Will baseball's new lesson on PEDs stick with kids?

Tommy Wolf would still wear his Ryan Braun jersey to Miller Park in Milwaukee, but it wouldn’t mask the sting of the idolized outfielder’s suspension and subsequent lying about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Wolf, a star pitcher at a suburban Milwaukee high school, says he understands the pressure Braun may have felt to use the drugs, and recognizes some of it himself, but doesn’t believe any of his peers would take that route.

"I think, as a high school player, especially if I want to get to the next level as a college player and then maybe the next level after that, becoming a professional athlete, obviously you want to become bigger, better and faster," said Wolf, 17. "Personally, I don't think (it's happening at my school). That would be pretty major if kids at my high school were doing stuff. From what I know, I know kids at my age are doing whatever they can to make themselves better in that area."

The high-profile suspensions of Braun and Alex Rodriguez, among others, are meant to clean up the game and preserve its integrity, sending a message that there is no room for those who cheat or lie. Major League Baseball has been down this road before, but the new public outcry from fans and players may point to a real change in how PEDs and those who use them are perceived. Still, for millions of young fans and aspiring athletes, the damage may have already been done.

Observers say, despite a lack of definitive data, that as many as 2 million young athletes from middle school to college age are regular users of PEDs, with at least one activist going so far as to call it an "epidemic."

"The pressures on athletes at every level, including our youth, are as high as they've ever been to win at all costs, and that results in the huge temptation to use dangerous performance-enhancing drugs," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, whose investigation led to Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France championships.

Human-growth hormones (most notably testosterone), anabolic and androgenic steroids and even over-the-counter dietary supplements are substances designed to help athletes get bigger, stronger and faster. But they also carry risks that include potentially inducing cancer; wreaking havoc with the endocrine system; damaging the liver and kidneys, leading to enlarged hearts and other organs; infertility; and even suicide.

Don Hooton -- whose son Taylor, a high school baseball player, committed suicide 10 years ago after taking PEDs for less than six months -- points to studies that show nearly 6 percent of boys and more than 4.5 percent of girls use them regularly.

"If this were a disease, we would be calling this an epidemic," said Hooton, who established a foundation named for his son that does significant outreach to warn athletes, coaches, school administrators and parents about the dangers of PED use.

Hooton said that when doctors prescribe anabolic steroids for legitimate medical use, a normal dosage is about five to 10 milligrams per day.

"A doctor from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York found that the average steroid user is taking 3,000 milligrams of steroids a week," he said. "I tell those stories at doctors’ conferences, and they look at me and say, 'That's enough to kill somebody.' Of course it is!"

Yet there is little oversight or effort by federal or state organizations to crack down on the problem, particularly in schools, Hooton said.

"You think back to the (Major League Baseball) hearings in 2005 and all of the congressmen and the grandstanding in front of TV cameras, and it all became about the kids before the day was over,” said Hooton, who was recently chosen as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Sports Educators in America by the Institute for International Sports. “Eight years later, they've done nothing."

When Braun was suspended in July for PED use, for the second time in 19 months -- the first, prior to the 2012 season, was overturned by an arbitrator -- several fellow players criticized him publicly, breaking a generally accepted code of silence.

"As a player who never took PEDs or steroids, it’s upsetting that (PED users) take away from those guys who bust their butts in the gym and play the game clean," said Los Angeles Dodgers star outfielder Matt Kemp -- who finished second to Braun for the Most Valuable Player title in 2011 -- to Sports Illustrated. "You don’t like getting lied to."

While some parents have used the high-profile suspensions to begin a conversation with their children about PEDs, Hooton said the media hype about the suspensions highlights the problem.

"Think of the energy that was spent discussing the 13 professional ballplayers (who were suspended for PED use), all the time on talk radio, on TV and in newspapers and everything else. But we've got 1.5 million kids doing that," he said. "If I could only dream of having just one week where we could focus just that level of attention on the 1.5 million that are using these drugs. Why are we wasting our time on these blanking athletes? In the broader scope of things, who cares?"

In the Milwaukee area, where Braun has been an icon since he was named Rookie of the Year in 2007, the suspension hit particularly hard.

"I was fairly disappointed, not only as a player but also as a person I looked up to," said Wolf, the high school pitcher. "He was a very good role model, in my opinion. He's very successful, presents himself well. When I found this out, I was pretty devastated. In Milwaukee, even kids younger than me look up to him.

"Pretty much everybody was against what he did. People would say the only reason he took the PEDs were to make his recovery (from injuries) quicker; that was their only defense for him. Either way, it's still illegal … He really represented the state of Wisconsin pretty badly."

Veteran Milwaukee-area prep and college baseball coach John Meulendyke said he sees the tide turning as a result of the new round of suspensions and public reactions from players such as Kemp and Schumaker.

"It seems like they really want to get the game cleaned up. It sounds from the talk of some of the analysts that it used to be the best thing not to say anything about it, and if you said something about it, you were kind of an outcast,” Meulendyke said. “Now it seems if you're doing it, you're an outcast and you need to be saying something against it. I think that's the bigger message that's being sent to kids -- that this is looked down upon by many people, and many people in the league. The kids are hearing that, and I think they recognize that."

While there is seemingly not a PED problem at her son's school, Lisa Wolf -- Tommy’s mother and a veteran teacher -- said even if there was, parents might not recognize the signs.

"It's usually the parents that find out about it last, where kids are doing things and they don't know about it," she said. "The biggest disappointment, from a parent standpoint and also as a teacher, I see in Ryan Braun is because he lied."

Wolf admonished Braun for still not discussing his suspension openly in the media since he was suspended July 22. She added that doing so might even be cathartic.

"Fess up to your bad choice,” she said. “He did cheat. Come out and say, ‘I was a decent ballplayer and I made a bad choice, I'm sorry and let's move on, I need to rectify it and here's how I'm going to do it: I'm going to stop it, be a proponent against PEDs, I'm going to donate money towards drug rehab,’ or whatever the case may be."

Wolf counts herself among those parents who think Braun’s case could be a springboard for conversations and awareness about PEDs, and who wish schools would deal with PED use in the same way they have drawn awareness to concussions in sports.

"At the high school level, my son plays soccer and baseball, and the big thing right now is concussions," she said. "So whenever your child goes out for a sport, (parents) have to sign a waiver and watch a video on the dangers of concussions. I think they should do the same thing with PEDs, whether it's a tutorial or we have to watch something. I think they should be educating us more as parents."

One of the largest PED scandals in sports occurred in 2010 at the University of Waterloo, near Toronto. After arrests of two football players who had a large cache of steroids, all 68 of the team’s players were tested for PEDs and nine produced positive results. In response, school officials shut down the football program for an entire year.

"The silver lining, if there is such a thing with Major League Baseball, is that we may be reaching a tipping point in professional sports," said University of Waterloo athletic director Bob Copeland. "One is consequences. With A-Rod, specifically, this is starting to hit him in the pocketbook and is sending a strong signal to others.

"When you look at the stance of the commissioner, that's a very, very strong stance. That, together with the peer group, is going to make a difference. You can't idolize these people; you need to turn your back on them."