Steroid scandals:the view from the kids' locker room

As a bona fide hockey dad, Steve Becker has some responsibilities: For one, he's had to restrain his own aggressive play on the ice to make sure his three hockey-playing sons get the right message about sportsmanship.

But currently, he's getting little help from his kids' other role models. Like millions of other dads, Mr. Becker, a seafood wholesaler from Apex, N.C., spent last week harrumphing as he watched ESPN with his boys, who range in age from 12 to 16. As allegations around the BALCO steroid scandal touched the heights of baseball and track, Becker had to try to explain not only how badly athletes cheat when they take steroids, but also why so many people are defending them.

"They see everything, so I've had to think a lot harder about what I do," says Becker. "But it's a lot harder when nobody else seems to care that much when these sports heroes cheat."

Many Americans do care, but for others a quiet acceptance of "steroid heroes" is on the rise, and the shift is clear even to the youngest wide-eyed fans - captives of an age that's always full of hurdles and shifting ideas of right and wrong.

Nearly half a million middle- and high-schoolers admit to at least trying anabolic steroids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Experts say that middle-school boys - 1 in 3 of whom reads the sports section at least once a week and 87 percent of whom watch the NFL - are taking cues from the BALCO backlash. Along with memorizing earned-run averages and plus-minuses, they're learning the intricacies of blood counts and "masking agents," struggling to parse society's growing acceptance of cheating for success.

That's not to say there hasn't been outrage. The potential impact of high-profile steroid abuse has garnered attention on all levels: President Bush called for baseball to take stronger action against steroids in his State of the Union address last January, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona has proposed antisteroids legislation. In a recent Gallup Poll, 86 percent of baseball fans called for more stringent steroid tests in time for the 2005 season. And 59 percent of those surveyed said that they'd support congressional legislation if players and owners can't agree on new rules.

"The kids are all watching ESPN, they tune in every night, and they come to school and talk about it," says Michael Holton, principal of East Garner Middle School outside Raleigh. "All kids know is that Barry Bonds looks good, he's huge, he's muscular, he hits the ball a mile, and they wonder: Can I do that same thing by just injecting myself?"

It's a question being posed in poster-bedecked bedrooms and hallway huddles across America. Parents, grandparents, and teachers are still the ones whom most kids ultimately look to for deeper clues about ethics and citizenship. Yet in a country that's debating whether to even put an asterisk next to Bonds' name in the record books, many experts say it's imperative that the steroid-free ideal of sportsmanship remain sacrosanct.

"Sport is the one area where there's still resistance to the idea that anything that makes our life easier, faster, quicker, more efficient is better," says Dr. J. Nadine Gelberg of Rochester, N.Y., who studies the impact of technology on sports. "We still have wooden bats. So, in that way, sport is kind of a bastion of protecting these core values, but the steroid issue is proof that the bastion is struggling."

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