“Sports” is all about the rules.  I remember as a child when we would go across to the ball park and play a game, you first had to establish the house rules.  Without rules it would be chaos, but as long as there has been a competition athletes have been trying to skirt the rules in order to gain an edge.  Is this right?  Of course not, but it is a natural part of the game.  Scuffing balls by pitchers, using corked bats, steroids, and who knows what else maybe illegal in the near future.  Where is the line drawn between enhancement of performance and what is cheating.  We all know about the steroids which are banned, although many still consider the fact that they were not banned until 2003 and were not even tested for until 2004 irrelevant, I am going to focus on external enhancements in this post.

There is a player by the name of Brian Roberts who up until last year had a career .255 average.  He had hit as low as .227 and as high as .273 and then last year he magically jumped to .314.  What was the secret to his hitting success?  Roberts is one of the first to use a new type of contact lens designed by Bausch and Lomb and marketed by Nike to aid a batter by helping him to see the seams on a fastball sooner.  (Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Timlin, and Danny Almonte also used them.)  The lenses are red and when on your eyes make you look a bit like a demon, but they filter out certain shades to allow you to see the seams on a fastball.  The idea is that if a batter can pick up the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand he will be able to follow it sooner and react to it more quickly than he otherwise would be able to do.  Does it work?  Well of the players who used them, they all agree they can see the ball sooner and they had improved batting averages.  These lenses are not only for baseball players but Bausch and Lomb are making them for golfers too so that they can read greens better.  Justin Leonard says he can now see every blade of grass on the greens.  Is this a fair enhancement for batters?  What if these are outlawed in the near future?  Would that mean you have to throw out Brian Roberts accomplishments from the record books?  Would his stats be tainted?  Where do we draw the line on personal enhancement tools?  Are nightvision goggles soon to be allowed.?

How about batting armor?  I have to say that I think all the padding that players are allowed to wear gives these batters a mental edge when they step up into the plate.  The old school pitchers would throw in very close to move batters off the plate.  This was their defense.  Today with the array of pads some batters choose to wear, i.e. Barry Bonds, pitchers have lost that advantage.  This brings me to another point, the mental advantage!

A large part of any game is mental.  Many physicists have written papers to prove a corked bat does very little to enhance the swing speed of a bat.  So how does it help?  The consensus is that it gives them a boost in confidence while they are at the plate.  Confidence can do strange things to a player.  When I was in HS and I was confident, I could drain long range basket after long range basket, (There was no three point line when I played and I am still bitter about that!)  PGA golfers who have confidence say the cup looks like a huge hole in the ground when they putt.  So how does this apply to enhancements?  What about the sports psychologists that many pitchers bring to the games to help them perform?  You say you don’t believe that is relevant.  Ask the players that employ these guys.  Players are by and large a very superstitious lot.  They go through the same routines before games, wear hats that have not been washed in years and even dirty socks that are lucky.  The mind is a powerful tool and learning to harness its positive vibes gives players an advantage.

Lastly, I can not end this post without mentioning my personal favorite, cortisone shots.  Cortisone is a steroid that is derived from cortisol which is produced in the adrenal glands during moments of high stress.  It aids in the healing process and is used in pain injections for athletes.  Who can forget Curt Schillings performance during the World Series?  There is no way he could pitch without a performance enhancing shot into his ankle.  Should this be legal?  In my book it is a performance enhancing injection and should not be allowed. 

Just some thoughts about where is the line drawn.  We all know about the lines in taking banned substances, although new substances are added all the time as we develop new enhancements.  I still think Raffy tested positive because of all the Viagra in his system, and rumor has it that it did help his BAT.