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 ...
Is that guy doing herion?
Well the discussion on importance was originally on the records, at some point my fingers chose to ignore the brain and typed “rules” instead. Either way though in the great scheme of life neither is important, there’s the real world and then there’s sports. And while some of us spend a lot of time on sports they’re still just sports, an idle distraction to chew up spare hours.
Lack of enforcement showed the MLB didn’t actually care. And it’s not like the government did much in the way of enforcement either. It was a minority in the press but it was a pretty vocal minority. One thing to remember is that the late 90s early 2000s was the high watermark for what I call “complaint reporting” in the sports journalism crowd, most sports reporters spent most of their time complaining about something, Jim Rome is the posterboy complaint reporting. Among the things they complained about were steroids in baseball.
On an individual player basis nothing was known and certainly there was plenty of push for innocence until guilt was proven. But it was well known that there was a steroid problem in baseball, if only because their anti-steroid rule was such a pathetic joke, everybody knew that MLB was turning a blind eye to a growing situation. No one was really sure how much it was growing not many were trying to guess which players, but it was the only one of our sports which was doing absolutely no drug testing and had no schedule of punishments for violating the steroid rule. The emperor clearly had no clothes.
Baseball is in a free market, it competes with other sports, other TV and movies for your entertainment dollar and minute. If you don’t like what’s happening in a sport you can just stop watching. You said you stopped watching MLB after the strike, so obviously you can stop watching. I stopped watching the NBA when they outlawed zone defense (IMHO the stupidest sports rule that’s ever been written), I would watch NCAA or no basketball at all. If you decide that watching the World Series is more important than your objections to how the sport is being run that’s fine, but understand that’s a decision you made. That’s you deciding that whatever complaints you have about steroids in baseball are not as major as your desire to watch the Series, it’s a perfectly valid decision but it’s demonstrative of how important you think the steroid issue is. Which is why we know that in spite of any lip service pay in polls the steroid issue isn’t that important to the fan base, we know this because the fan base is spending a record amount of time and money on the game, if they really thought the steroid issue was that huge this wouldn’t be the case.
One other thing to note on the lack of importance of the issue to the fans. You said that a steroid thread on FR would get 1000 posts in a day, well the Mitchell Report threads started about 20 hours ago and the 3 I can find don’t even add up to 500 forget any of them getting near 1000. The steroid issue in baseball generates a lot of sound and fury but in the end it signifies nothing.
I think we've both had our say, and I leave it here.
I never pay attention to ESPN discussions, of course that’s pre-sorted for sports fans. Sorry it IS an either or situation, anything that’s not annoying the fans enough to stop watching your sport is not really annoying the fans. Ask WalMart, they’re the most hated company in the country, and have more customer transactions every day than any two other retailers combined, if the customers are still giving you their money their complaints are just empty noise.
And I’m not that impressed by the rigorousness of the MLBs steroid policy. A lot of their punishments, for everything not just steroids, sound more impressive than they are because the season is so long. They can throw out a 15 game suspension and it sounds great but it’s a 162 game season, that 15 game suspension is the equivalent of slightly less 1 1/2 games in the NFL, that’s not that impressive. A 4 game suspension in the NFL doesn’t sound like as much on the surface but it’s 1/4 of the season, equivalent to an unheard of 40 game MLB suspension. The NFL is the only professional sports league that hands out real suspension, 1/8 season, 1/4 season, 1/2 season, whole season, THOSE are suspension. It’s especially funny when the MLB hands out 5 or 10 game suspensions to pitchers who only play 1/5 of the games in the first place yet pitcher suspensions ignore the rotation, a pitcher suspended for 5 games actually only misses 1 start. And of course Mitchell has recommended no punishments, color me thoroughly unimpressed by the MLBs rigorousness.
It’s not about you or your sincerity, it’s about the fan base which you happen to be a typical example of. The MLB is setting attendance and revenue records, the fans are demonstrably not that upset about the steroids scandal. There was a ton of fan backlash against the strike, and no real world backlash at all for steroids.
Randy Johnson - long arms, sorta slings the ball (I understand that Walter Johnson was similar, and also kept his speed up as he aged). Supposedly the fabled Fastest Pitcher Who Ever Lived, Steve Dalkowski, used a similar motion. It’s awefully hard to gain control that way - Dalkowski never could.
unless the list IS all Republicans, inwhichcase, Election Year Politics will continue ‘til after the World Series! this is Series.
“why the govt would waste a darn red cent on this report is beyond me... “
Your sister is wise beyond her years....sure wasn’t mentioned in the Constitution, was it....and then to hand the keys to the bus to Mitchell! Beyond Comprehension!
Jack,
“...You can ignore surveys of opinion on the subject if you want, but the reason why is fairly clear and it’s not what you’re saying. I’m one of the people who came back with my money in 2000 after being turned off by the strike, and my money reflects my enjoyment of the game, not my perception of the problem steroids presents. Your interpretation of what attendance says about people’s views on steroids is a reach, to put it pretty mildly.”
Your assessment is spot on....I came back from the strike in 2003, when the Cubs were winning, solely for that reason...others have other reasons, but the STRIKE caused the decline in Baseball attendance, not stearoids!
Stu,
“... TV ratings and attendance and revenue had their biggest climb of the last 20 years during the home run derby with McGuire and Sossa, the steroid fed home run derby, The reality is people don’t care about roids. ...”
You’re right of course...but some of us were more excited about the Cubs winning than Sosa or stearoids or Home Run records....just sayin’!
regards.
“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 a few $1,000,000 fines early on against the major users would have done Baseball a world of good...shudda never got to an ‘Act of Congress’! /20-20hindsight
You’re right.
Yes, my sister is a huge Red Sox fan and goes nearly to every game at Fenway... and this steroids issue is not of her interest at all...
Oh, I agree they could have nipped it in the bud if they’d gone after steroids 15-20 years ago, but steroids are here to stay now. Theres no going back.
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