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Except for …
“I operate in a fishbowl,” explains the good doctor. “Everything I do with these celebrity athletes is done in the glare of a national spotlight.”
He has been at the epicenter of two particularly wrenching controversies. In 1998, just months after Paletta became the Cardinals’ head team physician, a reporter espied a bottle of an over-the-counter supplement (androstenedione) in Mark McGwire’s locker stall. That ignited a furious debate over baseball turning a blind eye to a substance banned by the NFL, the NCAA and the Olympics, due to its gateway relationship to anabolic steroids.
Paletta’s public stance was that studies had not yet concluded “andros” to be either harmful or performance enhancing. That said, Paletta strongly recommended children not use the substance.
In the past year, he has testified twice before a federal panel, headed by former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, that is investigating steroid use in baseball. He has appeared as the Cardinals’ medical director and as president of the Major League Baseball Team Physicians’ Association.
So, what precisely should a doctor do if he detects a suggestion of steroid use?
“You can counsel a patient,” says Paletta, “and point out the results of lab tests, discuss the hazards of taking any drug and advise a patient not to take them. But in 10 years as a team doctor (two with the New York Mets, eight with the Cardinals), I have never had a player tell me face to face that he was taking steroids.”
Team doctors are also muzzled by an array of rules controlled by major league contracts, privacy laws and medical ethical codes. Often they cannot vigorously defend themselves when hungry media are clawing for information.
When Cardinal pitcher Darryl Kile died of heart failure in 2002, questions arose about Paletta’s testing methodology. In 1993, when Kile was playing for Houston, his father had a fatal stroke at the age of 44. Paletta insisted that that the stroke suffered by Kile’s father did not compel doctors to screen his son for a potential artery blockage. Some medical experts disagreed in the aftermath of Darryl’s death.
Controversy and second-guessing are part of Paletta’s dream job too.
At Holy Cross, George A. Paletta left an indelible imprint as a student-athlete while foreshowing his enormous success.
As a premed student, he became a Fenwick Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar finalist—and also emerged as a 1984 Division 1 Lacrosse All-American. In 1995, Paletta was inducted into the Varsity Club Hall of Fame—becoming the first lacrosse-only athlete so honored.
Paletta knew in the eighth grade that he wanted to be a doctor—after being treated for a broken leg that was the result of a skiing mishap. An all-around athlete at Fox Lane High in Westchester County, N.Y., he wanted to compete in a varsity sport in college.
“Holy Cross had an excellent premed program, and I figured I could play soccer there. It was a perfect fit,” recalls Paletta.
But premed labs caused Paletta to miss soccer practices, a situation his soccer coach wouldn’t tolerate. So Paletta turned to springtime lacrosse to get his kicks.
“Lacrosse is where I learned the joy of performing as part of a team,” he says. “It is the same camaraderie, the same esprit de corps that I feel in my medical practice today.
“Everything I do is in cohesion with our team of trainers, doctors, nurses, rehab specialists,” Paletta continues. “Our operating room is our clubhouse. There’s a special excitement in achieving something in a group, pulling together toward the same goal.”
As an athlete, Paletta calls himself a late bloomer. After a so-so first year as a midfielder, he came on late in the season to score six of his eight goals as an attacker. Coach Bob Lindsay’s fire was turning the program around as he upgraded the College’s schedule, gaining exposure while taking on the likes of UMass, Harvard and Brown.
Paletta always had excellent speed and his stick skills improved; as a junior, he began to absorb the subtleties of the sport. Now Paletta’s most important asset resided above his shoulders: He could anticipate moves and knew where his teammates expected him to be roaming; his ability to score or set up scores with nifty passes made him a threat on every foray.
Paletta accomplished the amazing—becoming a national star—only the second player in recorded NCAA history to post a 50-goal, 40-assist season. His record of 98 points (52 goals, 46 assists) ranks seventh all-time on the NCAA’s single-season scoring list.
He became a marked man, an All-American. In the North-South Collegiate All-Star Game, Paletta scored two goals playing amongst the nation’s elite.
A few months later, he entered the portals of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
“Holy Cross prepared me, showed me how to achieve my goals,” Paletta says. “Holy Cross was the pathway to my good fortune in life.”
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