banned in the Olympics and allowed policy decisions to be vetoed by the union or owners. The drug policy, a product of collective bargaining, also requires that both team owners and the players' union "resist any government investigation by all reasonable and appropriate means including, when necessary, initiation and prosecution of legal proceedings."

Baseball will need to make radical changes to inject integrity into its drug program. The alternative is a federally mandated drug policy, based on the Olympic policy, extended to all organized sports at all levels, both amateur and professional.

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Basketball franchise
adds to isle sports

THE ISSUE Hawaii has been granted a franchise in the American Basketball League.

HONOLULU is on the verge of giving a tryout to yet another professional sports team. Hawaii has been granted a franchise in the American Basketball Association, along with as many as 30 other franchises to be added to the 33 teams that played in the league last year. Fans should welcome a team that will fill a small void left by the demise last October of the Hawaiian Islanders arena football franchise.

Teams in the association's three divisions are anything but powerhouses. Honolulu sports marketer Orrys Williams, who heads the Hawaii franchise's ownership group, calls it "the real thing," but ABA teams are more semiprofessional than professional, the level where players carry their own bags and rely on their day jobs.

Club franchises reportedly go for around $20,000, and a player's pay ranges from $200 to $300 a week. Average game attendance is said to be about a thousand.

No relation to the ABA that merged with the NBA nearly 30 years ago, it competes with the Continental Basketball Association and the National Basketball Development League, the NBA's minor league, in providing a last gasp to former NBA players and a last chance for others to get noticed by NBA scouts. When clichˇ-driven sportscasters in college games speak of "the next level," these are not the leagues to which they refer.

Williams says the Hawaii roster will include talent from California summer leagues and at least three homegrown players. While ABA teams are used to playing in high school gymnasiums, Williams says he is negotiating with the Blaisdell Arena for 18 to 20 games.

Golf remains the only major sport that stages high-level professional events in Hawaii. Precarious as they are, lesser versions of other pro sports in the islands add spice to the mixture.