Baseball's Other Drug Problem

With the steroids scandal still rippling through baseball, MLB is under particular pressure not to allow a new drug controversy to develop. Management faces a twin challenge: preventing the use of drugs that give some players unfair advantages by souping up their bodies like race cars while not denying medication and other assistance to an athlete suffering from a legitimate malady. Ultimately, experts say, the best way to identify both legitimate medical conditions and illicit drug use is to devise top-to-bottom systems that track a player's progress on a number of dimensions. To know a player is to know when he might be heading off course.

Euchner, a lecturer in English at Yale University, is completing a book about suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge.

© 2008