At Hardball Talk, Calcaterra said of this B-Pro guest piece by former journeyman pitcher Eric Knott:
We should spill way less ink about who we think “the real Home Run King” is — as if that matters — and think way harder about those frequent minor league suspensions and what they mean to the people who are faced with the choice to take dangerous drugs or wind up out of baseball.
Against that backdrop is this excellent column from Eric Knott. Knott pitched 11 years in the minors and 24 games in the majors. He is the quintessential borderline guy who, if he had an extra couple of miles per hour on his heater, may have stuck. But he didn’t get those miles per hour, and he didn’t try PEDs in an effort to do so.
Knott gives a fascinating, clear-eyed and detailed rundown of the environment in baseball during the height of the Steroid Era, as well as what factored into his decisions about whether to use.
It’s an absolute must-read. There’s more useful information in this piece than anything that can be found in the Mitchell Report or the latest bombastic anti-PEDs screen from Johnny Sportswriter.
I concur - read it.
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[blockquote]Anyway, I normally stay out of PED stuff, but thought this was good.
Somehow I got depressed reading it because all I could think was "If I submit this to BTF, people will react by making fun of him and calling him a moron for ethically distinguishing amphetamines and steroids, and all the discussion will be about that instead of any of the interesting parts".
Read it anyway!
This is really a shame.
As to the story itself, it adds another ugly footnote to the Expos saga and more dirt on Selig's legacy. I remember those Expos final push pennant races - dreaming of seeing them get a final playoff appearance just before MLB pulls the plug just to have MLB say 'screw you' to the team and not let them have any September call-ups which cost players like Knott their best shot at a major league career. Going over Knott's stats I see a guy who only had a good K rate in the Pioneer league at age 22 (very old for that league) thus he never had much of a margin of error. Agreed with him that his biggest error was not signing with the Yankees when he had a shot at a month in AAA after being in the Mexican League - tired or not you gotta grab those chances - but it fits with the type who would've refused any steroids even when seeing the effects on players around him, and on how he resisted greenies at first. The guys who tend to make it will do anything to make it and few are honest about it afterwards - I really appreciate the honesty from Mike Schmidt that he probably would've used steroids had it been as prevalent in his era as in the late 90's, and get disgusted by guys like Reggie Jackson who moralize about it but I'd bet strongly would've used had their careers been in the late 90's as their ego's wouldn't have let them fall behind (ala why Bonds jumped in with both feet post-McGwire/Sosa).
I don't know if it's true but it sounds reasonable.
You need < instead of [
I was ejected from a Dominican Winter League game for mother-####### an umpire
I liked that phrase. I wonder if that's the common parlance.
I thought cocksucker was the magic word
has anyone else heard THAT before? I certainly never have. I mean, Bouton asked, in 1969, "how fabulous are greenies?" He implied they had been around for years by then
I've never taken any steroids unless you count creatine or andro, so I'm not qualified to comment. But the description of greenies, I remember that. For me, the big effect was on weight. When dexedrine was made illegal, I gained about 60 pounds in 6 months, which was exactly what I was taking the dexedrine to avoid. I burned much more energy and had no appetite, so I ate fewer calories. My family is given to getting fat. Greenies kept me from that for a decade, like nothing else ever has. - Brock Hanke
phentermine--one of the 2 ingredients in the now banned "fen-phen". Phentermine is still prescribed but only for gross obesity, and it is recommended that it only be taken for a month or so, along with improvements in diet & excercise
For anyone with the time, he outs a few anonymous team-mates with enough detail that a little research can connect the dots on who he was talking about. Not earth shattering stuff, more just interested in knowing given he was on a team I watched at the time. Without doing a lick of research I'm going to tag Sean Burroughs is the guy who couldn't take off his shirt in the clubhouse cause of man-titties.
Take that Murray Chass!
Now what would possibly ever lead you to believe that?
On the "performance enhancement" effect of greenies:
On the "performance enhancement" effect of steroids:
There's much more that doesn't related to PEDs, and those parts are equally interesting. Thanks to DerK for posting it, and it's nice to see that it wasn't behind a paywall. It's an article that deserves the widest possible distribution.
Maybe he guessed that someone would try to start an argument about the distinction.
Maybe he guessed that someone would try to start an argument about the distinction.
Now what would possibly ever lead you to believe that?
More seriously, the value of the article is that it's not written by a player who's on any moral crusade to condemn steroid users. It's written by a player who's both the fly on the wall and who also was faced every day with a conflict between his personal values and his possible career enhancement, and is willing to write about it openly. Combine that with the ability to write well, and the result isn't so much a unique perspective, as it is a perspective that hasn't been presented previously with this degree of skill to a broad audience. This isn't just another version of Goose Gossage yelling at a cloud.
What might be even more interesting would be to get Knott and Bob Tufts together for an unscripted and open ended discussion about the whole PED question, and the practical and moral dilemmas it presented to players in their precarious career positions. I say that because Bob has also written about PEDs here on BTF from a similar vantage point, and it'd be interesting to see how they'd interact.
And we know that you've never lied in court, because you've never been convicted of perjury.
Yeah, me too. Great great read, this FA. Highest recommend.
David, Andy? STFU? Thanks.
Martin Sanchez, come on down! (23-year-old Dominican in his third pro season, and the only Dominican pitcher on the team)
Look at it more closely though. "The small ligaments and tendons" are supporting joint structures which are attached to "small" muscles. If it were reasonable, the "large" ligaments and tendons around other joints would be just as vulnerable because they are attached to relatively "large" muscles. Pitchers have always been prone to injuries of the elbow and shoulder. Why? Because it's a highly stressful motion repeated thousands of times per year, not because they use AAS.
That being said, anecdotally bodybulders have related issues with tendon tears (never heard of any issues with ligament tears) which they relate to AAS use in the same manner. The theory is the muscle grew and strengthened more rapidly than the tendon did and the greater contractile force of the muscle contributed to the tendon tear. Bodybuilders are engaged in a far different activity and train in a manner far different (and for that matter, use AAS in a manner FAR differently) than a baseball pitcher though. So even if their anecdotal evidence is valid, I don't know that there would be any carry over to baseball pitchers.
This is a tough one. The Bonds thing in the prior paragraph probably slots it in for 2002 or 2003. The closest fit among Knott's teammates in those years is probably David Dellucci, but he was already an established ML player at that point, only playing at AAA for a couple of games as part of a rehab assignment. Could also be Terrmel Sledge - I don't think he was touted as a power prospect by scouts, but he did hit for good power in 2003, which might have shaped Knott's perceptions, he did spend a few seasons in the majors as a backup, and he was listed in the Mitchell Report for steroid use. Alex Cintron wasn't a power prospect, Rod Barajas and Lyle Overbay were starters instead of backups, and Andy Green didn't exactly look built (and was a relatively unheralded 24th-round pick, to boot, instead of a traditional "prospect").
The description fits Steve Randolph, who played alongside Knott for several seasons as both came up through the minors.
That could work, though it means pushing the timeline back to 2004.
I initially thought he was talking about this game, in which the Reds blew a nine-run lead against the Brewers. That game has two of Knott's former teammates in it - Spivey and Overbay. Spivey contributed to the lead-blowing by making two errors. The reference to velocity makes it sound like he's talking about a pitcher, though...
I agree with everyone, btw, this is a fantastic read.
Probably - I'm still working through the research.
The power hitting prospect that was well endowed - I would guess that would be Jack Cust...he sort of bounced around before having some good years in the Major Leagues.
I don't think it's dishonest, per se, but it certainly is convenient that he decided that the PEDs he took were OK (even if he's ashamed that his father might find out he took them).
Knott said that guy never hit for the power that people expected, though, and Cust had pretty good power.
I don't think it's dishonest, per se, but it certainly is convenient that he decided that the PEDs he took were OK (even if he's ashamed that his father might find out he took them).
Knott gave several strong reasons for distinguishing "the PEDs he took" from those he didn't. To call that merely "convenient" is effectively to dismiss his reasoning as being little more than a rationalization of his own behavior, which in turn is in so many words accusing him of being dishonest.
If you have any specific reason other than a generic suspicion of all ballplayers to doubt the motivation behind Knott's reasoning, you should say so directly, rather than ducking behind weasel words like "convenient". The fact that he never told his father about his amp use may simply reflect the distance between his experience of the culture of the baseball clubhouse and the different experiences and outlook of his father. I don't see that it's much different from the offspring of a strict Catholic not owning up to the fact that he or she has been sleeping around before getting married. It's just one of those things that can never been explained without opening up a whole can of intergenerational worms.
I wonder if this was Duaner Sanchez. He was not much of a prospect, but went on to have a few really good seasons out of the bullpen before injury wrecked his career. He was traded away while on a team with Knott.
I'm not sure where to find old Sidewinders results. The Aces site doesn't have them.
I totally agree, which was why I was hoping that Bob Tufts might see the article and add his two cents worth. For an issue that's been the subject of more agonizing and debate than practically anything this side of the various strikes, it's sad how seldom the conversation here gets much beyond dead end exchanges about Babe Ruth's goat testicles habit and speculations about cap size, not to mention the immortal subject of Mike Piazza's bacne. AFAIC this article is worth every one of Repoz's pinata posts put together, and it'd be great to see ESPN or some other network use it as a springboard to delve into the serious ethical points that it raises. My feeling is that there are a lot of people who are superficially on both "sides" of this issue, but whose views are wholly unrepresented by the snarkers and the other assorted imbeciles on both "sides" who seem to have dominated the conversation up to now.
Well he talks extensively about why he thought it was OK at the time. He doesn't really comment on what his current feelings are. If they have changed, or he still feels the same way. At no point does he say, this is what I and many others thought at the time, and I still believe it. Could be he does not want to say he thinks illegal supplements are still OK, or it his opinion may be evolving and he does not want to sat so for other reasons. My guess is he still feels the same, but may be more conflicted about it than he was then. Who knows though.
"Yes, we lied to the public, and we perjured ourselves in the courts, but it was general knowledge in the clubhouse" vs. "yes, we lied to the public, and we perjured ourselves in the courts, but it wasn't discussed that much in the clubhouse." Anyone who sees wide open moral or legal space between those two statements has got more talented eyes than me.
I would say that the equivalency is weak, and relies on looseness in the definition of "Performance Enhancing." If you set some minimum threshold of enhancement for a drug to meet before it became an ethical concern (which everybody does), you could with perfect consistency oppose steroids and be indifferent to greenies.
That completely omits the distinctions that Knott draws between them, as I copied in #16 above.
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I would say that the equivalency is weak, and relies on looseness in the definition of "Performance Enhancing." If you set some minimum threshold of enhancement for a drug to meet before it became an ethical concern (which everybody does), you could with perfect consistency oppose steroids and be indifferent to greenies.
And if you define "performance enhancing" in the almost comical ways that have been attempted in previous threads, you can put on your best straight face and say that steroids are no different than Tommy John surgery or bootleg gin.
Part of the problem is that great numbers (though not everyone---let's be clear about that) on both "sides" of this issue have seen either steroids themselves or the backlash against them as a not-so-covert attack on their favorite players. The Chasses see steroids as an attack on Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson, and many here see any sort of ethical questions surrounding steroids as nothing but a hypocritical attack on many of the stars of the 1990's, conducted by people who sleep cuddled up to a stuffed Roger Maris teddy bear. It's easy for the Chasses to ignore the genuine ethical dilemmas that confronted players such as Knott, but never faced Aaron and Robinson. And it's easy to come up with a thousand one liners to dismiss the issue that Knott poses and see him essentially as a sucker for not buying into the steroids program.
Yes, we all know that the reputations of ballplayer heroes of all generations are largely the product of media hype, and that the media are by their nature almost compelled to create mythical heroes and cartoon villains. They do it for actors and they do it for CEOs, and why should ballplayers be any different? Anyone with a computer and time on their hands can find many hundreds of stupid stories written in 1998 that glorified the same set of players that were being vilified just a few short years later, but again, how does that sort of easy mockery address the ethical points that Knott had to deal with? In spite of all the rhetoric, this was never a contest between angelic 1960's stars and asterisked 1990's stars. It was about the daily contests that took place (and still take place) between players like Knott and players who lacked his ethical concerns, and no time travel was ever involved. Knott doesn't mention Roger Maris, and the ethical points he raises don't have a damn thing to do with anything but the here and now questions that he confronted every day.
It's a matter of record that Sledge failed a drug test (2003 -- while trying out for the US Olympic team). On the other hand, it was a positive for Nandrolone and a real good chunk of Nandrolone positives are from supplements that contained -- without listing it -- andro. (Andro was still legal then. but also on the IOC's banned drugs list so it can't be called a false positive)
I don't think it's dishonest, since dishonesty implies willful deception. I just think he came to the conclusions that he did because going in, he wanted those things to be true, so he unconsciously steered his moral calculations in that direction.
He admits that greenies made him play better (albeit in a different way than steroids would have), and he says that his primary concern over steroids was the health effects, rather than any moral turmoil. He also notes that he was surreptitious in his use of greenies, concealing them from family members and making sure that there was no documentary evidence (like a shipping label) tying him to their use.
I'm not trying to give him a hard time here. But nobody is capable of speaking entirely objectively about themselves and their own choices.
At the same time, it's worth noting that MLB itself, now that it has deigned to acknowledge PED use, sees no difference between the use of steroids and the use of greenies, as far as official sanctions are concerned.
He's not a sucker. More akin to a guy who went home at 5:30 every day to spend time with his family, rather than spending another two hours at the office chasing a promotion. He was more concerned about his own health than his career prospects, and that's fine. It's his choice to make.
I need an agent to arrange my appearance fee (David?).
There is no moral dilemma - only personal justification of one's actions.
Would you judge a Dominican player who grew up in a culture and legal system where drugs are not treated as they are in the US the same (especially considering the lifeboat/economic ethics of Hispaniola and caring for one's family)?
Would do judge a player that used illegal drugs like pot and cocaine (which inhibit performance and shortchange fans and teams) harshly for their actions?
Did I bat an eye when given DMSO by my team? No.
This is manifestly false. They're treated differently in the Mitchell Report, and there are official therapeutic use exceptions -- granted rather freely -- to the anti-amp policy.
A player could also receive a therapeutic use exemption for testosterone or HGH, if one were warranted (or the need for one were convincingly faked). And the Mitchell Report, though compiled at MLB's behest, was not written by MLB as an institution - in contrast to the drug policy, which was.
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I don't think it's dishonest, since dishonesty implies willful deception. I just think he came to the conclusions that he did because going in, he wanted those things to be true, so he unconsciously steered his moral calculations in that direction.
He admits that greenies made him play better (albeit in a different way than steroids would have),
Here we get at the heart of the dispute. Knott did not say that greenies made him "play better" than he would have with normal rest. He specifically said that "My velocity didn’t increase, and I didn’t throw more innings or prevent fewer runs in games when I took one." The effect he describes is restorative, not enhancing in the way that he describes steroids.
and he says that his primary concern over steroids was the health effects, rather than any moral turmoil.
But the moral issue arises when a player feels the need to damage his health in order to keep up with the players who simply don't care about such long term issues. It may be primarily a practical issue for the individual player, but a moral issue in collective terms. This is why Knott isn't condemning the individual players who faced the same hard choice and decided differently than he did.
He also notes that he was surreptitious in his use of greenies, concealing them from family members and making sure that there was no documentary evidence (like a shipping label) tying him to their use.
I addressed that first point above in #39, and as to the second point, Knott's actions show little more than an awareness of the difference between moral and legal questions. If a hypothetical pot smoker were to use the mails to get his supplies, I doubt if he would encourage his supplier to have a return address of "Dr. Bong's Marijuana Farm" on the label. That doesn't mean that he would have any qualms about the morality of pot smoking, just an understandable caution about taking unnecessary risks.
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At the same time, it's worth noting that MLB itself, now that it has deigned to acknowledge PED use, sees no difference between the use of steroids and the use of greenies, as far as official sanctions are concerned.
Actually the sanctions are greater for steroids, which reflects the relative degree of seriousness with which MLB regards the two PEDs. But the more important distinction is that it took the issue of steroids even to get amps drawn into the conversation in the first place.
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And it's easy to come up with a thousand one liners to dismiss the issue that Knott poses and see him essentially as a sucker for not buying into the steroids program.
He's not a sucker. More akin to a guy who went home at 5:30 every day to spend time with his family, rather than spending another two hours at the office chasing a promotion. He was more concerned about his own health than his career prospects, and that's fine. It's his choice to make.
Of course that totally dodges the moral issue of the steroid user getting an advantage over the non-user. If the guy who works late is rifling through the company's private papers during that time in order to gain an advantage, then your analogy would make more sense.
I need an agent to arrange my appearance fee (David?).
If you and Knott could get together in a public forum to discuss the whole PED issue at length, I'd pay to see it, and I think you'd have a wider audience than either of you might expect.
There is no moral dilemma - only personal justification of one's actions.
Maybe not for you, but other players might see it differently. And the long term collective moral issue doesn't go away.
Would you judge a Dominican player who grew up in a culture and legal system where drugs are not treated as they are in the US the same (especially considering the lifeboat/economic ethics of Hispaniola and caring for one's family)?
Maybe not, but I'd try to make sure that the Dominican's understanding of the issue was forcefully addressed and corrected---in Spanish---before he signed his first contract. An ounce of prevention, etc.
Would [you] judge a player that used illegal drugs like pot and cocaine (which inhibit performance and shortchange fans and teams) harshly for their actions?
Only if I had a rooting interest in the fortunes of his team. Otherwise I'd just say "Go for it".
Did I bat an eye when given DMSO by my team? No.
That's one of many things I'd like to see you and Knott discuss.
I simply don't accept their competitive "achievements" at face value, and there are more than ample reasons to have that perspective.
Never heard this before. Do you have any articles which discuss this?
So what? They allowed him to perform better on the day he took them than he would have on that day if he had not taken them. They improved his performance relative to his baseline expectation for that game.
Per Knott: "I was more alert and more focused on getting the ball to the catcher. The pills locked me in. They gave me the ability to stay focused on the pitching and forget about the peripheral distractions around the ballpark... I looked at it as a way to get through a long season and offset some of the fatigue that arose from traveling, working odd hours, and playing 20-plus days in a row." He was more focused and less fatigued, and as a result he played better than he otherwise would have.
That is one circumstance under which moral considerations arise, but not even close to the only one. By taking controlled substances, he was choosing to break the law, and engaging in behavior that he explicitly recognizes the outside world would consider to be shameful. He justifies this to himself by stating that the use of amphetamines was broadly condoned within the culture of baseball, even if it was condemned by the world at large, and noting that he would not have used them if their use had been discouraged by his teammates.
Not to mention the fact that by choosing to take amphetamines, Knott was also running risks. To quote Knott: "The only times I ever snapped a bat in the dugout, got into verbal confrontations with an umpire, or popped off to an opposing player was while I was playing under the influence of a greenie. I was ejected from a Dominican Winter League game for mother-####### an umpire and once threw an empty five-gallon water bottle onto the field in a Mexican League playoff game. I did things that were out of character under the influence, and I didn’t mind." He experienced significant behavioral changes as a result of drug use, becoming aggressive and hostile, and he was willing to tolerate those changes in order to continue receiving the performance benefit that the drugs provided to him. He also increased his chance of serious medical conditions (heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, temporary psychosis, suicidal ideation, etc.), even though he did not acknowledge this fact within the piece, and may not even recognize that it is true.
You are incorrect. Look again at the large sections of the piece in which he talks about the different moral codes regarding amphetamine use inside the game and outside it. If he believed, deep-down, that amphetamine use was entirely right and proper, he would not feel the need to describe at such length the influence that baseball's widespread cultural tolerance of amphetamine use (and its contrast to the moral rejection of that use by the world at large) had on his willingness to begin using them.
That moral issue is equally present in a fatigued/ill/hung-over player's decision whether or not to use amphetamines to artificially enhance his performance in that particular game, given that long-term amphetamine use also poses significant health risks.
There's nothing new or interesting in what Knott said. The illegal PEDs he admits to doing are fine because of rationalization rationalization rationalization; they're totally different than the ones he claimed he didn't do. How many thousand players haven't said that?
BUT
having said that, i want to point out that this author is a real person, published this under his own name, and, AND, what he had to say is socially and "morally" acceptable
it would also be OK for some player to have said - yes i DID use amps, i pitched/hit better when i used them and i DID know they were performance enhancing but i used them anyway. i did think their use is cheating, but like, if you ain't cheatin, you ain't competin. and fact is that showing up and getting a boost from ANY drug to make up for your own failure to have complete dedication to your competition is, in fact, cheating.
you don't think it matters that someone who ate right, slept instead of going out whoring and boozing, had to compete against guys who took drugs to give them more energy and focus? i guess not, because the team encouraged and abetted it.
but at this point, the HORRORS!!!! gasbs of shockSHOCK about roid use are to the point that can't nobody who is a real ballplayer talk honestly about how he used steroids without all the stupid "apologies" os we CAN'T have any sort of meaningful discussion. if any player/former player wanted to talk about roid use WITHOUT all those boohoohoos, he'd be burned at the stake.
fact is that what other people currently think obviously and heavily influences what people say about what they do and what they did.
remember BITGOD when it wasn't adultery for a man to have a Black mistress? remember BITGOD when it was kewl for a man to dump the wife n kidz for a teenage beauty queen? remember when it was great when musicians had all these under 18 teenage groupies it was fine for them to screw and heck, they were almost EXPECTED to? remember when it was not only legal but AWESOME!!!!! for adult women (like teachers) to have sex with their teenage students? - now they go to prison.
can't none of those people NOW come out and say - yeah i did it, i'm not sorry and i don't think i did anything wrong.
Yes, exactly.
I'm not sure whether this is all that interesting, even if true. First, the complexion of the minor leagues is very much in flux as players frequently move from level to level. Second, you've got young players developing -- and growing. So it's not all that surprising to me that various hitters would gain size and power.
But it's been so long.
Isn't it "bated" breath?
Anyway, there's always been an alternative to 'dishonest' on this issue: irrational. Also, obviously they are different drugs and affect their users differently. Nobody ever said the drugs were "similar" at a granular level, on every detail. The "similarity" is that both drugs can be viewed as performance enhancers and that there's no meaningful difference on this score, or on the issue of the HOF.
What he seems to be saying is that, under other circumstances, he would have been able to perform as well without greenies. But those circumstances weren't available to him, as indeed they aren't to any player who is asked to play 162 games in 180 days, or 140 games in 155 days for minor leaguers. "Normal rest" is not available to those players, whether or not they're hung over (which Andy seems to think is the only reason a player would ever take a greenie).
Knott acknowledges that, without greenies, he wouldn't have been able to perform as well as he did. Indeed, he describes them as "PEDs":
I must admit that I used PEDs from time to time myself. I popped greenies occasionally before a start or a game. I also took Adipex, a prescription diet drug that I learned from my current personal physician is extremely powerful and a controlled substance. So I wasn’t perfect.
Only with an overbroad definition of "performance enhancing" -- one that would include something like coffee. You have more energy and focus if you drink coffee, a primary reason so many people drink coffee.
By the same analogy, steroids are really just stronger protein powder.
The problem with testing for Nandrolone is that it's a naturally occurring substance. So what they test for is the presence of 19-norandrosterone. Synthetic nandrolone results in elevated levels (there's always a trace amount of this, but the standard for a positive test is more than 5 times the highest level recorded). So does androstenedione. So too lysine (this is in some dispute, but under "strict liability" it doesn't matter)
Early Nandrolone tests were provably unreliable. (as demonstrated at Mark Richardson's hearings after a positive test. Under controlled conditions they were able to produce a false positive)
And the first time that tainted supplements became a major issue was in the Greg Rusedski who was able to demonstrate that the supplement provided to him (by trainers employed by the body trying to discipline him) had andro in them and that this would produce the elevated levels of 19-norandrosterone.
No, that's not at all necessarily so. The guy working late may just be slow. Granted, he may be able to fool his superiors (only for a while hopefully), but working late in and of itself doesn't make you the better employee. It's what you do on the job, late or during regular hours. Rifling through private papers, spreading rumors about competitors, etc., are actions that maybe should be seen as reprehensible. Maybe that's why we seek bright lines expressed in rules all the time in all our endeavors.
There was no analogy to be the "same" as.
**And David's brushoff of the difference between working late honestly and working late dishonestly, which isn't worthy of a serious response.
The problem with this dictum is that taking it to a reducio ad absurdum level, as it always is here, makes discussion not worth discussing.
Then why did you force it onto this thread?
Then why did you explicitly ask for a discussion that hinges on that point?
[Edit: Coke to JJ]
Because, doing that sort of thing is, in essense what he does. Its his raison d'etre. He's Andy, The Thread Steerer.
BUT
having said that, i want to point out that this author is a real person, published this under his own name, and, AND, what he had to say is socially and "morally" acceptable
it would also be OK for some player to have said - yes i DID use amps, i pitched/hit better when i used them and i DID know they were performance enhancing but i used them anyway. i did think their use is cheating, but like, if you ain't cheatin, you ain't competin. and fact is that showing up and getting a boost from ANY drug to make up for your own failure to have complete dedication to your competition is, in fact, cheating.
Since that's a POV that's obviously held by an indeterminate number of players, I'd love to see one or more of them come right out and say it as you just have. It'd be a lot more provocative than hearing the same POV expressed by a ghostwriter wannabee.
you don't think it matters that someone who ate right, slept instead of going out whoring and boozing, had to compete against guys who took drugs to give them more energy and focus? i guess not, because the team encouraged and abetted it.
Lisa, have you ever seen or heard of a single player who complained about any other player---either rival or teammate---who used amphetamines? There may well be, but I've yet to hear of any.
but at this point, the HORRORS!!!! gasbs of shockSHOCK about roid use are to the point that can't nobody who is a real ballplayer talk honestly about how he used steroids without all the stupid "apologies" os we CAN'T have any sort of meaningful discussion. if any player/former player wanted to talk about roid use WITHOUT all those boohoohoos, he'd be burned at the stake.
Can't argue with that point, as you're only applying it to those players who actually used steroids. It wouldn't apply to those who didn't.
fact is that what other people currently think obviously and heavily influences what people say about what they do and what they did.
Could be, probably is in most cases, but not everyone is necessarily quite that cowed by current consensus opinion.
remember BITGOD when it wasn't adultery for a man to have a Black mistress? remember BITGOD when it was kewl for a man to dump the wife n kidz for a teenage beauty queen? remember when it was great when musicians had all these under 18 teenage groupies it was fine for them to screw and heck, they were almost EXPECTED to? remember when it was not only legal but AWESOME!!!!! for adult women (like teachers) to have sex with their teenage students? - now they go to prison.
can't none of those people NOW come out and say - yeah i did it, i'm not sorry and i don't think i did anything wrong.
Much as I detest the use of steroids by baseball players, I can't quite get around to comparing it to the types of activities you're bringing up here. But maybe I'm just getting soft on the subject.
I was hoping out loud to get some more views from actual ballplayers, in response to the quotes from Knott that I copied in #16 above. The utterly predictable responses from the peanut gallery here, all of which have been posted countless times before, are about as interesting to me as my take on the same subject is to some of you. What is interesting is the take of actual ballplayers like Knott and Tufts, and like Lisa, I only wish we could have more of them.
There's no real dispute anyway, other than by those trying to muddy the waters to reach a predetermined result. Taking a substance to make one feel more rested doesn't remotely transgress any serious system of competitive ethics -- or any other kind of ethics -- and so the terms "normal" and "abnormal" are sophistic, disposable throwaways.
Nor is "enhancement" standing alone the distinguishing concept we're looking for. Amps and coffee provide a temporary increase in natural human faculties obtainable without resorting to them. Roids provide an indefinite increase in muscle unobtainable without them and, therefore, fundamentally increase performance capability. Amps do not alter the performance ceiling; roids do. (And if someone wants to quibble about this, roids do materially more.)
The difference is akin to the difference in strategy and tactics. Roids are a beneficial improvement in strategy; amps provide a temporary tactical improvement within static bounds. Or for the economics people and the graph drawers among us, amps permit an occasional, temporary shift along a static "performance supply" curve.(*) Roids favorably and indefinitely shift the entire curve.
These distinctions, frankly easy to arrive at, explain why Knott's intuitive and instinctive moral sense -- expressed very well -- is the same one that has obtained with little dissent for 45-odd years -- from the perspective of competitive ethics, roids and amps are fundamentally different and clearly on opposite sides of the applicable ethical lines.
(*) Of course, there's plenty of testimony from Bouton and others that even this shift doesn't really happen, but for these purposes, we'll assume they're wrong.
And when you tried to bait people into responding to you in #35, saying that if people didn't respond it would prove they were liars, what was your goal then?
Then why did you direct your question to us, rather than actual ballplayers? If you wanted Bob's take on it, you could've just e-mailed him.
There's no real dispute anyway, other than by those trying to muddy the waters to reach a predetermined result. Taking a substance to make one feel more rested doesn't remotely transgress any serious system of competitive ethics -- or any other kind of ethics -- and so the terms "normal" and "abnormal" are sophistic, disposable throwaways.
I disagree with that only to the extent that I don't find the consensus BTF definition of enhancement to be either dishonest or irrational, and IF (big "if") you view "enhancement" as being merely the difference between playing and not playing, I've long conceded their point. But as you rightly point out, that sort of perspective is not one that either you, I, or Knott would share, and I'm glad to see the alternative perspective expressed so directly and eloquently by a ballplayer whose views are based on actual pro level experience.
As have I, though I'm not sure what concession there is, given that the number of "but for" games played in any players CV is almost certainly the functional equivalent of zero.
Then why is it against the rules?
Of course, you're the same guy who once tried to argue that it wasn't against the rules to go off the course during a marathon, so arguing "competitive ethics" with you isn't likely to be a particularly fruitful endeavor.
That distinction is essentially immaterial.
And of course, steroids by themselves do not alter the performance ceiling. They only enable the player to work more effectively at self-improvement. I could take steroids all day, and it wouldn't do #### for my playing ability, because I'm not at the gym lifting to build muscle.
You must have just made a typo. It's easy enough to spell ballplayers as P-R-I-M-A-T-E-S.
It's the core reason the two substances are distinguished, so it's very material for these purposes.
In the absence of other ballplayers, I would gladly settle for the takes of a few Primates whose views on the subject haven't been expressed ad nauseum before, or at least who have the ability (as Lisa does) to express their POV with a bit of originality. I know what you think of my views on the subject, so that's of equal lack of interest to me, since I've heard it all before. The one thing that elevates this otherwise routine thread from Repoz's usual pinata posts is the viewpoint of Knott, which I hope people will read in its entirety.
As have I, though I'm not sure what concession there is, given that the number of "but for" games played in any players CV is almost certainly the functional equivalent of zero.
On that point I'd be inclined to defer to the views of actual players, many of whom have indicated otherwise, even allowing for exaggeration.
No, it's not. The fundamental distinction is between permitted substances that enhance performance and prohibited substances that enhance performance. These are both the latter. The exact mechanism by which those various substances enhance performance is immaterial.
There's nothing "fundamental" about that distinction. It's merely a distinction made by the rules, and one that has been different several times in baseball history. The "fundamental" distinctions are the ones we've been chewing over for the last few years.
And, as noted, amps aren't really "prohibited" since almost 100 players are allowed to use them. They're merely provisionally, or conditionally, prohibited.
The exact mechanism by which those various substances enhance performance is immaterial.
I wasn't distinguishing the "mechanism" by which they "enhance performance"; I was distinguishing the fundamentally different ways in which they alter performance capability. "Enhancing performance" is merely the shifting along the performance supply curve I described earlier.
So if someone invents a drug that makes you 10% stronger, but all effects fade within a day, that would be ok for players to take before every game?
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