Posted on 08/19/2018 3:29:37 PM PDT by heterosupremacist
When attorney Jose Baez first met Aaron Hernandez in 2016, the former NFL star was already serving life in prison.
The then-26-year-old had been arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd, an acquaintance, in 2013, after three seasons with the New England Patriots. Now, he needed a lawyer for another indictment, involving an earlier double-homicide.
Baez took the case, and grew close with the athlete. He helped Hernandez win an acquittal on April 14, 2017, but days later, on April 19, the 27-year-old hanged himself in his cell.
A brain scan revealed that the former tight-end had suffered severe brain injuries consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), due to repeated head blows while playing football. Doctors said that it was the most severe case they had seen in someone so young.
Baez has chronicled the last year of his client’s life in “Unnecessary Roughness: Inside the Trial and Final Days of Aaron Hernandez” (Hachette Books), out Tuesday. Among the tome’s revelations are three notes found after Hernandez’s death, addressed to his daughter Avielle Jenkins-Hernandez, now 5, fiancée Shayanna Jenkins, now 29, and Baez himself.
“[Hernandez] wrote three letters the night he died, letters discovered in his cell and released to us by corrections officials a few days after his death,” said Baez.
For the first time, The Post can reveal those suicide notes. In highlighted text, Baez deciphers the hidden meanings behind Hernandez’s words...
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And admitted to years of drug and alcohol abuse while burning the candle at both ends thinking he was immortal.
I don't buy this CTE. Otherwise, why didn't it affect the players from the early years through the 80s? They had none of the rules and safety advances that players today have now.
Because there was a large cash action suit to get in on and an unwillingness to admit that age and ones own choices transformed him into a mere mortal.
I don't recall him being sacked that often.
Any chance that the combination of genetics and off-field lifestyle had anything to do with his present condition?
He was certainly sexually abused as a child.
Most likely due to using your head as a club...but apart from a few big cases....it doesnt seem have been discovered in msny more...or are they not reporting it?
Who do you think had more head shots, Mike Ditka, Dick Butkus, or Jim Mc Mahon? It has to do with drug usage or vaccination overload. Back when people got 1-5 vaccines in their lives, and none before age 4, it seems there was much less brain injury, which includes autism, and now CTE. Vaccines have affirmatively been linked to brain swelling, so why not early childhood injury, aggravated by exterior head trauma? Occams razor states simple is usually true. That is a simple way of excusing the various factors involved with human lives. So many factors exist for all health issues. The solutions will be quite complex as well as the diagnoses.
Truth be told, the real problem is steroids. People got hit in the head before steroids. A few got "punch drunk" but most went on. Then roids became a thing in sports starting in the 70s but gaining steam in a big way in the 80s and after. Now men who are 250+ pounds of pure muscle can run a sub 4.4s 40 yard dash and smash into each other at full speed. Never seen before. Also the effects of roids on the body are atrocious just by themselves. Coupled with massive physical trauma and there's your problem.
So here's the dilemma for the NFL. CTE is a thing, it's real. But it's probably it's a thing because of rampant steroid abuse which everybody inside and outside the NFL knows about but which they have found ways to mostly ignore. If you take away steroids, the game will really regress, every record will become unachievable, The game will be slower, with smaller players doing less spectacular things. Like when baseball actually got rid of steroids and the "new home run record every year" stopped. If you ignore steroids and instead focus on the symptom (CTE) you can keep your steroid monsters. Since they don't really care about the player's health and because the players want that edge to get them the cash, that's what they chose.
That's what I really think is going on.
Lyle Alzado was Exhibit A.
She began growing a beard. I exaggerate a little, not much. Her face got hairy. It's called hypertrichosis and it's rare but not unheard of. It also shut down her adrenals. We got her the hell of that steroid and she reverted to normal but it took a full year for adrenal function to return. For the record, she's a teen now and never had any issues breathing other than normal stuff people get when we have colds. So the roids were pointless and in fact harmful.
Imagine now that you take such things for a decade while subjecting your body to extreme stress the whole time. That's the NFL.
Your scenario is probable, though you seem to be concentrating on the bigger and faster human beings as the cause, not the steroidds themselves.
I would disagree with you on a few points. For one, I think the game would be better with more natural athletes, at a slower speed. The eye cannot tell the difference between 4.4 and 4.6 in speed players. It can tell the difference when it is a DE or LB like Lawrence Taylor, who was not a freak of nature, but a Steroid built monstrosity. The same goes for many of the big men, who are not only 240+ but faster and stronger. When you see them after retirement, they are noticeably slimmer. That is not eating less and not working out, that is the stopping of the roids.
[I don’t buy this CTE. Otherwise, why didn’t it affect the players from the early years through the 80s? They had none of the rules and safety advances that players today have now. ]
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