Doping Dumbs Down

Nothing’s fun anymore. Competition is vicious. Doping’s gone viral. Steroids are scourges. Winners get wealthy. Losers are stoned. Competitive violence must be crushed, sanity restored.

Lance Armstrong stirred it all up with the ‘pee’ heard ‘round the world. The fallout from his fraud has found its way into all things competitive, from team sports to Tai Chi. He’s being stripped naked and publically flogged for causing the scrutiny of harmless pursuits. Like ice fishing.

You bet, a fishing tournament on a frozen lake in Wisconsin has raised hackles. The participants were internationals, hopeful to elevate the sport to Olympic status. The rules are simple: drill holes in the ice, catch all the fish you can, three hour time limit.

The Russian team won, snagging 4 pounds of pan fish. But their elation chilled when the United States Anti-doping Agency showed up. The Russians were lined up on the ice like common criminals facing a firing squad and tested for “banned substances.” The win was tainted when the test results revealed a mood-enhancing combination of vodka and anchovies.

Ice fishing is hardly an Olympic event. It rivals for pure boredom the state sport of Georgia…watermelon seed spitting. It’s really a winter sanctum for retirees and milquetoast men. They have fled with flasks from cabin fever and contentious women, seeking refuge in frigid air upon frozen lakes. To fish? Ha, to escape!

But now the Rope-a-Dopers have arrived. Fueled by Executive Order, they’re purging performance-enhancing substances from all forms of competition. ObamaCare levels the playing field. There’s a bad moon rising, folks.

Good thing the World Anti-Doping Agency wasn’t around in the small town of my youth. Drones were only sci-fi fantasies. Otherwise, my band of oddballs would have been busted as doping felons and vilified, stigmatized and institutionalized. Take our afternoon game of marbles, for example.

They weren’t Olympic grade, but betting was sanctioned. Boasting rights were the pay-off. It was alleged we sometimes imbibed in performance-boosting drinks. They mainly consisted of bottled Cokes or Moxie Cream Sodas, enhanced by pouring in packs of Tom’s peanuts and shaken vigorously. Our energy levels went nuclear from the surfeit of sugar and salt.

But our puny stimulants couldn’t match LeRoy’s brew. He was a moose of a kid with massive hands…imagine a baseball glove. He was sort of a freak of nature, a term coined by Armstrong to sidetrack the anti-doping sleuths. He did pull-ups and push-ups using only his thumbs. Picture an Orangutan. He played a mean game of marbles.

He could shoot a marble with accuracy across the school playground. In a three-foot circle he was deadly. Such was his velocity that marbles vaporized on contact. One day he decimated my entire stash of cat-eyes. It cost me my Babe Ruth baseball cards, my Mad Magazines and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum for money to get more marbles.

Leroy had his own energy drink…an RC Cola (Royal Crown, if you’re under 60). He kept it close, taking occasional gulps with furtive glances. It emitted a smoky vapor that smelled like hot asphalt. He would hunch his shoulders, pop his knuckles and shoot, straight-line, 0 to 60 in a micro second. Only marble fragments remained.

We were curious about the secret concoction he swilled. One day we hid his bike. He left in a fury, leaving behind his RC Cola. We examined the contents…a few peanuts, a pinch of snuff, Moon Pie crumbles and shards of a Tootsie Pop sucker, a half-smoked Picayune and a plug of Bull of the Woods chewing tobacco. It was nasty.

LeRoy is now president of the National Spit Tobacco Federation. Its educational program grooms young baseball players in the art of tobacco spitting for Olympic competition.

The Island Seniors have a Duplicate Bridge Center. For years they competed in undetected seclusion. Participants dutifully checked their knives and guns on entry. Until one day Maude Clinkscales, an octogenarian with poor eyesight, brought in brownies boosted with sugar and some unknown, suspicious white substance. Things got ugly and out of hand. Rumor is there was pole dancing and strip poker. Gossip here is pernicious.

Today, black SUVs patrol their parking lot. Men in black manage detection machines and monitor the snacks. The games have returned to insufferable boredom. The Anti-Dopers are now showing up everywhere. What’s next? Jump rope contests, yoyo events, kite flying meets and horseshoe pitching matches? Nothing’s safe. RC Cola, where are you?

As for me, I’m wondering if Rick-Rack paddle competitions could restore some balance. Imagine the possibilities!

Bud Hearn
March 6, 2013