Chris Minaker is a minor leaguer within the Seattle Mariners organization. He played baseball at Stanford and graduated from the university with a Masters in Sociology last June. As anybody who's ever gotten a Masters Degree knows, you have to write a thesis paper to get your degree.
Well, Minaker's thesis isn't bound to help him make any friends within the offices of Major League Baseball. It was a study on steroids, and how their use in professional sports is affecting athletes in college sports. While baseball would want you to believe that other sports such as football have a bigger problem with illegal substances, Minaker's study showed otherwise.
His paper was strictly about college athletes at Stanford, but some of its conclusions about steroids won't have baseball executives or union officials grinning with glee.
"If the need for steroids is broken down by sport, it becomes clear that baseball has the biggest problem with steroids," Minaker writes, citing results of a confidential, written survey he took of 91 male varsity athletes at Stanford. "It is also baseball that has had the most well-publicized steroid problem of all of the professional team sports. It seems that the problem of the professional ranks has trickled down into the collegiate ranks."
Minaker found that baseball was the sport at his school where supplements - everything from steroids to caffeine - were most used. He didn't set out to point a finger at his chosen profession. In many ways, he still hasn't.
Minaker admits that 89 students at Stanford is a rather small sample size, but the numbers within them don't lie. Nine of the athletes he surveyed admitted to using steroids, and five of them were baseball players. It should also be noted that the Stanford football team wasn't very cooperative and remains "shrouded in secrecy."
The alarming thing about Minaker's survey is that it's proven that steroids and other supplements have broken through into the college ranks, and that ultimately they will make their way to high schools too.
It's a very interesting article written by Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, and I recommend you take the time to read it.
Previously at the Fanhouse:
Barry Bonds Owes Greg Anderson Big Time
Steroid and HGH Investigators Debate Naming Customers
