Now, for those of you who want to have an honest discussion about drug-testing, let's take a look at what actually happened yesterday evening when the Phillies announced that rookie infielder Freddy Galvis had been suspended for a drug test that revealed traces of the banned drug Clostebol in his system. A urine sample provided by a utility man who was hitting .226 with a .254 on-base percentage and three home runs returned a positive test that, according to a 2004 study, could have been caused by contaminated meat, contaminated medicine, or a woman's vagina that that had been contaminated with contaminated medicine. The positive test also could have been caused by a light-hitting utility man's decision to ingest an illegal anabolic drug in the hopes of improving his performance and securing a permanent spot on a major league roster.
The reality is that none of us knows anything beyond what the drug test revealed, which, according to a statement issued by Galvis, was a trace amount of Clostebol. The exact amount, according to the player, was 80 parts per trillion, which is the rough equivalent of a drop of ink that has been diluted into 12 million gallons of water. Relatively speaking, such an amount would be at the far end of detectable levels.
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