[Vision2020] The Buried Story of the Steroid Scandal (Bob Schieffer)

[Tom Hansen]

>From Bob Schieffer's closing commentary on today's (December 16, 2007)
edition of "Face the Nation" -

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The Buried Story of the Steroid Scandal
By Bob Schieffer

When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a ballplayer. 

We didn't have coaches back then until we got to high school. We learned the
game from each other and from copying the major leaguers. We copied
everything from their swings to the way they walked. 

Because they chewed tobacco, I chewed. It was part of the game. 

My dream to be a ballplayer ended but it left me with a heavy addiction to
nicotine. 

Years ago, I finally beat it, but it was probably the reason I have a
disease called ulcerative colitis, and almost certainly the cause for my
bladder cancer decades later. 

I still take drugs to control the colitis. Surgery got the cancer. 

But I can only thank the stars there were no steroids in my younger days. 

My baseball dream ended when I hurt my arm in high school and it finally
gave out during my first year of college ball. 

Had I known of a magic potion that would have made me stronger and kept the
dream alive, I would have been no more hesitant to try it than I had been to
chew tobacco. If my heroes had done it, that was all I needed to know. 

The baseball stars got their names in the paper last week but we buried the
lead to this story. Deep in the report it said hundreds of thousands of kids
- kids who have the same dream I had - are putting their lives at risk using
this stuff. 

Who do we blame for that? Where are they getting it? How can their parents
and even coaches NOT know? 

That's where the follow-up stories should begin.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown