The Biogenesis Lie

"That was just really recklessness, you know," Victor Conte, founder of BALCO laboratories and current CEO of SNAC System, Inc. told VICE Sports. "You've got to be pretty dumb to get caught as a Major League Baseball player, let's put it that way."

Two years ago last Friday, ESPN's Outside The Lines released a bombshell report that Major League Baseball was prepared to suspend "about 20 players" for their connections to Biogenesis, the Miami-based clinic out of which Tony Bosch was supplying players—and many other customers—with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Over the next two months, MLB suspended 14 players, including five All-Stars—Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta and Everth Cabrera. That's not counting the players like Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal who were suspended for positive drug tests in the years prior to the Biogenesis bust and effectively given "time served" sentences.

Lest we forget, the entirety of the Biogenesis storyline dating back to Ryan Braun's eventually overturned positive testosterone test in October 2011 has been filled with dumb men making even dumber decisions. There was Melky Cabrera's fake supplement website, a $10,000 ruse meant to fool MLB and the MLBPA into thinking his spiked testosterone levels were the result of an honest mistake with a weird powder. There was Braun's attempt to smear the courier who misplaced his tainted urine sample as both a Cubs fan and an anti-semite. There was Porter Fischer, the man who turned Bosch in over a $4,000 debt but had the smoking records stolen out of his own car while he was stuck in a tanning booth. And there was everybody's willingness to trust Bosch—a man with repeated failures in the business world; a supposed doctor lacking a medical degree, whose only training took place at the Belizean equivalent of the Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.

Still, MLB dropped the hammer on the players. The 14 suspensions were the most from any case since the league started its performance-enhancing drug program in 2005. Penalties for getting caught were increased, too: first-time offenses went from 50 to 80 games, while second-time offenses went from 100 games to an entire season. Any offender caught doping is now ineligible for that year's playoffs, no matter when the infraction occurs. This was a new era: baseball was getting tough on PED users.

Two years later, it's hard to tell if anything has actually changed.

Five Major Leaguers were busted for positive tests for performance enhancers in April alone. Meanwhile, the stars who were suspended are doing, well, just fine. Nelson Cruz earned a four-year, $57 million contract with the Mariners this past offseason after leading the majors with 40 home runs in 2014, and is atop the leaderboards again in 2015 with 18 thus far. Rodriguez has returned from a power-sapping hip injury to mash 12 home runs and pass Willie Mays on the all-time home run list. Braun returned from a brutal April slump to hit .273/.368/.545 with seven home runs and five stolen bases in May. Peralta, in the second year of a four-year, $53 million contract, has been the best-hitting shortstop in the National League and could make his third All-Star game in the past five years this July.

Shortly after the Biogenesis suspensions were carried out, Conte appeared on Jim Rome's show and claimed 50 percent of MLB players were doping at some point during the calendar year. Conte says he still believes this to be true. "The largest loophole is the lack of out-of-competition testing during the offseason," Conte says. "Now, the way it works is these baseball players during the offseason use an intensive weight-training program in conjunction with a variety of PEDs, including testosterone and others, and this helps them for the period of three to four months to develop a strength and speed base that serves them through the entire season."

Major League Baseball's joint drug agreement only allows for 350 players—just under 30 percent of the league's 1200-strong active roster—to be tested during the offseason. Conte says the actual number being tested is closer to 50 or 60. "When the fish are biting, so to speak," Conte says, "is during the offseason, and Major League Baseball knows this. Then why aren't they putting their hook and line and pole in the pond when they know the fish are biting? Instead, they're doing the equivalent of reeling in their hook and line and leaning their pole up against the tree, and putting their straw hat on and taking a nap."

Conte cited other issues as well. Testosterone ratio testing can be beaten by injectable testosterone pellets. Boxer Lamont Peterson was below the allowable 4-1 T-E (testosterone to epitestosterone) when he tested positive, caught by carbon isotope ratio (CIR) testing in 2012. Under the language of the joint drug agreement, players cannot be tested unless they are at the ballpark, giving them windows to use fast-acting testosterone candies or lozenges. Unless they are somehow targeted—something players like David Ortiz and Jose Bautista have alleged and that Conte confirmed happens—players consider their second drug test of the year as a green light to dope with impunity. MLB refuses to increase its use of the superior CIR testing due to its higher costs.

All this leads Conte to say, "I think there's a lack of genuine interest in catching these players." The upshot of the Biogenesis scandal was supposed to be its deterrent effect on players going forward. But as new steroid cases continue to pile up and the offenders continue to rake in money—Braun, Cruz, Peralta and Rodriguez are owed a combined $206.75 million for the 2016 season and beyond—perhaps we should ask, what exactly about this drug program is supposed to stop the players? Why does it exist, other than to protect MLB's brand?

I asked Conte if MLB's pursuance of the Biogenesis documents and the suspensions levied for non-analytic positives changed anything in the so-called fight against performance enhancing drugs. "You're talking about because they have an investigative team, they might find records, stuff like that?" Conte asked. "My opinion is that it's more propaganda than anything else. They're trying to send a message, you know, but they more or less had to do this because it was so obvious what was going on. There were four positive drug tests," Conte said, referring to Braun, Cabrera, Colon and Grandal, "that would make you try to see, wow, they're all testing positive for synthetic testosterone. So there was, at least, enough positive drug tests for investigators to attempt to connect the dots."

MLB's pursuit of Bosch and Biogenesis didn't begin in earnest until after Ryan Braun and his legal team put the league's drug testing program to shame by winning the appeal of his October 2011 positive. Then, and only then, did MLB send its investigative team—most of whom were fired after significant allegations of misconduct—after Biogenesis. MLB spent nearly $1 million on bodyguards for Tony Bosch and another $125,000 to steal the clinic's records out of Fischer's car, filed a frivolous lawsuit in an attempt to obtain the records, and then offered Bosch, who was dealing to high schoolers as well as professional athletes, immunity in exchange for his testimony.

And yet the policy, despite all its flaws, works well enough from a business standpoint. Major League Baseball teams saved over $30 million in recovered salaries from the suspended players. Nelson Cruz was voted into the 2014 All-Star Game by Orioles fans and is the leading AL designated hitter candidate for this year's midsummer classic,. Brewers fans gave Ryan Braun a standing ovation when he returned for the 2014 opener, Jhonny Peralta would be the National League's starting shortstop as of today, and Yankees fans are ready to #Forg1v3 Rodriguez now that he's the team's best hitter again.

So we'll keep doing this dance, where star players beat a doping system that's designed to be beaten, MLB acts shocked when somebody pisses hot, and everybody gets outraged for a couple months. Meanwhile, the hammer will continue to be dropped primarily on minor leaguers and foreign players lacking union protection, their salaries will be taken and their careers will be ended all in the name of protecting the brand, and performance-enhancing drugs will remain rampant in baseball, and more importantly, unregulated. This is the status quo in sports drug testing, and it's one where the only winners are the team owners and executives, who have emerged from Biogenesis, as always, unscathed.