Posted on 12/13/2007 7:18:21 AM PST by Hemingway's Ghost
This just ran across the ESPN News scroll...
"A source close to a former Yankees strength trainer tells ESPN The Magazine's Shawn Assael that the trainer told Mitchell investigators he supplied Roger Clemens with steroids; information supplied by this trainer is in the Mitchell report. According to one industry official who spoke to [the] Bergen Record, 'several' prominent Yankees will be named in the Mitchell report."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
What I don't understand what is so fundamentally wrong with Rodney Harrison taking HGH to recover from a major injury. Why shouldn't we allow pitchers to use HGH to recover from shoulder problems? And if we find HGH doesn't cause major health problems, why shouldn't athletes be able to use it to get stronger? How is it any different than getting a B-12 shot, a cortisone shot, or taking creatine? How is it any different from drinking protein shakes?
The day is approaching that a steroid will come about that won't have many side effects when used properly. When that day arrives, why shouldn't ball players be able to use it?
The reality of why HGH is against the rules in sports is because so many players started using them for their similarity to steroids in over all effect and their lack of detectability. Had they not been introduced to sports as basically a steroid substitute, if instead they’d come in from the medical side as a good healing regimen, they probably wouldn’t be against the rules. Eventually they’re probably going to dump all these rules because they’re basically unmanageable, somebody is always going to find a way to make an undetectable variant, and somebody is always going to be willing to take them. And, sadly, in the end performance enhancers give the audience more of what they want, we watch sports for the performance, if it wasn’t for the side effects of the methods it’s hard to argue that enhanced performances are a bad thing.
I wonder if ol’ Rog was experiencing ‘roid rage’ as he got into a beef with a police officer in a bar during the 90s. He skated on that charge.
The appeal of steroids will always be there, these guys have millions of dollars on the line, and alot of the guys in the minors are willing to trade years of their life to make it to the majors. It's going to happen, and the steroid creators will forever be a step ahead of the test makers. We're better of finding something thats safe and allowing players to take it.
Do you think Selig gets it?
This got silly a long time ago. You could have dropped it way back on 119, but upped the ante with this "same thing" crap, and the only reason you're still talking about it is because you have a hangup about admitting you're wrong, or at least retreating gracefully. You're as out of the ballpark as Mickey Mantle's biggest home run.
Your second paragraph just repeats what you said in your last posting with added rants against owners, and since I already replied to that in my last, I won't bother to repeat myself.
Discostu said:You admitted you came back to the game between BEFORE the steroid rules became useful, interestingly enough that was also the time when the press first started hounding the MLB about steroids. If steroid were actually an issue for you, you would have waited until AFTER the MLB started testing and punishing players for using them. You couldn’t possibly have started watching baseball during the 2000 season and not know there was a steroid problem and that the MLB was doing absolutely nothing about it. Yet you came back to the game anyway, clearly the steroid issue didn’t matter to you.
100% chop logic, Stu. It's pretty nutty to declare what did or didn't mean anything to me when you know only the slimmest facts on the matter. I came back in October 2000 when my interest was perked by the Subway World Series that year. I'm not a New Yorker, but there hadn't been one of those since the 1950s, and that got my interest. It wasn't one of the great World Series, but I enjoyed it and it reminded me how fun the game was. I watched regularly from then on.
You claim that the press started hounding MLB about it around that time. If they did, I don't remember it, and I read a lot of baseball coverage from that point out. The main outrage about steroids came from fellow fans, whom I read and talked to on forums and message boards. In spite of that, there was a lot of denial. I can remember virtually no one who maintained that steroid use was "no big deal," that "there's no punishments for it so really it's okay for anyone to use it." They either denied steroid use was occurring, or if they had good eyes maintained it was, but lacked real evidence to prove it. And oh, did they get chewed up for it, for accusing players of using without any smoking gun. Barry Bonds's steroid use hopefully seems obvious in retrospect, but if you brought it up in 2001 you'd get hammered with "Where's your proof?" "It's normal for guys to get bigger in their 30s" "Hank Aaron hit the most home runs of his career at the age of 37" "Zack Wheat had his best years at the end of his career" "It's unjust to accuse someone with no real proof". That's the state of steroids in baseball at that point. Not indifference. Denial.
In truth, press attention to the issue during those years prior to "Juiced" was pathetic. Columnists like Buster Olney have admitted as much. It was only fans that were pushing the issue, and they were a select group. Most people seemed to be in denial, and to see this you only have to look in the archives of someplace like rec.sport.baseball.
My analogy is imperfect, I grant, since I didn't own MLB like I owned that car, but your conception of "free market logic" as it applies to steroids and baseball is more so. It sets up a false either/or of steroids v. baseball when the choice was never that. It was a time of ignorance, strident denial, and people hoping to return things to even keel, which eventually resolved itself in a consensus determination to purge the sport of performance enhancing drugs, and the sport has flourished.
There is a book out on the physics of baseball - I don’t have it but I read it in the book store while my wife shopped one day. According to the book, the reason why pitchers lose speed as they age has little to do with muscles. Much of the speed of a fastball is because of the snap of the arm, which comes from flexibility of ligaments. As we age, ligaments get less flexible, hence less snap. I don’t see how roids affects this.....else they’d recruit pitchers at weightlifting competitions. I think it’s quite possible that Clemens juiced, but adding muscle shouldn’t add MPH. His exercise regimen may have more affect on ligament flexibility than the steroids - seems to me that some others who kept their speed into old age (Ryan & Steve Carlton come to mind) were also workout fanatics. Haven’t heard if Randy Johnson works out, other than horizontally......
Nope you’re the one that keeps obsessing, I already gave you the “sacred” thing, but I’m still pointing out that even without the word “sacred” your statement that baseball rules were important is wrong. And you keep dodging that by continuing to harp on “sacred”.
The fact remain, there was no detection and no punishment in the original steroid rules, so until 2002 for all intents and purposes there were no steroid rules. And that wasn’t a rant, that was a fact. The MLBPA objected to making the steroid rules useful and the owners rolled over, calling facts rants doesn’t change them.
Pure REAL logic. Steroid were publicly a problem that the MLB was publicly doing absolutely NOTHING about. Yet you came back to the game. And now you declare it was important to you. The precious subway series featured roided players vs roided players, if you thought roids were a problem then why did you watch? Obvious answer: you didn’t think they were important, you just wanted to watch some baseball. And there’s nothing wrong with that, the problem comes in when you now start to pretend you have a problem with roids in baseball.
The press started making a big stink about roids in 2000, conveniently after the home run derby. That again is historical fact. There’s still people that claim Bonds didn’t do roids, the existence of idiots living in denial proves nothing. Although in 2001 any one wanting proof was especially stupid since the MLB was deliberately trying not to get proof of roid use by anyone.
Any patheticness by the press on the roid issue was far exceeded by patheticness by the owners and PA. It was pressure from the press that finally got them to start testing. Too bad they didn’t include testing and punishment in the original rule, then none of this BS would have happened and there’d be no Mitchell report.
There’s nothing false about it. If company A has a business practice you don’t like but you patronize them anyway then it obviously isn’t that big a deal to you. It is either or, you are either telling them what they’re doing is OK by supporting them with money or you aren’t. There’s no middle ground here, if you give company A money you are tacitly informing them that all of their business practices are fine as far as your concerned. There’s no reason for them to change their practices if they’re making the money. If you want them to stop you have to take away the money supply. It is the most basic simple logic of capitalism. The carrot is the money, the stick is the lack of it, you’re giving them one or the other. The only ignorance in that time was deliberate, everybody who was paying attention knew there was a roid issue in baseball.
Yeah, I read the b%#*#! to stand for b.s. Thanks for the clarification
Thanks. Will read that soon.
The believe the report is based on deliveries of steriods by clubhouse folks, not based on drug tests. Clubhouse personnel would not be mailing steriods to players with sinus infections.
Ryan & Carlton also relied a lot on their total motion to generate power without overstressing their arms. This gave them longevity. The trade-off with these kind of pitchers is that they are easier to read for the base-runner, hence more steals. Carlton, being a lefty with a balk-move to first, was an exception.
The guy that boggles my mind is Randy Johnson. He throws sidearm, so doesn’t get the full advantage of his body motion. The stresses on his elbow must have been enormous and yet his arm withstood a long career.
Frankly, I think they out to raise the pitchers mounds again to give the pitchers a little help out there, but then nobody asks me. The hitters have a definite advantage in this era of smaller ballparks.
There is nothing wrong with it. There is a lot of ignorance about HGH, and people blithely toss it in with "steroids". It could not be more different. Instead of banning HGH, why not just allow anyone to take it, under certain circumstances? Wouldn't that level the playing field? Don't we want players to come back sooner from injuries? Isn't that better for each sport?
Your version of history circa 2000 does not gell with mine. I'm pretty sure it's not a historical fact that the press was ever making a big stink until a few years later, when things like the admissions of Canseco, Giambi, Caminiti, and the congressional hearings began bringing out some concrete facts. A few lone reporters might have been making noises, but they were a minority. All the MVPs Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa racked up is evidence of this, from the same body that is currently denying Mark McGwire and soon Rafael Palmeiro election to the Hall of Fame.
If only ignorance of the subject during that time was deliberate! It wasn't. A lot of it was a somewhat noble attempt to give people the benefit of the doubt, "innocent until proven guilty." A lot of it also was that the public really was ignorant - of facts, not suspicions. I've thought Clemens was using steroids for a long time, but I could never say that confidently until today with the Mitchell Report. In 2000 a lot of people were taking it a lot further, probably in part because they did not want to believe that much of the things they were seeing were "tainted". But like I said, it was not denial, not indifference.
The problem with your analogy is that baseball is a monopoly, not a free market. If all gas stations, including my regular one, started charging $9 a gallon but I still love to drive I might pay the fees anyway. But if my regular one kept the price at $9 while everyone else was at $4 I'd shop somewhere else. If you want to watch the World Series there's only one game in town, take it or leave it. It's because of the widespread feelings against steroids that actions like the Mitchell Report have been taken. Why you persist in claiming I don't care about steroids when I tell you I do I cannot explain, except as a truculent adherence to dogma you brought to the table preformed.
“But like I said, it was not denial, not indifference.”
That should read “was denial, not indifference.”
Allowing athletes to take HGH to recover from injuries would be a good start. If after study, it comes out that its really not harmful to people, then we should allow athletes to use it for other uses.
*snicker*
A lot of the guys you list aren’t on the list published by ESPN...and don’t show up in a word search of the document itself.
Where did it come from?
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