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To be fair, Dick Butkus is 67 years old, and does still have major knee problems.
Is there any dispute as to whether he was actually McGwire's dealer? Besides, who are you going to trust? The guy who sells the illegal substances, or the guy who bought the illegal substances and denied it for a decade?
I do agree with this. It sounds like something involving Dr. Nick Riviera.
Mac is six-five and well over 200 pounds without the steroids. I don't thing a regimen of PED's is going to turn me into John Riggins. A truck load of Twinkies turning me into Dmitri Young's vanilla-flavored Mini Me is the best I can hope for.
I think we have a winner. I'm ashamed I didn't think of this. Damn.
I have not seen all the discussion on McGwire so I don't know if this is old news, but Wenzlaff's most informative statement is reminding everyone of the exact cocktail that McGwire was injecting. If McGwire was just seeking to "stay healthy" that isn't the best combinations of drugs.
I share Ryan's question. What is the apologist story? Is it that McGwire wanted to stay healthy, searched long and hard to arrive at the doorstep of Wentzlaff and told him he wanted a set of drugs to keep him healthy?
Wow. I applaud the awesomeness of this comment.
1-800-DOCTORB, any operation $129.95.
Yeah, but all the other skanks in the skantocracy may be getting one up on her.
Maybe I'm misrembering, but aren't you the one that use to post in every thread, "Nobody cares about steroids."
Parsing the credibility of spoken statements is pretty regular stuff around here. Not sure why this makes people "crazed". 90% of discussions about Dayton Moore revolves around parsing the believability of his statements (trust the process!).
According to reportage at the time, Reggie Jackson became acquainted with Wenzlaff at a Bay Area gym after his retirement. He introduced him to some of the A's, and Wenzlaff met Canseco, taught him how to use properly, then met McGwire and--according to Wenzlaff's testimony--introduced him to the drugs. Reggie and Wenzlaff both maintain that Reggie didn't know of his dealing. Reggie, the story goes, believed he was introducing a talented and innovative weightlifting coach to the team.
Not clear yet if he's wrong or whether there's something special about the McGwire story (in particular the "no, steroids didn't make me better") that have prompted the current sound and fury.
And McGwire's story is that he didn't search long and hard. That he couldn't tell you exactly what he was taking. While that need not be true, it doesn't strike me as too different from the way Sandy Koufax dealt with his chronic problems. If it might work, let's try it.
Neither.
If you're prospective steroid user who trusts whatever some random guy you don't know who's selling the stuff tells you about steroids, you DESERVE whatever crap happens to you.
Is there any polling data? Just because people are unwilling to cancel their mlb.tv account doesn't mean people don't care.
Yes, I thought that was the most interesting part of his statement. Not sure if he has a vested interest in lying at this point. Maybe he wants to bring down McGwire just for the sake of it.
Huh, I never knew that anyone actually responded to those emails.
And yet, no one accuses Jesus of juicing.
Ron, that's a fair assessment except there's one piece you're missing: I think the steroids outrage has died down except as it pertains to the Original Sinners, i.e., Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, etc. So if Sosa or Clemens suddenly confessed (not that Clemens would or could), yes, it would be a big story. But if JD Drew or Hanley Ramirez or Carlos Beltran suddenly were caught? Nah. If it were a Pujols or Jeter, sure, but that's because people have pretended that these two Saints don't have the requisite Character Flaws to be users.
I've said that I can envision a scenario where Clemens has a difficult time getting into the HOF but ARod doesn't.
I think ARod represented a sea change in the way this issue is viewed. People finally threw their hands up after he was caught and said "ah, eff it." And so Ortiz and Manny really weren't big stories, relatively speaking.
Actually, it does. If attendance and revenue are near record levels, that's a pretty clear indication that people don't really care.
We saw what happened to attendance after the strike in 1994: it cratered, and then it took years to build back up to the previous levels. When people care, it shows up pretty clearly. Many people said "I'm not watching these greedy ballplayers anymore," and many of them followed through, for years.
I think the two things continuing to give the story legs are:
- his incredibility - people seem to be more outraged at this than the fact that he used; and
- the records/'98 season - people feel like the game has been more tarnished now because he changed "history," which can't be undone.
Related to the first point, John Edwards is going to get crushed in the next week.
No one doubts Wenzlaff was McGwire's dealer. (Read the 2005 story here.) No one* doubts taking steroids helps you add a lot of muscle, making you stronger and allowing you to hit a baseball farther. But I don't know if there is scientifically tested evidence that shows a steroid regimen like the one McGwire was on improves hand-eye coordination. Maybe it does; maybe it doesn't. But is it proven?
*Well, no one but a few head-in-the-sand Primates.
Thank you for the clarification. I see that McGwire has declined comment. It would be interesting to see if he maintains that he did not ask to be bigger, stronger and faster, but instead used them b/c of Wentzlaff or another's suggestion that it might keep him healthy.
That's enormously speculative and completely unscientific.
I have heard people state flatly that it does and others state flatly that it doesn't (not people here). So, I am also interested in information on this question.
Actually, I did a quick search on polling data and I think Ray's right about the general malaise about steroids among the general public. See the results from this gallup poll. But I don't agree that attendance or MLB.tv subscriptions should be used an indicator of public sentiment toward steroids.
Not in the least. Attendance fell off a cliff immediately following the strike, and then began ticking back up from there. What would you attribute it to?
If people really, truly, cared about steroids -- instead of just blowing wind about it -- attendance would have been sliding as this issue picked up steam in the 2000s. Did that happen? My understanding is that it did not. (I just tried to pull up the year by year attendance levels at b-r to check, but for some reason this information is weirdly hidden right now. At least I can't find it anymore. It used to be very easy to access.)
I doubt it. Steroids might help improve your bat speed a bit, which could theoretically help you hold off your swing a fraction of a second longer, which in turn would help you lay off marginal pitches. But being as how it's more your natural born reflexes than your muscles that tell you when to begin your swing, I can't see that it would really help your hand-eye coordination. No drug can "enhance" that. The effect of steroids (beyond injury recovery) is pretty much limited to adding muscle strength, and even there you need a lot of other skills to maximize the effect, not to mention the dedication to a disciplined workout program. And even with that, you have to develop the specific muscles that add to the power of your swing. Just adding a lot of flashy arm muscles will help Rambo more than a ballplayer.
No question that steroids can help you accomplish this focused muscle development, and give intelligent players an unfair advantage, but they aren't magic pills. Steroids can help to make a great player greater, but they can't do a damn thing for a mediocre player who thinks that steroids are some sort of a magic pill.
I don't know about hand eye coordination but there's scientific evidence to believe, but not conclusively prove, that steroids usage helps HR production.
What do you mean by "apologist"?
I do not thing steroid use is the crime against humanity that some anti's make it out to be, but I also think McGwire used the stuff to hit more homers, am I still an apologist?
I can give a single data point in favor of the theory that steroids can help reaction time. Ben Johnson. The false start detection had been calibrated to Valery Borzow's reaction times. One of the keys to Johnson's success was his reaction tie (to the point that they actually had to slightly recalibrate the detection of false starts)
And when he came back (presumably off steroids) that great reaction time was gone.
Obviously not proof of anything.
It's one thing to speculate that, and I personally believe the same, it's another thing to conclude that this is based on rigorous evidence.
I don't see any need to impugn the character of a convicted drug dealer. He's already taken care of that himself.
Here's what I have for per-game MLB attendance from 1993-2006:
1993 30,9641994 31,256
1995 25,022
1996 26,510
1997 27,877
1998 29,054
1999 28,888
2000 29,378
2001 29,881
2002 28,114
2003 28,051
2004 30,404
2005 30,942
2006 31,404
The impact of the 1994 strike is, of course, just like Ray says. To be honest, the evidence on steroids is somewhat mixed. The steroid story broke in 2002, if I remember correctly, and attendance was down in 2002 and 2003. But that was also right on the heels of a recession and 9/11, so I'd be leery to point to that and say, "See, it was the steroids! People cared!!" Testing with penalties was implemented in 2004, so, if you want to tell the story that people cared about steroids, maybe you can tell it from this data.
I think that by this time the only true response to all these steroids stories is "whatever." But that doesn't mean that there's any great public sentiment towards amnesty for juicers, as witnessed by the reaction to McGwire. That's mostly going to be determined by a long period of contrition, coupled with continuing excellence on the field. Which is going to give still-active former (?) juicers like A-Rod and Manny an advantage over the retired original "Steroid Four" of McGwire / Bonds / Palmeiro / Clemens, who aren't in a position to be able to "redeem" themselves on the field.
Of course here I'm talking about general reputation rather than a HoF vote. I'll leave HoF predictions to our resident swamis.
Just curious - what in that survey leads you to that conclusion? Half of baseball fans said Bonds shouldn't be in the HOF. That's way below Rose (31%). Only 39% said Selig should punish Mitchell report players, though.
I think the data are quite telling. Per-game baseball attendance didn't jump beyond where it was before the strike until 12 years later -- when steroid testing with harsh penalties was implemented.
There are better ways than ballpark attendance to measure whether the various factions of the game "cared," but there's nothing about the data that show that fans "didn't care" and at least a mild case that they did "care."(**)
(**) Maybe fans were sore about the wild card.
The problem with that study is that it keeps referring to "muscle mass" without specifying which muscles, as if they're all of equal value in increasing bat speed. This is a bit like similar studies about amphetamines that make all kinds of claims for "focus enhancement," without testing for the specific muscles used in propelling a heavy bat towards a curving Major League pitch. Much as it's clear that adding the right type of muscle mass can help add bat speed (at least up to a certain point), and in turn help add distance to warning track fly balls. I'd feel a lot better about this link if the author specified just what "muscle mass" he had in mind. And his inflated estimates for how many home runs steroids might add to a player's total are almost too embarrassing to repeat.
I would agree with that. With the obvious caveat that, like your (**) suggests, there's a lot more than steroids that drives these numbers.
You'd think with the "excitement of the wild card" and the "riveting Red Sox-Yankee rivalry" and the "chicks dig the long ball" effect, that that attendance time series would be a bit different. It's not a number I pay a whole lot of attention to, I'm glad you did the work, and I confess to some surprise.
Even setting aside steroids, I was surprised the first time I looked at these numbers (several years ago now), there's surprisingly little evidence of this. Hell, attendance went DOWN the year after Big Mac and Sammy SAVED BASEBALL!! Of course, 1998 was an expansion year, which probably produces a first-year bounce at least in Tampa and Arizona, but even so, that's something that's really hard to find in the data: the idea that home runs drive attendance.
Just a little over a half of polled individuals believed that Bud Selig should not punish current major leaguers named as past steroid users in the Mitchell report. Over 60 percent of those polled believe that Sosa, McGwire, and Clemens should be in the HoF (this is course before McGwire's admission though). Perhaps general malaise is too strong. But there is a slight majority of the polled sample doesn't seem to be hung up over roid users.
You are just saying that because you want to protect your favorite players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
Seriously, though, I think the Hartgens study use to be linked frequently back in the old days. They theorized that the upper body (neck arms shoulders) etc saw more reaction from AAS administration.
And for Andy, "Current research shows that 10-30 mg methamphetamine may improve reaction time, and cognitive function, increase the feelings of alertness, decrease a sense of fatigue and increase euphoria. But this also came with a tendency to make more high-risk choices." (among the high risk choices specifically mentioned is a tendency of athletes to play while injured)
Mind you, in addition to the studies on caffeine there's also one that shows chocolate increases reaction time. (Dr Bryan Raudenbush did the study if anybody's interested.)
I think they "do the fans care" question is ultimately going to be a fools errand. No matter what data you show, people are going to keep asserting that nobody cares. That lament has been heard on this board since 2003.
Nevertheless, two-thirds of the people thought Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. Does that mean that people care even less about gambling than they do about steroids?
IMHO, if you are looking at malaise (or more accurately apathy), its the no-opinion number that is the most telling about that poll. If you measure apathy, the fans really don't care much about teh fear or teh stolen base.
If you want to find out if people care about steroids, the best way is just to ask them that question instead of trying to infer it from other sets of information that don't correlate to well to the question and have far more influences.
The specifics of the experiment: They got a baseline club-head speed. Then had the golfer (Jason Zuback IIRC) warm up with a weighted club. And found that his swing was actually significantly slower. Of course they couldn't prove why, but the working hypothesis is that the weighted club primed the slow twitch fibres to fire.
Dunno that I'd want to hang anything on this.
But if they say, "Yes, I care about steroids," they'd just be attacked as moralists or soft on greenie users or misinformed or Hank Aaron idolaters or people who once thought about kicking their neighbor's dog.
What you really mean is that there's no evidence at all that would convince a true believer that people "care." That position is more an ideology than a quest for evidence and information.
Ok, that's also what I found to be pretty good support for the idea that fans aren't hung up.
OTOH, from this part of the survey:
Over 60 percent of those polled believe that Sosa, McGwire, and Clemens should be in the HoF (this is course before McGwire's admission though).
I didn't pay much attention to those guys because evidence was scant at the time (re what the public knows), at least re Sosa and McGwire, and most reasonable people wouldn't keep a guy out based on that little evidence. The study would have been much better had they separately asked people who think these guys juiced whether they should get in.
I paid more attention to the Bonds question because A) there's more publicly known evidence against him, and B) nobody doubts his HOF candidacy otherwise (as with Clemens).
edit: They also should have asked people whether all these guys should get in but for steroids.
Does "increase" mean "slow down"?
But this also came with a tendency to make more high-risk choices."
Would this include taking a swing at a pitch at which you might otherwise not swing?
Yes, but it is always interesting when people are asked directly whether they care about something, but if you approach it obliquely a different response emerges. Maybe people acre about steroids one way or another, or maybe they don't, maybe they say thry do, but continue watching games, buying tickets and cheer for Joe Anabolic when he bats for THEIR team.
I think the average fans cares, but, assuming the mediot venom is honest- which I think it is, their level of caring doesn't remotely approach what we've seen from much of the sports media.
WRT McGwire specifically- I think a lot of writers LIKED him, they didn't like AROD or Manny, and they didn't really like Sosa even when they were writing about what a great guy he was. They really liked McGwire, and when they wrote that he was a good guy and a great father (look at him and his son!), they meant it...
sure there were questions, but they wanted to look away, then came that hearing before congress, and I have to tell you, I'm no anti-ped crusader, but I thought the only way to take his testimony was that he was a user... and the writers who sued to like him began simmering, and simmering
and now he comes out with an apology which was... incomplete? (I'm trying to be charitable), maybe McGwire believes what he said, his own self image is that he was a great HR hitter, he didn't need them to hit HRs, but he needed to stay healthy, maybe he's been telling himself that for years
so he gets up and sort of apologizes/admits, and the great mass of MSM writers who once liked him and have been simmering for years, took it in and thought a second and, "WHAT A CROCK OF ####!!!!! YOU LYING PIECE OF ####!!!!!!!!!!!!
and they may be right (ie his apology being a con more than anything else), but right now most of what we are reading is blind emotional rage I think.
True enough. Something along the lines of, "Do you believe that steroid usage in baseball is detrimental to the game" would be ideal. But those questions are close enough that I don't mind using them as an evidence base to discuss public opinion about steroids.
IMHO, if you are looking at malaise (or more accurately apathy), its the no-opinion number that is the most telling about that poll.
The no-opinion respondents probably includes a host of people like "I'm still deciding," or "I don't know enough about the issue to offer an opinion," along with the "I don't care, leave me alone you damn poller," crowd.
like hitting on a chick who is out of your league? Or the opposite, hitting on the diseased ridden groupie type?
Attendence and caring are not the same things.
Say a person was in love with his wife. He later found out she had been shoplifting. Will he divorce her because of that? Probably not. But he certainly cares and will demand she didn't do it.
Further, there appears to be an issue that frequent, heavy users become more tolerant and the side effects then are right nasty.
Yes, that's what I thought I said, the public isn't hung up on roids.
I paid more attention to the Bonds question because A) there's more publicly known evidence against him, and B) nobody doubts his HOF candidacy otherwise (as with Clemens).
Not saying I believe that this is the case, but there is the race card!
Then isn't it unlikely that these alleged amp abusers used all season, season after season? If yes, then the argument that records set during the "greenie era" are as tainted as the more recent HR records has no merit.
Let women figure out why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them.
If you exclude the two expansion teams (TAM & ARI), this is average major league attendance before, during and after baseball was saved by Mark McGwire picking up and hugging his hefty son:
1997 - 27,873
1998 - 28,402
1999 - 28,923
So attendance actually did go up by 521 fans/game. However, I would guess that the strong dot-com economy and the shiny new ballparks had a lot more to do with rising attendance at that time than chicks digging the long ball.
Look at the effect recession had on attendance* over the last 2 years:
2008 - 32,379
2009 - 30,222
There might be other factors, but I think the economy accounts for most of the loss of 2,157 fans per game in 2009.
*Includes all 30 teams. The 1997-99 numbers include only 28 teams.
Yeah, I was just agreeing with you.
Not saying I believe that this is the case, but there is the race card!
True. And that people think Bonds is a jerk.
"Confusion", not so much I guess. "Anxiety", dunno. I mean I know people with some pretty severe anxiety problems and it's quite debilitating, but I have no idea what it means in this context.
(Going to dinner now...)
Note the "can" as opposed to the "will". Unknown how a half year on, half off cycle would play into this (though the extreme side effects of long-term heavy use don't seem to be common in MLB). This is one aspect that doesn't seem to have been studied.
The two NY teams were down 1.5M fans combined, even though they had shiny new parks. That certainly didn't help.
Yeah, I think they priced out their seats before the economy tanked, and for some reason they couldn't/wouldn't reduce the prices for the high end seats once it became clear that those prices weren't going to fly.
Think of all the nobodies who went to Japan to become big time homr run hitters. Their parks are marginally smaller. Just think if steroids added 20 feet to every routine fly ball, how many more homeruns would a typical power hitter hit? Geez, get real. Using steroids is like letting Johhny Damon play at the new Yankee Stadium every single game of the season. Yeah, he's now a 40 homer guy? It has nothing to do with hand eye coordination, its all about strength.
That's incorrect, they are very different chemicals.
Winstrol is one of the last steroids an athlete should take to help with "health". Other steroids, specifically Deca, would provide much greater alleviation of joint pain and help protect joints from further/new injury as well. Winstrol is harsh on the joints.
Both test and eq can have a slightly positive affect on the "health" of an athlete.
This is all with the caveat that relatively sudden increases in muscle mass can result in a greater chance of strains/pulls/tears
I'm not sure so many people are "hung up on hand-eye coordination?" However, Mr. Wenzlaff "said that he thinks the combination of drugs he provided for McGwire would help McGwire’s hand-eye coordination." Hence, it is being discussed.
There are a lot of factors which differentiate an average schlemiel like me from a top-flight athlete. One of those is hand-eye coordination. If my hand-eye coordination improved by some substantial percentage, I might have been (at best) a starting varsity baseball player in high school. But if a guy who was say a career minor league player took a drug which improved his hand-eye coordination substantially, he could (in theory) last 8 years in the big leagues, if suddenly he could see the curve ball much better and react to its movement correctly.
All that said, I strongly doubt that steroids can really improve anyone's hand-eye coordination much, if any, at all. But whether it can or cannot seems to me something which could be studied scientifically and proved one way or the other.
Yeah, baby.
No, it's not. There have been plenty of strong guys who can't hit worth beans. Hand-eye coordination involves being able to see where the ball is going to be, and directing the bat to get there at the optimal time. If you can't do it now, getting stronger will only mean a bigger breeze when you miss.
And their pitchers are at least marginally crappier, and the two in combination can add a lot.
Well, perhaps not just what they want you to think they think, but also what they think they think, but the problem remains is that it isn't necessarily what they actually think.
This is a problem that's been recognized by professional pollsters for many, many decades. The state of the art of scientific poll-taking addresses this by asking essentially the same question multiple times, in multiple forms, on the same questionnaire (spaced apart, obviously), as a means of testing the respondent's commitment to (that isn't the precise jargon, but grad school was a long time ago and I forget exactly what it is) the answer. Nonetheless it's a serious issue with opinion polling data. Just ask any electoral pollster; people say they'll vote one way, and then they actually vote another.
The fact remains that the best evidence of what people think is how they act. What they say is interesting and informative, but the bottom line is what they do.
And as for the comment that McGwire wanted to get "bigger, faster, stronger", Paris Hilton might say that he went 0-3, which is a bad day even if you have a walk afterward.
Of course, the shiny new parks had fewer seats than the old ones. The Yankees would have had to sell out every game to match their 2008 attendance. If the Mets had sold out every game in 2009 they still would have drawn 400,000 fewer fans than they did in 2008.
I think they priced out their seats before the economy tanked, and for some reason they couldn't/wouldn't reduce the prices for the high end seats once it became clear that those prices weren't going to fly.
The Yankees wouldn't for whatever reason, but I think the Mets did make some adjustments. Of course, the quality of the team they were putting on the field later in the year probably had a little something to do with the attendance hit too.
Get jacked. Make love to beautiful women. Drive a fast car. Write the Great American tweet. Live hard.
New Yankee Stadium's listed capacity is 51,800*. In 2008 the Yankees averaged 53,070. Therefore, even if the Yankees sold out every game, they will never be able to match their 2008 attendance. For that matter, they can no longer match their average attendance in 2007 (52,729) or 2006 (52,445).
The same story is true for the Mets in 2008 (49,902) and 2007 (47,580), when their average attendance exceeded the capacity at their new yard (45,000).
*I don't know if they sell SRO tickets. If they do, then then could change the equation.
True enough. Something along the lines of, "Do you believe that steroid usage in baseball is detrimental to the game" would be ideal. But those questions are close enough that I don't mind using them as an evidence base to discuss public opinion about steroids.
83 and 84 are both right, but there's another problem: What does "care" mean? If someone asked me if I think the Wild card is "detrimental to the game," I'd say "yes." But it hasn't caused me to watch fewer games or spend less money; it doesn't keep me awake at night or upset me in any real way. MLB shouldn't "care" whether I "care" about the WC, given that it doesn't affect anything I do.
If you want to know whether people "care" about steroids, you first need to define why and what that means. "Dislike in an abstract way"? "Attend fewer games because of"? Etc.
Exactly. And from the empirical evidence we have, it seems that many if not most fans "care" in the former mode but not in the latter.
1. Do you think the use of PEDs by some players creates an uneven playing field? Almost all fans would answer yes.
2. Does it bother you if there is an uneven playing field? Almost all fans would answer yes, it bothers them.
3. Do you think sports leagues should require drug testing to try to ensure an even playing field? Almost all fans would answer yes.
4. If you don't know who is taking PEDs and who is -- and you think the playing field is uneven in that respect -- is that enough to make you stop watching the games? Very few would say yes; and of those who said yes, most would still watch the games.
5. If you thought a player on your favorite team might be using PEDs, but that player was helping your team win and your team was doing very well, would you be less inclined to go to games or watch games on TV? Almost all fans would answer no. (The ones who answered yes are probably lying to themselves.)
6. If you thought a player on your favorite team might be using PEDs, and that player was not helping your team win and your team was not doing very well, would his presumed PED use make you less inclined to go to games or watch games on TV? Almost all fans would answer, what kind of dumbass question is that? In other words, losing or winning is what counts.
My conclusion is that in an abstract sense, most fans care about PED use because they care about fairness on the field of play. But in a more narrow sense, if they are fans, they care a lot more about their team winning. They will root for players on their team who help the club win.
5. If you thought a player on your favorite team might be using PEDs, but that player was helping your team win and your team was doing very well, would you be less inclined to go to games or watch games on TV? Almost all fans would answer no.
Whether or not they would answer no to these questions, their behavior as expressed both in attendance/TV ratings, and cheer/boo behavior at ballparks, unequivocally says "no."
My conclusion is that in an abstract sense, most fans care about PED use because they care about fairness on the field of play. But in a more narrow sense, if they are fans, they care a lot more about their team winning. They will root for players on their team who help the club win.
This seems clear.
back in the early 60s, the NY football Giants had this DB named Erich Barnes, who I loathed because he was a dirty player--then he got traded to my Browns and a magical thing happened: he wasn't "dirty" anymore--he was "hard-nosed"
I love NBA basketball every bit as much as I love baseball. But one thing I loathe in the NBA -- and I blame on the Euros -- is flopping. I think it's unAmerican.
In our sports, there is a dignified level of machismo. If a player gets hit in the mouth and loses a tooth and he's bleeding, he wants to stay in the game and keep competing. Football players who break a leg will try as best they can to walk off the field with no help.
But in the Euro sports culture, it is just the opposite. They are total fakers and whimps. A soccer player runs by another and one will fall down and writhe in anguish and fake an injury. Instead of just getting up and walking it off, a team of nebishes will come out with a stretcher and carry the fake-injured dude off the field. It's the same story in Euro basketball, where these guys master the art of falling down on defense when another player so much as breathes near them. They are almost all floppers.
The king of the Euro-floppers was Vlade Divac. He had two things going against him from my perspective as a fan of the Sacramento Kings: he was a Laker and a Euro-flopper. I didn't really hate* him. I just abhorred that phony crap he pulled to draw undeserved offensive fouls.
But then, one day, I realized how wrong I was. I suddenly realized that drawing charges was a great skill and very few could really do it well. It was a master form of defensive greatness. By squaring up and steadying his feet, a good player could take offensive fouls -- sacrificing himself really -- making it tough for the other team to drive to the basket. Vlade Divac was suddenly no longer detestable.
What day was that? January 22, 1999. The day my team, the Kings, signed Vlade as a free agent.
*The only players I have ever hated in sports have been guys on my own teams who suck, but were nonetheless arrogant and rejected the notion that they were no good. If a guy sucks, but is giving it his best and not portraying himself as God's gift, I can excuse that. It's not his fault his coach is playing him so much. It's the GM's fault they don't have anyone better. ... In recent years, Jason Kendall (on the A's) had everything to hate. He was horrible offensively and defensively; and he's an arrogant prick. I felt the same way about Brad Miller, when he was on the Kings. He did not even try on defense. Alas, the Kings now have Brad Miller's dopple-ganger, Spencer Hawes. A soft, 7-foot center who is very high on himself because he can hit a 3 pointer, but a center who cannot guard anyone. ... Thank God Stefon Marbury and Allen Iverson never played in Sacramento.
I know this wasn't the main point of your post, but the only reason I refuse to watch soccer is that behavior. It just repulses me. It must be the way I was programmed playing sports growing up - it's so opposed to the way I learned to compete.
I have less of a problem with it in basketball because guys might fall down to get a whistle, but you don't see them writhing in agony.
And everyone in MLB can already do it; ergo, getting stronger will help them improve their athletic performance. How can people not see this? We're not talking about Joe Schmoe juicing it up and making the bigs; we're talking about guys who are already there and who have a considerable level of talent getting bigger and stronger.
Not true in cricket, however, where significant stock is taken by how a batsmen reacts to being (legally) hit in the chest, throat, head, wrist, gonads, etc. You walk away and shake it off, and unless there's blood pouring out or you're unconscious, you man up and get ready for the next one. Unlike in baseball, you don't get a free base, even. Of course, you're wearing more padding, but it certainly isn't total body.
And as for rugby . . . silly generalisation is silly.
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