Sports
 

Pro athletes are known by the company they keep

By Tom Carpenter

Major League Baseball has taken a hiatus from the steroid controversy that plagues the sport and passed the baton to professional track and field in time to create a firestorm of controversy before the Summer Olympics in Athens.

Marion Jones won an unprecedented five medals in the 2000 Olympic Games and, fairly or not, finds herself in the eye of the storm in the on-going drama about designer steroids.

Jones has been under investigation for possible use of banned drugs by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency not because she failed a drug test, but because of the people she runs with on and off the track.

Her former husband, shot putter C.J. Hunter, tested positive for steroids four times in 2000 when he was married to Jones and was barred from the Olympics.

Sprinter Tim Montgomery and Jones, who now live together and have a child, worked with Charlie Francis, former coach of the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was stripped of a gold medal in the 100-meter at the 1988 Games because of steroid use.

The USADA sent a letter to Jones and Montgomery requesting that they appear to answer more questions concerning their relationship with Victor Conte and his Bay Area Lab Co-Operative. BALCO is the "designer" drug company put in the heart of the scandal when a track coach gave the USADA a syringe, allegedly from Conte, that contained a substance identified as the steroid tetrahydrogestrinone.

The USADA gave Jones documents discovered during the BALCO investigation that they believe show evidence of steroid use, something Jones denied before a grand jury last year and again Wednesday.

With Conte willing to sing if the price is right -- no prison time or probation -- the scandal should climax when Conte spills the beans or, in this case, the steroids.

But Jones isn't the first athlete to suffer for the company she keeps. Remember "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, the greatest baseball player never to make it into the Hall of Fame? He was one of eight Chicago White Sox players banned from baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Jackson wasn't in on the fix, but he had knowledge of the bribes paid to his teammates to throw the game, and that is what kept Jackson out of the Hall of Fame.

Jackson hit the only home run in the series for Chicago. His 12 hits set a World Series record that stood until Pepper Martin tied it years later. Jackson didn't commit an error in the field, and he batted .375 to lead all hitters. He knocked in or scored 11 of Chicago's 20 runs in the series: not exactly a line score that indicates a player trying to throw the series.

Whether Jones cheated to win her fame and fortune will be determined in the near future, but just hanging around with known drug users diminishes the impact of her denials.
 
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