Alex RodriguezA respected orthopedic surgeon by day, baseball coach to his 7-year-old son Nolan in his spare time, Dr. Matt Bernard is understandably concerned about the threat of performance-enhancing drugs.
“I hope they clean it up, completely get rid of it before Nolan might be tempted to make that choice,” Bernard said Tuesday evening, one day after 13 major leaguers — including New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez — received significant suspensions due to PEDs.
“But I don’t think making an example of one player (A-Rod) will get steroids out of baseball. The only way to really get rid of PEDs is to test every player three or four times a year, and if you’re caught one time you don’t play anymore.”
It makes sense, even if it might be hard to convince the major league players union to agree to so harsh a penalty. But Bernard also comes to this conclusion from a more experienced perspective than most. The California native once played the sport at a pretty high level, becoming a walk-on pitcher at Alabama in the late 1990s.
“I threw 84-85 miles per hour,” he said. “I knew I was never going to make it to the majors with that kind of stuff. But what if I’d needed just one or two miles an hour more on my fastball to reach the big leagues? I’d like to think I wouldn’t have used steroids, even though I knew guys who did.