Bonds saga could impact baseball’s Olympic future

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A failure by Major League
Baseball to eliminate steroids use after the latest allegations
against Barry Bonds would hurt its chance to return to the
Olympics, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency said on
Wednesday.

WADA chief Dick Pound, who is also a prominent member of
the International Olympic Committee, spoke in an interview on
the day “Sports Illustrated” published excerpts from a new book
saying slugger Bonds used steroids for at least five years.

“If the message goes that if you want to be a hero and the
most popular player in the game, you fill yourself up with as
many drugs as you can without dropping dead of high blood
pressure or whatever it is … I sure don’t go for those
values,” Pound told Reuters by telephone from Canada.

As for playing in the Olympics, he said, “Much will depend
on what Major League Baseball does about this …. What is Bud
Selig going to do?”

Selig, baseball’s commissioner, reacted cautiously when
asked about Bonds, who is third on the all-time home run list
and poised this season to pass Babe Ruth for second place.
Bonds has never failed a drug test.

“I will review all the material that is relative in every
way,’ Selig said about the Bonds’ allegations in the book.

Late last year baseball owners stiffened their sanctions
against steroids, including a 50-game suspension for a first
offense, 100 games for a second, and a lifetime ban for a
third. The league acted after a serious of high-profile doping
cases and the threat of U.S. Congressional intervention.

Pound said financial considerations could be a factor
against vigorous enforcement of the doping rules.

“They may say …. we are running our business the way we
want to and we don’t care about what anybody thinks about what
our players do or how we may enforce or not enforce our
policy,” said Pound, whose agency monitors doping in
international sport.

Baseball was added as a full Olympic medal sport in 1992,
but officials voted in 2005 to cut it. Officials last month
declined to revive it in the London Olympics in 2012.

“I’m pretty sure that the approach to drug use was … one
of the factors in the decision of the IOC not to include and
then not to reconsider that decision,” Pound said.

Baseball was the first sport cut from the games since polo
in 1936.

He said officials would likely consider in 2009 whether to
resume playing baseball in the 2016 Olympics.

Pound also said baseball owners could still boost home runs
if that is what fans want without sparking players to use
steroids.

“You can change the strike zone, you can lower the fences,
you can do things with the bat and the ball. But you shouldn’t
be coming to a baseball game to watch a freak show,” he said.