Photo by IYM via Flickr

A week ago, Yanina Wickmayer, the world’s 16th-best female tennis player (according to rankings) was suspended for violating a portion of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code. To be clear, no one has directly accused Wickmayer — who, at 20, had a breakthrough run in this year’s U.S. Open — of using a performance-enhancing substance. Nope. What’s got officials miffed is the fact that the Belgian phenom broke the agency’s reporting rules, according to ESPN, “three times within an 18-month period.” If you believe Wickmayer, the year-long suspension was the undeserved result of a rules mix-up and a few crossed e-mails and postal wires. If you believe the World Governing Body of Tennis, “[i]t is recognised [sic] and accepted that No Advance Notice Out-of-Competition Testing is at the core of effective Doping Control, and without accurate information as to a player’s whereabouts, such testing can be inefficient and often impossible” — so Wickmayer’s failure in this regard is detrimental to the anti-doping movement. Either way, Wickmayer’s punishment and that of fellow Belgian Xavier Malisse — who was found guilty of the same bureaucratic oversight — came as a surprise, and there has been some speculation that the harsh penalties they received were more directed at a former player than anyone currently touring.

In so doing, the various sporting powers that be have given sports fans another reason to question the purpose of WADA — and, really, why, in the face of such ridiculousness as that which Wickmayer and Malisse have fallen victim to, any of us spectators should care at all about whether or not players in any sport engage in doping.

In the United States, questions about performance-enhancing drugs begin with Lyle Alzado. Alzado was a defensive linemen for the NFL’s Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns, and — most memorably — the Oakland Raiders. He died at the age of 43 in 1992, after a battle with brain lymphoma, a rare form of cancer that he blamed on his use of anabolic steroids. As ESPN put it, “ Although there is no medical link between steroids and brain lymphoma…[h]e became a symbol of the dangers of steroid abuse.” Eventually, the NFL began testing and suspending players for the use of a host of so-called “banned substances.” The fallout from that program — instituted here for the sake of saving future Alzados, even if the real solution to football’s heath crisis has little to do with anabolics — has lead to multiple four-game suspensions for players who, like Wickmayer and Malisse, don’t necessarily test positive for a performance-enhancing drug (PED). Diuretics, for example — which the NFL considers to be evidence of guilty system flushing — seem to lead to more penalties than PEDs themselves.

Next up was baseball, which — thanks to the efforts of Jose Canseco — eventually found itself before Congress. When it did, the question wasn’t so much who was using but who wasn’t. And, as repeated leaks from a 2003 positive test list seemed to be confirmed by ritualized mea culpa after ritualized mea culpa, it indeed became apparent that — among stars at least — baseball’s collective use of PEDs was rampant. Still, even after all of this reckoning, the lingering effect isn’t one that will ensure a level playing field for future generations. Rather, it is the assumption that the multi-millionaires who benefit from performance enhancement will find ways around whatever testing protocol is instituted, no matter how rigorous it is; an air of suspicion that brings on the sort of Kafka-esque environment where non-PED using athletes find themselves condemned for small bureaucratic infractions — and the real WADA targets get away with their drug use.

Just to be clear: This goes for every sport. Wickmayer, Malisse, and Joselio Hanson of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles have all, in the past week, found themselves suspended for the mere appearance of improper medical enhancement. This, while two weeks ago, two admitted steroid users helped lead their team to baseball’s world championship. Until WADA and the various sports governing bodies that subscribe to its program can figure out a way to evenly, fairly, and responsibly enforce anti-doping rules, there seems to be no reason that any one should trust their rulings. And because science will no doubt provide athletes intent on finding a way to artificially enhance their respective performances a way to do so ahead of whatever testing there is to stop such activity, it seems as though the only folks who’ll get caught up in all of this are (and will be) innocent of any direct PED crime.  Which is to say that maybe, we’d all be better off without any of it.

In December of 2003, the New York Times reported on what would be a controversial advance for the 2004 Major League Baseball season. “Major League Baseball officials tried to turn [umpires] into scientists using the Umpire Information System, a technology made by a Deer Park, N.Y., company called QuesTec,” wrote Hugo Lindgren. And though the QuesTec devices would never be used to call balls and strikes, baseball executives would use them “to measure the overall reliability of its human umpires” — effectively creating a technological check on an umpire’s strike zone. The most human component of the game — a sometimes arbitrary enforcement of a key, otherwise-neutral factor was, after more than a century, facing the prospect of becoming standardized. It was an early manifestation of what will almost assuredly be a key sporting debate over the next few decades: If the technology exists to really, truly make the calls that can turn a team or player into or away from glory a neutral factor, why not replace those eminently fallible umpires, referees, and line judges with as many computer-based devices as possible?

More recently, the drama caused at the U.S. Open by Serena Williams would seem to argue for some kind of breakthrough in tennis-umpiring technology; if the line judge that so pissed off Williams had been an invisible hard drive, one could argue that the confrontation that handed the match to her opponent would have never taken place. And as perfectly calibrated and emotionless as such a machine might be, it would also — thanks to all of that — erase what so many of us like watching sports for: the unpredictable outcomes. Obviously, computerized officiating would likely have very little effect on, say, something like the BYU over Oklahoma upset that sent shockwaves through the college football world on the first weekend of the 2009 season. Nor is it likely that iRef would have stopped the Golden State Warriors from beating the Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 NBA playoffs. But it would iron out a few other kinks, without which sports fans would lead less rich lives.

Game three of the 1975 World Series: Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and the Red Sox against Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and their Big Red Machine. Before Fisk’s iconic home run wave, he was involved in another game-winning play — only there, he wasn’t on the victorious side. The Wikipedia run-down goes like this: “In the 10th inning, Cincinnati Reds hitter Ed Armbrister laid down a sacrifice bunt, and then collided with…catcher…Fisk who was trying to field the ball. Fisk committed a throwing error on the play after colliding with Armbrister, which led to the Reds’ winning run. [Umpire] Barnett declined to make an interference call on Armbrister, despite Boston’s pleas. Barnett’s failure to call an interference was criticized by some as wrong-headed and indefensible.” And, in this Red Sox fans’ eyes, they were — and it most certainly impacted the course of the series. But (and this is, admittedly, easy for someone who’s only ever seen this series on tape to say), it is part of the game.

Besides, not only does this stuff eventually even out (thanks, Joe West), it adds an element of unpredictability to the event. If the Sox had won in ‘75, it would have been a surprise: The Reds had won 108 ballgames, featured an imposing line-up, and were squaring-off against a Sox team that was short on quality pitching and, for the series, a key hitter in the recently injured Jim Rice. But it wouldn’t have been a totally unpredictable happening. On the other hand, no one — no one — could have figured on Armbrister, Fisk, and Barnett.

Let’s face it: Most of us watch sports for the drama — the storyline. And though we’re sometimes satisfied with the unchecked slaughter of a blow-out, if we’re honest with ourselves, most sports fans would prefer to be perched on the edge of their seats, ringing our sweaty palms about the smallest of margins. (There’s a reason we call the close ones great games.) When those impartial judges add to our anxiety — or worse, single-handedly bury our team — we hate it. We call for blood. And we are rewarded with the rush of adrenaline that we were after when we turned on the television. A balls-and-strikes verification system might ensure fairness, but it also makes things that much more boring.