(left to right : home run king, unimpressed teen)
While Crosswalk.com’s Pete Winn quotes a member of the UM faculty attributing a rise in adolescent steroid use to kids wanting to “emulate Mark McGwire’s ‘huge forearms'” (link lifted from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory), he’d have us believe the stigma of being associated with the Sultan Of Surly had an altogether different impact.
When teen boys saw superstar athletes – especially Barry Bonds – drawn into steroid-related scandals, said University of Michigan professor Lloyd Johnston, some of the glamour wore off and the stimulus to use steroids was removed.
Bonds pleaded not guilty in federal court Friday to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for purportedly lying to a grand jury about steroid use.
Though he maintains he did not use performance-enhancing drugs during his drive to become home-run king, Bonds has become the public face of a steroids scandal that has affected athletes in many sports, including runner Marion Jones, who recently admitted to steroid use and returned the Olympic gold and silver medals she won in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
“What Bill Clinton was to oral sex, Barry Bonds is to steroid use, only in reverse,” said Shepherd Smith, president of the Institute for Youth Development.
“Unfortunately, we saw the incidence of oral sex among teens go up because of the news surrounding Bill Clinton and his follies in the ’90s, whereas, with Barry Bonds, all of the news highlighting his alleged steroid use has had kids taking notice of the adverse consequences,” Smith said.