Andy McCullough, The Star Ledger

August 8, 2009

Andy McCullough
The Star Ledger
One Star Ledger
Newark, New Jersey 07102

RE: Steroids and other drugs

Mr. McCullough,

I’m a transplanted Jersey guy, born and raised in Bayonne. I check the Irish sports pages in the Jersey Journal and the Star Ledger to see who finished the back nine.

Your story on David Ortiz and steroids caught my eye, so to speak. That’s why I am writing. I had eye surgery this week. Since I had it I choose not to call it “minor”. I borrow this non-designation from Dennis Miller who once said on Monday Night Football that “there is no such thing as minor groin surgery”.

Part of the post operative treatment is 4x daily dosage of both eyes with steroids. Does that mean that I can no longer watch any baseball on TV or is it limited just to the Red Sox?

One of my daughter’s degrees is in nursing. She practices in Texas as a Labor and Delivery nurse. She has 3 daughters, one of whom has some breathing difficulties. When it passes the norm the first thing she does is to dose her nasally with steroid spray. She then follows up with pills the size of wing nuts containing, you guessed it, steroids. Does that mean that my granddaughter shouldn’t breathe out?

My father told me glorious tales of Babe Ruth tossing down tumblers of Tom Collins’s at Donohoe’s on Route 23. It was 2 miles North of where the Willowbrook Mall is today. The Bambino dumped the froth, the oranges, the ice, and the liquor straight down his Hall of Fame yaw. Does that mean we should ban gin?

OOPS! Wait a minute. We tried that once. It didn’t work.

How many Babe Ruth home runs should we take off the board because he used an illegal substance?

How many Bobby Layne wins should we redact because he used a legal substance to excess?

Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb used marijuana and heroin. Should we take back the 2 NFL championships the Colts won with him on the team?





If I inject a bagful of industrial strength steroids through an IV how many pedestrians will I run down after I disconnect the needle and drive to the stadium?

Adults are responsible for their actions. I understand that if steroids are used to excess your testicles shrivel up. If David Ortiz still fell for the siren song of the Green Monster who am I to say he is wrong.

Reductio ad absurdum…If he had pneumonia should he denied penicillin in that it is not a substance found in nature? Try as I might I cannot find any pictures of ACE Bandage bushes. Deep tissue massages would be suspect in that teams that don’t use them would be at a disadvantage.

I am scheduled for a cortisone shot in my ailing knee. It is a reminder of a high school football injury that happened in 1960. If I take the juice injection will I be banned from doing my traditional hop, skip, and jump when I return to Bayonne?



Kevin Smith


PS – All drugs are toxic. It depends on the dosage.