Saturday, May 18, 2013
Murray Chass: ARE RED SOX REELING ALREADY?
(www.murraychass.com)
Read More...Shaughnessy is too good to have to invent anything. He neither invented anything in this instance nor accused Ortiz of using steroids and their cousins. What he did was take his skepticism and his curiosity, good traits for a newspaperman to have, and ask Ortiz about steroids. Ortiz’s responses did not indicate anger of being accused of wrong doing.
I would compare the Ortiz column to the columns I have written about Mike Piazza and my suspicions about his possible use of steroids. I ...
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1 2 3 >Keeping the season and career HR records free of steroids taint.
The NFL doesn't seem to be suffering.
You're already seeing that to some extent -- who has the better training regimens, who has the better diets, who has the better film study/computer breakdowns, who has the better coaches. I don't see "PEDs" (which we can't even agree on a definition of) as being substantially different.
"So remind me again what the arguments against acceptance are?"
IF these substances cause longterm harm and premature death, then allowing them means you are forcing other players to make a rough choice: juice up and get rich, or play it safe and wind up being out of baseball.
IF being the operative word here, but the scenario would be a pretty good argument against, I think.
Better ban football altogether then. Also, to be safe, hockey, rugby, Aussie rules, Gaelic football, and any other contact sports I am forgetting.
I realize that sports is entertainment and "Because I like it that way" is a real argument. But I can't find the moral imperative that so many writers seem to be latched onto.
And headers in soccer.
50 years down the road these drugs will be so old fashioned. Who needs steroids when robotic exoskeletons provide so much more strength and power?
I'm actually not even trying to joke here. I've read a bit about military uses of exoskeletons, allowing people to do heaving lifting with minimal effort. A long way from having something that will help throw a baseball or swing a bat, probably, but 50 years down the road? Considering the ever quickening pace of progress 2063 will probably be more unrecognizable to people of today that 2013 is to the imaginations of 1963.
Consider what unregulated enhancements might be possible to recreationists. If kids of the future can put on their suits and throw a ball 120 miles an hour, and the person they throw to can hit it 600 feet, will they have any interest in watching clean and low-tech professionals compete at what will seem to be a lower level of play?
I doubt that most current PEDs are much worse for you than, say, a lifetime spent as a coal miner.
That seems like it could be used as an argument why football shouldn't even try to curb helmet-to-helmet hits, which I doubt you advocate.
There is a certain amount of inherent danger in these sports, obviously. That doesn't mean efforts can't, nor shouldn't, be taken to make them as safe as possible.
Whether that includes juicing is a separate matter. But the inherent danger in these sports isn't a reasonable argument against it.
We're kinda heading that way, aren't we?
This, and also, PEDs, if widespread, are pointless. It's just an arms race where everyone pays a price to get better, but no one gains.
Everyone concerned is better off if nobody uses, than if everybody uses.
Except society needs coal miners. Nobody needs roided ball-players.
I don't know what future audiences will like, but if we reach that point, it would seem that the athlete would be providing so little of the performance as to limit its appeal as sport. Under this kind of scenario, it's possible that technology would make Albert Pujols and David Eckstein virtually equal as physical specimens, and you'd be doing little more than watching a battle to see who created the better machine (which may be what future audiences enjoy, though I'm sure the clean, low-tech competition would maintain significant appeal).
The market disagrees.
Except there's no pressure to defect.
I'm still unclear what the price they're paying is, and the marginal price on top of what an athletic career can already do to one's body.
I'd advocate getting rid of the helmet, so that's kind of a "mu" answer to your question.
No, but it makes histrionics suspect, if the marginal danger is slight compared to the inherent danger.
Not clear. Most people seem to be happy with anti-PED efforts.
So, the nature of doping makes it really hard to predict what sort of effects we'll see. Beyond the stock warnings about increased risk of stroke and heart attack, liver and kidney troubles, and arthritis, it's hard to know what current pro PED usage will bring. My hunch is that someone like Barry Bonds (using designer steroids under strict supervision) will probably get away ok, whereas someone like Roger Clemens or Jason Giambi (using old school bodybuilding drugs stacked in high doses) probably has a great risk for trouble.
We *do* know that a great many of the heavy juicers of the 70's and 80's, like Superstar Billy Graham, saw serious deleterious side effects. Of course, MLB's testing policy has (for almost a decade now) made it really, really hard to use stuff like dianabol or winstrol (the stuff Raffy Palmeiro was caught with.) My own guess is that low dose testosterone creams and mild hGH usage are basically harmless, or at least would be under dr's supervision. Of course, unregulated PED usage would immediately become an awful arms race and we can all go ask Ken Patera how to think of that.
In baseball. Kinda. In baseball, the market also showed that they like plausible deniability. In football, most people seem to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears.
Yeah. Saying that responsible, supervised use of PEDs will definitely ruin your organs and kill you strikes me as being about as effective as saying "Marijuana will make you microwave your baby".
OTOH, with regulation and use, I can see an effective campaign against unsafe, irresponsible usage.
If there are any histrionics in this thread, it ain't by the anti-PED side. Mike Lupica's not here.
You can't remove all contact from football and still have football, so some of the danger is inherent. You can remove some other dangers, even marginal ones, if the inclusion is not necessary to play the game. Helmet-to-helmet hits and horse collar tackles, for instance, can be outlawed while still maintaining the game's core. The same is true of steroids (though there are obviously other issues with juicing).
But as long as the substances are controlled, the issue is moot. Whether you can reasonably ask athletes to take on further damage is something open to debate; whether you can ask them to risk legal consequences is not.
But still, to argue marginal danger, I think you need to quantify the inherent danger and the marginal danger, which nobody is doing.
I don't think you have to quantify the inherent danger. Auto racing is inherently dangerous, and always will be. But its various governing bodies are consistently and routinely looking for any and all ways to make it safer, as they should be. Baseball should do likewise, whether that's juicing or collisions at the plate (get rid of them, dammit).
Now, you do have to quantify the marginal danger and compare it to what it costs (both financial and other) to modify it (such as enforcement, success rate, loss of appeal, etc.) That's got to be an ongoing enterprise.
I honestly think this is the direction we're headed in. You can't have a middle aged (and more) population that takes testosterone and hgh on the regular and then say ballplayers can't to get over their injuries.
Allow me to spitball for a moment: I'd imagine the structure of usage will be through some form of therapeutic use exemption, where Player X ends up on the DL with an "approved injury" and the team doctor administers whatever PED's as performance *enabling* drugs. The info is a matter of public record, the player is tested extremely heavily during this period to make sure he doesn't take advantage of the opportunity to dope in an untoward fashion (nothing therapeutic about mimicking Ronnie Coleman's stack while you're on the DL) and there's some "stoppage time" between when the player comes off the drugs and when he's allowed back onto the field so as to eliminate any chance of unfair advantage.
Maybe, but there's a sizeable number that are not happy about it. As an example, when a player who was caught and served his 50 game suspension signed a new contract, there were quite a few reactions such as "wow, I can't believe they are letting him play baseball again"
You've definitely got some people who could only be satisfied with a lifetime ban on a first offense, treating it the same as betting on your own games.
I agree with this. It just needs to be more transparent and regulated. I think the public is fine with using PEDs to recover from injuries (as evidenced by their attitudes towards Andy Pettitte and now Ray Lewis). I think Bill Simmons said something to this effect when talking about how it was ridiculous that Kobe Bryant or whoever had to go to Europe to get his blood recycled or whatever weird process they do to help basketball players recover.
[26]:
I'm imagining a scenario where I walk into my doctor's office and I say "I have a job that puts an extensive strain on my body, and my body is unable to recover in time to perform my job at the highest level on a day to day basis. My strength and energy, and thus my job performance, fluctuates on a day to day basis."
I have no doubt I have no problem finding a doctor who will offer to legally prescribe testosterone and hGH to improve my job performance, while warning me about the known risks.
This is why I range from meh to irritated about histrionics from the public and the media.
Edit: And I think my stance is just further down the continuum expressed in [26] and [28]: Athletes are getting over injuries every day.
Ray? I think he get's the benefit of the doubt because the terrible thing he's supposed to have taken is deer antler spray. It sounds funny. Doesn't make him seem as evil as a guy taking some unpronounceable drug created in a lab. Doesn't really matter what the actual effects or potency of the drugs are.
I'm sure there will be a few Ravens fans to show up at super bowl parties wearing a #52 jersey and some fake antlers. I mean, it's Baltimore. They already own the costume antlers to support Buck Showalter.
FTFY.
The story spins a lot worse (and due to NFL PED bias, may be being spun the way it is) if it reads "I sold Ray Lewis sublingually administered growth hormone."
My state of residence also legalized marijuana. I guess I'm pretty libertarian.
It creates an unecessary (unknown) health risk with no collective upside.
If everyone juices, the sport gains nothing, the players gain nothing, and there is added risk.
What's the argument for PEDs?
Its not that surprising. The site is populated full of (a) libertarians; (b) contrarians; and (c) diehard baseball apologists. I'm not saying that in a disparaging way, I tend to agree with them.
Sure there's an upside. There is some evidence to suggest it increases performance and allows players to recover faster from injuries.
It brings inevitable usage out of the shadows and into a place where it can be regulated and monitored and researched. It eliminates temptation to defect, and break the rules for personal benefit (and to the detriment of one's fellow players).
"It might be unhealthy, but we'll never know, because we'll never research it" rings hollow with me. How those risks compare to exists risks of playing the game are important (but I'm repeating myself here).
Which just denies other players playing time.
I'm all about social safety nets in the world at large, but I want my talent to rise to the top and stay there, on display for me to watch, when I watch sports and entertainment.
What risks are there to playing baseball? I've seen zero evidence MLBers die younger than the general population.
While I think the silly ball era was an ugly brand of baseball, it certainly drew fans. The answer to bigger, stronger hitters is probably moving the fences back, not handicapping player capabilities.
It's not handicapping to bar PEDs, and even with bigger parks, you'll still get crazy offense b/c the OFs can't cover all that space.
Doubles and triples, and inside-the-park home runs! I remember people liking those things :)
But changing park dimensions away past historical thresholds...yeah, we're talking about changing the game in ways that fundamentally changes something about the sport. There is an appeal (as mentioned in another thread) to being able to imagine very similar games being played across eras.
People have been decrying the ever quickening pace of progress for hundreds of years.
You'd get different kinds of outfielders. More Ben Reveres, fewer Josh Willinghams. That would put a damper on offense.
This makes the incorrect assumption that PEDs help power but not speed.
No, it doesn't. Bigger outfields, with or without rules on PEDs, put a greater premium on outfielders who can cover ground.
The fans are not the market. The players are the market. Fans will go see baseball regardless. There wasn't a lull in attendance during the 90s, outside of the strike effect.
It's not an argument for PEDs, it's an argument against regulating PEDs based on some combination of:
a) standard civil libertarian right to do what you want to your own body stuff as long as you don't harm others
b) chemists are always ahead of the curve so testing is generally effective only against those ignorant or unable to afford the good stuff
c) making it "illegal" drives it underground which increases, not decreases, the health risks (and the shadiness)
d) punishment outweighs the crime
e) man some of the anti-PED crowd are hypocritical jerks
If you buy all of those, then drug-testing is unnecessarily invasive, ineffective, counter-productive, draconian and exists only to placate certain vocal segments of society. Add that the use of these drugs by the general public is effectively unregulated (while technically regulated) and you're singling out a small segment of society too. That doesn't mean you think that check-out folks at WalMart should be injecting themselves with Winstrol.
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