Posted on 12/07/2004 8:27:12 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
SO athletes use steroids to perform better. Wall Street traders take Ritalin and everyone uses caffeinated drinks during work to stay alert. News anchors get face lifts and actors take Botox so more people watch them. What's different about athletes?
Yet, this weekend you would have thought that Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds had committed some unspeakable crime. Commentators spoke of them "falsifying the product." Saturday, Sen. John McCain promised hearings and threatened legislation imposing drug-testing standards if professional baseball does not crack down. By Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made a similar call for legislation, and McCain said President Bush would sign such a bill.
Athletes may have more at stake than most of the rest of us. They may go a little farther in competing, but the risks seem pretty mild. This spring a baseball players' union representative, Gene Orza, claimed that steroids are "not worse than cigarettes." With over 4,000 people playing major league baseball over the last decade and claims that 40 or 50 percent of players are using some form of anabolic steroids, what is striking is how rare baseball deaths are and that these are not really related to "performance-enhancing" drugs. Take the last two years:
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
People abuse all sorts of substances. Unless we want cradle to grave montioring from Government nannies, then we just need to accept the fact that some people will do stupid stuff to themselves and let them get on with it. The sooner they are out of the way, the better off the gene pool will be...
What incentive does a member of the prosecutor's office have to engage in conduct that could land him/her in jail like this?
Any court employee who had access to these records could have been the source of the leak.
Take a look at the strike zone as defined in the rule book (which is already smaller than it was in Aaron's day), then watch a major league baseball game today . . . and tell me that hitters today have a more difficult time than they did 40 years ago.
I left McGwire off that list because his career was already over for all intents and purposes by the time those "conversations" took place -- so his name didn't even come up.
DC be gentle with me, I am not much a sports fan, but I seem to recall that MLB enjoys an anti-trust exemption that no other sport is privleged to have. Therefore, when you have a special dispensation from the govt be prepared to have them meddle where they shouldn't.
Bonds was the real target all along. There was quite a lengthy and detailed story about it in Playboy about ten months ago, about several of the people responsible for getting the federal investigation off the ground. For public consumption, the athletes were subpoenaed by the grand jury to testify in the BALCO investigation. The truth is that BALCO was investigated to nail Bonds. The leaks are designed to rattle testimony and spring perjury traps. The prosecutors know the press won't give them up.
Any court employee who had access to these records could have been the source of the leak.
Sure they could, but your argument about the prosecutors office fearing jail would apply just as well to them. The motive for and the manner of the leaks best fits the prosecutors' office.
That seems like a huge gamble on their part, doesn't it?
. . . your argument about the prosecutors office fearing jail would apply just as well to them.
True, but I would think a low-level court clerk or other similar employee would be more susceptible to offers of financial compensation than a lawyer would in a case like this -- mainly because the lawyer's career would effectively be over if he were ever caught.
Why doesn't someone investigate the reporter who ran the story, and prosecute him if he doesn't reveal the source of the information?
So was taking steroids. The parallels between the prosecutorial and athletic misconduct are many in the BALCO case. That's in part why I said that I had as much reason to believe as I do about the prosecutors as anyone does about Baseball: they both smell fishy.
True, but I would think a low-level court clerk or other similar employee would be more susceptible to offers of financial compensation than a lawyer would in a case like this -- mainly because the lawyer's career would effectively be over if he were ever caught.
Both the clerk's and the journalists' careers would be over if the leak was motivated by bribery. I don't believe that First Amendment protections would apply if there was ever any indication of bribery. The nature and timing of the leaks has the appearance of prosecutorial gamesmanship, which leaves the journalist far less exposed.
Why doesn't someone investigate the reporter who ran the story, and prosecute him if he doesn't reveal the source of the information?
I'd love to see it, but I'm skeptical it would amount to anything more than possibly a martyred reporter serving some time for contempt before being released and receiving a Pulitzer.
What's wrong with it is that people don't want their kids to grow up admiring some guy who injects gorilla pi** in his veins. Role models have a responsibility to behave at least halfway like a role model should, whether they want to or not.
In a curious twist of metaphors, according to Orza's wife, her husband's "private part" is no bigger than a "cigarette filter."
Two wrongs do not make a right. No more so than circular logic. If we go that route, the liberals win.
Then provide a better role model for your kids. If you go looking to GOVERNMENT for your kids role models, you are already in some pretty sorry shape.
It would be interesting to look up when MLB gained their anti-trust exemption. In the early years, perhaps during WW2? I mention this in this respect: If the exemption was granted during that time it most likely was because baseball raised the American spirit during a difficult era in our history. But does baseball raise the American spirit today? I grew up with "franchise" players--you were drafted and stayed loyal to your team, for most players. But now, free agency, doping, the designated hitter, these have changed the sport from the American Past-time to the American scandal. Who is next??
If a journalist offered a prosecutor $25,000 for confidential information, he'd probably get turned down. That same $25,000 would be a lot of money to a low-level court employee.
True, but his little Andro window dressing is what put Prohormones on Congress' to do list. HE killed a large segment of the Supplement industry, in order to hide what he was doing, and the dmaned sprotswriters let HIM get away with it, because they liked him.
That's Backwards. Bonds is caught in the Governments war against the supplement Industry.
First Ephedra, using Steve Bechler as the impetus, Then Prohormones using McGwire, and now Victor Conte, and Balco, who if you look hard enough you can see exactly how big a part of the supplement industry he was. Conte and anotherman Patrick Arnold were big time pioneers in an industry that caters mostly to fitness buffs, and yet in a time of a supposed national obesity crisis, the government is using dubious methods and regulation to shut them down.
Follow the money.
If you want to be an absentee or POS parent, that's your call. Just keep your brats away from my kids.
If we are no longer able to assume our own comfort levels for risk in anything, are we really still free? If we can't stand up and say, "Ok... I know this crap could kill me, but that is my choice"... then we are all just wards of the State and should just give up the pretense and the false advertising.
That's why out of all of these guys, I Hate McGwire the most.
The sprotswriters gave him a free pass, instead of asking the one inteligent question "Was it possible in 1997, to put on that much muscle using the primitive form of Andro available".
So in the facilitatation his little charade, Prohormones got put on Congress' kill list, and entire industry got legislated out of existence.
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