“Remember when being ‘up for the game’ used to be kind of a spiritual thing?Now, man…‘You up for the game?’ ‘Been up all week, man.’”
--George Carlin, “FM & AM”If Scott Moninger happened to stumble across a story by Amy Shipley while surfing the ’Net on March 2, he must have wondered whether he fell down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole when he stepped off his bike last August in Breckenridge.

Shipley’s piece on the Washington Post web site, headlined “Stimulants Are a Major League Hit,” recounted some professional baseball players’ fondness for a variety of stimulants that you can’t get for $5 at the nearest Starbucks, including ephedra and amphetamines. “Greenies,” the guys call them. No wonder they’re always gnawing on something or tugging at their crotches.

Shipley’s story reminded me of a long-ago “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” cartoon by Gilbert Shelton, in which Freewheeling Franklin and Phineas use a pharmacopeia to transform Fat Freddy into Mark McGwire and thus queer the betting in a slow-pitch-softball tourney. Except it wasn’t funny.

Her first two paragraphs got right down to business:

When a teammate brought a large canister of a supplement containing ephedra into the clubhouse last year, New York Mets first baseman Mo Vaughn grabbed a fistful of pills. A bunch of players sampled the substance, Vaughn recalled. They weren't looking to lose weight. They were seeking an energy boost.“Everybody was using it,” Vaughn said, “so I used it, too.”

Judas Priest. Mo’s momma must’ve never asked him The Question, the one the rest of us faced when we got popped with a lid of ditch weed and served up this lame-o excuse: “If everybody were jumping off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff, too?”

Well, uh, yes, actually — if I could flutter away unscathed like a mastiff bat full of crank the way Vaughn has and keep cashing fat paychecks, instead of croaking of heat stroke like Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler did last month, or plummeting to an ignominious professional demise, the way Moninger may, depending upon how theAmerican Arbitration Association rules next week during a two-day hearing concerning his positive dope test at last year’s Saturn CyclingClassic.

What’s the difference between these two pro athletes? Both Vaughn and Moninger are in their mid-30s, both have been pros for a dozen years, and both spend a wearisome amount of time on the road, plying their respective trades over lengthy competitive seasons.

The key difference is that Vaughn knew he was chowing down on a little St. Joseph’s Baby Speed to keep him grinding his teeth and feeling great out there on the old diamond. Why not? There are no rules against it – a pro ballplayer can wash down a jumbo bottle of No-Doze with a pint of nuclear waste if he thinks it’ll help him lay the fat part of the bat against a high hard one - and until this season, MLB did no drug testing at all, not even for the steroids Barry Bonds doesn’t take.

But Moninger says he had no idea that an amino-acid supplement he purchased was tainted with 19-norandrosterone until the Dope-O-Meter went ping! – and call me simple, but I believe him. He did the legwork required to demonstrate that the supplement had been contaminated, and after 21 years as a smart, businesslike bike racer, he is well aware of the odds – and the cost - of getting caught doping. Taking a leak in a beaker has become such a post-race ritual these days that one wonders why promoters bother renting portable toilets for their venues.

Alas, another key difference between these two athletes is that Moninger is an independent contractor licensed to race through national and international governing bodies affiliated with and partially funded by the Olympic “movement,” which insists on regular and draconian drug testing, while Vaughn is a union man working for one of the teams of Major League Baseball, a self-financing, self-policing organization that giggles and gobbles a fistful of greenies – the ones with the pictures of dead presidents on them - whenever the World Anti-Doping Agency gets, like, all uptight and shit, and issues 53 pages worth of kiss-your-ass-goodbye for any athlete caught doping.

That is, of course, unless they happen to play for Major League Baseball. Or the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Football League, all of which will continue to be free of solemn WADA narcs proffering post-game beakers, though they “will be encouraged to accept” the anti-doping code flourished with such fanfare this week in Copenhagen. This will happen shortly after Dan Rather moderates the Dubya-Saddam debate on CBS.

MLB didn’t even test its players for steroids until just this month, as part of its new collective-bargaining agreement with the players’ union, though Bonds and a number of his colleagues make The Incredible Hulk look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And this so-called “survey testing” regimen looks to be about as tough to beat as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The players knew they would be tested in March – and for steroids only, not ephedra, amphetamines or anything else that helps a guy keep from nodding off out there in left field. The results will be kept anonymous, and there are no penalties for a positive. If more than 5 percent of the players peg the Dope-O-Meter this season, MLB would go to something called “program testing” in 2004; positives would no longer be anonymous, but the doper would not incur a penalty unless he tested positive again.

This is not serious. This is like getting busted for shoplifting and getting to keep the merchandise.

As things stand now, a multimillionaire slugger could snort the entire baseline at Yankee Stadium in prime time on Fox TV and still be the league’s MVP, while a bike racer, toiling in obscurity for 1 percent of the slugger’s salary, can face a two-year suspension for unwittingly consuming a tainted supplement.

And that’s what Moninger is looking at come Thursday and Friday, when his hearing before the American Arbitration Association is scheduled. He and his lawyer are hoping for a six-month suspension – an athlete is responsible for what he puts into his body, after all, but there is that nagging question of intent to consider. However, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency wants the whole two years, which would effectively end Moninger’s career.

Or maybe not. You think Scott ever played any ball? The Devil Rays could use all the help they can get after a pair of back-to-back 100-loss seasons. And it seems all too clear that pro baseball, unlike pro cycling, could care less what its players eat - whether accidentally or on purpose.

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After reading the above, surely you realize that the pointless screechings of the hopelessly deranged author bear no resemblance whatsoever to the lofty principles espoused by VeloNews, VeloNews.com, Inside Communications Inc., our sister publications, investors, our employees (full-time, part-time, temporary and permanent), our suppliers, subscribers, parents, children, our second cousin in Cleveland, the Department of Homeland Security, Donald Rumsfeld and the doped-to-the-eyeballs former pros who dominate Colorado masters racing, where “drug testing” means taking a bong hit and croaking, “Good shit, dude,” between clenched teeth.Anyway, if you wanna go ahead and tell us (and your fellow readers)what you think this of this article, its author or the topic, why not drop us a line at Webletters@7Dogs.com? We'll post some of the better ones. We promise.