Everyone Is Being Dumb About the Fernando Tatís Jr. Suspension
A funny thing that happened in the last week is that everyone became a fucking expert on how to treat ringworm.
Last week, it was announced that Fernando Tatís Jr., the San Diego Padres superstar who has missed all of the 2022 season so far due to a wrist injury sustained in a motorcycle accident during the offseason, tested positive for the banned substance Clostebol, and will be suspended for 80 games whenever he is healthy. Tatís’ explanation for the failed test is that he did not realize the substance was in medication he took as a treatment for ringworm. This explanation was immediately dismissed by almost everyone in baseball as ridiculous.
This weird ritual—a player is linked to PEDs; the player issues some weird, anodyne explanation for that link; the baseball world scoffs at this explanation—has become a depressing dance that we all participate in. For some, there’s almost a competition to see who can be the quickest to dismiss the explanation for the positive test. This time, Jon Heyman of the New York Post cooked up a take about Tatís’ “ridiculous lie”:
“Tatís said he ‘inadvertently’ took the performance enhancing drug Clostebol to treat ringworm, and apparently either he, his agent or his marketing guy thought the world would mistake Clostebol, the synthetic anabolic steroid he was caught with, for Clobetasol, a common drug used to treat skin ailments like eczema and psoriasis that also requires a prescription. Clostebol is never prescribed for skin defects or ringworm. Of course, had there actually been a medical mix-up – extremely unlikely since one is a Schedule 4 anabolic steroid and the other a common corticosteroid – he’d have documentary proof since he’d have the prescription from the doctor.”
Except nowhere in Tatís’ statement does he claim some kind of absurd Clostebol/Clobetasol mixup. Nowhere does he claim a doctor prescribed him the wrong medication, or any medication at all. He simply says, “It turns out that I inadvertently took a medication to treat ringworm that contains Clostebol.”
Many people on Twitter—where you get all the best medical information—were quick to debunk a lie that Tatís never actually told:
In fact, Clostebol IS an ingredient in many over-the-counter skin ointments sold in the Dominican Republic, where Tatís lives. Indeed, Tatís’ father said he used a spray, Trofobol, that does contain Clostebol (not Clobetasol, which both Heyman and Jazayerli baselessly accused Tatís of saying he took) to treat a rash he got from a fungal infection. Of course, this explanation was ALSO roundly mocked, because Tatís Sr. blamed the infection on a haircut his son got; that was, admittedly, a bit weird.
But the story told by the Tatís family (his mother also posted a photo of a rash on his neck) is actually remarkably consistent and plausible: Fernando Tatís Jr. developed a weird rash; not knowing where else it came from, he blamed sitting in a gross barber’s chair; he took some ointment or spray that you can buy easily in his home country; he didn’t think enough of that mundane experience to note every ingredient on the label.
It’s actually the response to this test from the baseball world that has been illogical, implausible, and unfair. Journalists accusing him of telling “ridiculous lies” that he never actually told; dermatologists pretending Clostebol is not in skin creams sold around the world, when it empirically is; fans demanding proof of treatment for a condition as common and insignificant as ringworm. Heck, read this paragraph from an otherwise pretty reasonable story on the subject in the San Diego Union-Tribune:
“When and where was he tested? Tatís is believed to have rehabbed his broken wrist in the States, where over-the-counter ringworm ointments wouldn’t contain clostebol. In defense of her son Friday, Tatís’ mother posted an Instagram photo of a rash on his neck. Did she bring ointment purchased in the Dominican Republic when she visited him? Why not show a picture of that?”
Ah yes, that very normal thing every mother does: Take a picture of some random skin ointment your son used.
Look, I get why nobody wants to point this stuff out. Just because Tatís’ explanation is PLAUSIBLE, doesn’t make it true. Clostebol is an anabolic steroid (although from what I’ve read, it’s a pretty mild one). It was developed to mimic testosterone so that someone using it can put on more muscle. So it’s not crazy to think that Tatís might have been using it for that reason. And given the history of steroids in baseball, I understand why many fans just assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent (unless they like the player, of course, in which case they don’t care).
But I think another reason everyone has been so quick to dismiss Tatís’ explanation is what it would mean to accept him at his word. Because if we acknowledge that his story is perfectly plausible, then we have to acknowledge that it’s perfectly plausible for players to test positive for “performance-enhancing drugs” when they haven’t actually tried to enhance their performance. We might wonder why baseball is banning a substance commonly found in skin sprays easily obtainable in South America, Europe, and Central America. If there’s no way to tell whether a drug in your system came from cheating or some banal, over-the-counter skin medicine, then we will inevitably end up punishing people who took the latter for the sins of the former.
These are the consequences of baseball’s drug regime. When you build a system to police what people can and cannot do to their own bodies, you will end up punishing people for arbitrary reasons like taking the wrong skin cream. This is a discomfiting fact, so it’s easier to simply assume Tatís is lying. And that might be right! But what do you think the odds are that everyone punished by MLB’s drug testing system is guilty? Or that everyone not punished is innocent? And are you comfortable with those odds?
When you build a regime to police what people do with their bodies, it is tempting to shut your eyes and plug your ears to what that really entails. It’s tempting to imagine a system with no arbitrary punishments or creeping surveillance or draconian penalties. It is tempting to assume that any injustices created by that regime are lies. In some specific cases, you may be right—but that doesn’t make the system a moral one.