Wednesday, May 15, 2013
BPro: Listen to What the Heyman Said
(www.baseballprospectus.com)
With the Yang-Mills existence problem seemingly solved…we now move on to the Heyman existence problem. Or something.
Read More...And sometimes there isn’t much you can do. I wrote what I did about Hawk Harrelson and The Will To Win because at some point, you have to come to the conclusion that someone isn’t worth talking to anymore. Hawk’s problem wasn’t that he was wrong, it was that he was stuck in a frame of mind that starts from conclusions and will, when it cares to, circle back around to ...
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1. boteman posted on September 21, 2012 at 08:25 AM # hit 0 | hit 0Did Murti live through the 2000s?
Did Murti live through the 2000s?
But was Murti himself going around throwing out unfounded rumors about other players in that decade? I have no idea, and in fact I've never even heard of the guy, but the answer to that would either add or detract from his credibility here.
So if Joe Zilch or Murray Chass went around talking about cap sizes and bacne as being proof of juicing, that means that Murti's responsible for them. Yeah, that makes all kinds of sense.
Of course, most of 'em ended up being guilty.
Replace "Robinson Cano" with "Any athlete" and you've got a better statement.
Who said that Murti is responsible for them?
The point is that this is the exact same thing as we saw for most of the previous decade? Why is Murti waiting until now to make a stink about how unfair it is?
It's intellectually lazy, contrary to protections provided by our legal system and this inconsistency is being selectively applied to an industry where many minorities are successful.
It's intellectually lazy, contrary to protections provided by our legal system and this inconsistency is being selectively applied to an industry where many minorities are successful.
Because that standard only applies to criminal prosecutions.
In the rest of life, we generally use "more-likely-than-not", or preponderance of evidence, like in civil trials.
And in the vast majority of cases, PED suspicions have eventually proven true.
Like stereotyping people?
No matter how many times a suspicion becomes true, it doesn't make the next rumor accurate. BBTF exists to be a fact-based website on baseball, and thanks to my experiences in life with unfounded sordid rumors of drug usage while a Giant and Royal pitcher, I prefer to try to be fact-based no matter where and when I am. That way it's a lot easier to keep my story and convictions straight.
Because the "PEDs until proven innocent" mindset is usually combined with the "And if he did use PEDs, he didn't do anything wrong, because it's ridiculous to be punished for trying to improve your performance and help your team, and also he didn't do anything wrong because they don't work anyway" mindset.
Net-net, the presence of a popular press has been a massive boon to players' reputations and wallets.
So if Steve Howe said they got it wrong on his 7th suspension in baseball, you took that at face value?
Baseball should never have suspended guys for cocaine use. That was pure PR and mob appeasement.
Sorry, don't see the connection. If the evidence is such that something is more-likely-than-not, how would that conclusion be stereotyping?
It would be stereotyping to conclude something based on some unrelated characteristic, in spite of contrary evidence.
Baseball should never have suspended guys for cocaine use. That was pure PR and mob appeasement.
That depends. If guys showed up to work under the influence, or were dealing, I can certainly see suspending them.
Sure.
But Vida Blue, Jerry Martin, and Willie Aikens were suspended for a year (*) for attempted cocaine possession. That's flat-out reactionary.
(*) Later arbitrated down.
Were they convicted? Is there a general rule on criminal convictions?
The only contrary evidence to dismiss tales of use of illegal PED's are tests that say otherwise. Then these tests are quickly dismissed, saying either the drug in question wasn't able to be detected or a designer drug was used.
Bagwell is stereotyped (generalizations about typical characteristics of members of the groups - he got "bigger", see his baseball rookie card!) then experiences prejudice (attitude toward members of the group based solely on their membership in that group (all players, especially home run hitters in the 90's were using), then is discriminated against (HOF votes are withheld by BBWAA members based being "bigger" and a home run hitter in the "steroid era")
Actually, they were convicted of an attempt to purchase cocaine. They served time in a federal prison. At least 2, Blue and Aikens, spent many of the next years with multiple drug offenses and transgressions. Aitkens was selling crack cocaine. Their offense was a bit more dramtic than merely trying to possess.
I wouldn't withhold a HoF vote from Bagwell.
Once it crossed into the workplace, the player doesn't have a leg to stand on.
If that's true, he should have gotten the full year.
None. I look at Bagwell's career, and there is no funny uptick in HRs; no anomoly of any note.
I look at Brett Boone's career, where he goes from a punch-less middle infielder to a 35+ HR a year guy, and back to a punchless middle infielder after they start testing for steroids.
I am going to make a judgment about steroid use for one of those players, without proof of that steroid use (just one guy's word). I do not feel badly or prejudiced at all; I feel like someone who can reach a logical conclusion (that lacks a smoking gun) based upon a set of facts, and I think that is the way the world works, every day.
Howe checked himself into rehab in 1983 and admitted his drug and alcohol addiction problems. Too bad we were more concerned with either punishing him or condoning his illness by playing him if he could still throw 90.
If treatment of his addiction was paramount he stood a better chance of being alive today.
I would hope that counseling and treatment would be a part of any drug suspension, but as I am sure many of you who have been close to these addictions know, rehabilitation starts with the addicted individual, and until they take it on themselves to make a change to overcome their addiction, all the 3rd party intervention in the world is not going to stop the individual from lapsing. Howe was blessed with a skill that provided him enough money to get help; I wish for his sake he had done so, but I am not going to blame baseball for Steve Howe's troubles.
Well it would certainly make going to Royals games more bearable, that's for sure.
I do not disagree. Howe would have needed the strength to give up baseball and remove himself from its toxic environment (constant travel, drink and more), then learn to function away from the game. It would have probably led to a better chance of avoiding serious relapses.
It amazes me that Josh Hamilton is able to function as well as he has with only minor issues.
Broadcast worldwide. On the world's major sports network which has credibility - not a "mere blog".
I fear many of you would have fallen for the Proctor & Gamble devil worship rumors of the late 70's/early 80's - or at least worshipped a guy named "Stan" per "Family Guy".
They have?
"When there's smoke, there's fire" is also BS. There's only fire when there is fire, and far too many people (sportswriters, cough....) tend to be shouting fire in a crowded MLB media scrum when there is no fire to be seen.
OK, I will give up now and take a leave of absence from BBTF for awhile, as this subject is too personally painful for me to deal with in a calm manner past this point.
Because the "PEDs until proven innocent" mindset is usually combined with the "And if he did use PEDs, he didn't do anything wrong, because it's ridiculous to be punished for trying to improve your performance and help your team, and also he didn't do anything wrong because they don't work anyway" mindset.
That's a lot of truth to that. Being a steroid hardliner while resisting the sort of mindset that conflates bogus "evidence" with actual evidence is not likely to win you many followers around here. But there are too many conflicting BTF views on this whole subject to try to reduce it all to a few sound bites. The dominant BTF voices on PEDs are mostly libertarian, but once you get past that there's no common viewpoint.
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And as someone whose career was ended partly by unsubstantiated BS, I hope none of you ever have to experience the knowledge that you were collateral damage for someone else's actions.
"When there's smoke, there's fire" is also BS. There's only fire when there is fire, and far too many people (sportswriters, cough....) tend to be shouting fire in a crowded MLB media scrum when there is no fire to be seen.
Bob, if you're not going to be showing up here for awhile, those are pretty good thoughts to leave us with.
Granted, the owners/Selig and the media were co-conspirators and equally guilty of tacit endorsement of what was happening but in the final analysis, no one cares about them.
Translate this into Latin, and put it underneath the silhouette of the man in MLB's logo.
True to an extent, but unless you see public ratting out of one's teammates as a viable solution to countering that, you're still talking about mixing up the guilty with innocent.
Granted, the owners/Selig and the media were co-conspirators and equally guilty of tacit endorsement of what was happening but in the final analysis, no one cares about them.
Though they should, since although they may not be "equally as guilty" as the actual juicers, they certainly were in a better position to make their voices heard about it than the players themselves. This isn't a blanket indictment, since plenty of the media were only on the fringes of what was going on, but when you get cases like Steinbrenner's acceptance of that altered Giambi contract, no profession of innocence has much credibility.
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