Lasers OK, scalpels sometimes, steroids never: if Mr. Hyde met Mr. Bonds, would they exchange evil potion recipes?

Speaking of BALCO, as we will here, it's important to ask a bottom-line question. Performance enhancement in athletics is OK if it's done to the outside of the body with scalpels. But if done through the ingestion and injection of pills, liquids and evil potions of the sort that transformed Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, it is not OK. So the question is: How are drugs that change an athlete's body different from surgery that changes a quarterback's eyes or a pitcher's arm?

Surgery first performed on Tommy John has been done hundreds of times, perhaps on 10 percent of today's major league pitchers. They had torn or stretched ligaments around their elbows. Surgeons removed the damaged ligaments, drilled holes in the humerus and ulna bones at the elbow and laced through those holes a tendon taken from somewhere it wasn't needed, usually the wrist. A year later, his performance enhanced, the pitcher was not only back in business, he might have been throwing even harder than before. Kerry Wood of the Cubs had the surgery. John Smoltz has had multiple elbow surgeries, including the Tommy John.

Let's move the discussion to a hypothetical level: A college pitching prospect comes with an 88-mph fastball and thinks he could pick up a foot on it by having Tommy John surgery to tighten his elbow. He is not hurt in any way. He just thinks the surgery will make him better. If he invested a year's rehabilitation with the hope of a reward in the form of a 95-mph fastball, would that be OK?

Another level yet, perhaps the science fiction level: Stem cell research now being done shows that manipulation of cells can create more powerful muscles, stronger tendons, more durable joints. Let's say that in 2025 someone hits 91 home runs in a season and says, "It's a great honor to break Barry Bonds' record, and I want to thank him for his encouragement. At the same time, I couldn't have done it without my stem cell scientist giving me this new, improved body built by re-engineering my own cells." Would that be OK?

In a second, we'll get an answer or two from a leading sports medicine practitioner. But first, now that we've opened the Pandora's box of performance enhancements, and now that someone has mentioned Barry Bonds, let's deal with the anticlimactic ending to the BALCO case.

Victor Conte and his playmates, including Bonds' personal trainer, pleaded guilty to distributing steroids--the clear, the cream, the juice and Lord only knows what other Jekyll-Hyde elixirs. So Conte, the founder and mastermind of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, is expected to serve four months in prison and four months of Martha Stewart home detention. Seems the feds spent an awful lot of energy on getting a four-month sentence.

Anyway, the real downer is that we don't get to hear the whole story. The BALCO saga is over with a whimper, almost a whisper. The guilty pleas mean there will be no public testimony of what Conte did or for whom he did it. Those of us with prurient interest in the performance-enhancing customs of baseball players will have to be satisfied with what we learned through the good work of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The newspaper grabbed baseball commissioner Bud Selig by the lapels and shook him awake. It even gained the attention of the United States Congress, which subpoenaed the game's greatest home run hitters for testimony--excepting Bonds on the grounds that his notoriety would overshadow the committee's work. The newspaper reported that Bonds testified to a grand jury that he used the "clear" and the "cream," not knowing they were steroids. He said he thought they were an arthritis balm and flaxseed oil. The mind reels.

Alas, we will not have the delicious fun of hearing a skilled lawyer cross-examine Bonds in open court. We will not hear Bonds explain how a man who knows everything about everything that goes into his body suddenly didn't know flaxseed oil from steroids. Worst of all, we will not hear testimony from professional health experts on the real hazards of steroids. That is a loss to all of us.

Now, back to our hypotheticals ...

Would it be OK for a surgeon to do Lasik surgery to improve an athlete's vision? "Sure," says Dr. Freddie Fu, a sports medicine specialist whose work at the University of Pittsburgh includes research into surgical techniques.

How about doing Tommy John on a pitcher for the sole purpose of enhancing performance? "No," he says. "Not without injury. Might screw up the biomechanics already present."

As for stem cell manipulation, the good doctor suggested we check back with him in a quarter-century or so. Be glad to.

dkirdred@sportingnews.com

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