Friday, November 11, 2005Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It's a safe bet that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro never heard of Steve Courson.
It's a better bet that you and I wouldn't have heard of Bonds, McGwire and Palmeiro and their steroid use -- intentional or otherwise -- if not for Courson.
That's why it was so jarring yesterday that news of Courson's death at 50 in a tree-cutting accident on his property in Farmington, Fayette County, broke about the time lawmakers in Washington announced there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Palmeiro for perjury as a result of his testimony in the spring before a congressional hearing on steroids in sports.
Without Courson, Palmeiro might never have been put in a position where he had to sit in the hot seat and point a finger at his congressional interrogators and declare under oath that he never used steroids.
Without Courson, Palmeiro might not have been suspended a few months later for violating baseball's steroids policy or, at least, it wouldn't have been national news.
Without Courson, Congress might not be threatening to institute a standard steroids policy, calling for much harsher penalties than currently exist, for all professional sports.
Courson's legacy isn't that he played on the last two of the Steelers' Super Bowl teams of the 1970s, although that always will make him something of a hero in these parts.
It's that he shined the first bright light on sports' dirty little secret -- steroids.
Those of us who like to believe that what we see on the fields and in the arenas is real and not out of a chemist's bottle should be thankful.
Courson might not have been the first athlete to detail his steroid use publicly, but he became the most visible when he sang his story to Sports Illustrated in 1985. He wrote a book about it in 1991 -- "False Glory" -- that, all of these years later, still should be mandatory reading for coaches and athletes on all levels, from the pee-wees to the pros.
Courson's book isn't like the one former baseball slugger Jose Canseco wrote last winter. Canseco's book was designed to make money for Canseco and, to accomplish that goal, he had to rat out teammates. So he infamously outed McGwire and Palmeiro, among others. Courson's book didn't name names. He wasn't out for the buck. He merely hoped to educate the public -- especially young athletes -- about the rampant use of steroids and their consequences. It was a mission he pursued the rest of his life through interviews, published articles that he authored, public speaking and testimony at the same set of congressional hearings that disgraced McGwire, the resolutely silent former baseball home run king, and, ultimately, Palmeiro, the finger-pointer.
By no means should Courson be glorified for his steroid use. He always was the first to admit that. If anything, the title of his book indicates he believed the steroids made him a bogus character and his feats of strength on the football field fraudulent.
But Courson does deserve credit for having the strength to go public with his tale, a strength that can't be found in any syringe. It didn't win him any friends around the NFL, especially at Steelers headquarters. The Steelers couldn't have been happy that he wrote that 75 percent of their offensive linemen used steroids in the Super Bowl years and that coach Chuck Noll knew of the widespread use but turned his back to it.
"Disgruntled players throughout the league called us the 'Steroid Team,' as if performance-enhancing drugs were the sole reason for our success," Courson wrote. "The fact is, our [steroid] usage was the same -- give or take -- as most of the NFL teams at that time."
Later, there would be a similar story about baseball from Ken Caminiti, a former National League Most Valuable Player.
And Canseco.
There also would be the BALCO scandal, which forever tarnished Bonds' monstrous home run totals and, more than anything, kicked Congress into action.
But Courson was first in a big way.
Somehow, it's hard to imagine Palmeiro and Bonds doing much grieving over his passing.
(Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1525.)
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