I believe it was Bruce Chen Shui-bian that said…“BBWAA members shake fists before reconciliation and rational talks.”
It’s awfully big of Major League Baseball union boss Michael Weiner to declare that steroid users should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, considering the organization he runs, the Players Association, was the biggest culprit in the scandal that damaged the game.
“It’s a museum,” Weiner told the crowd last week at the National Press Club. “If you want to have some notation on their plaque that indicates that they were either judged to have used performance-enhancing substances or accused of having done that, so be it.”
OK, here’s a notation: “We would have stuck syringes in our eyes before we would have let baseball have tough drug testing of our members, and it was only when we were dragged before Congress and humiliated, and our members fearing prosecution, did we finally relent and go along with a worthy testing program. Otherwise, A-Rod would have about 700 career home runs by now.”
How’s that for a notation?
...Michael Weiner, like Andy Pettitte, “misremembers” the role his union played in the steroid scandal. We’ll all get a reminder this week in a Washington courtroom.
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I think that's fair. I just don't think there's a lot of anti-steroids people who would draw the line in the same place. With McGwire and Bonds, there wasn't a lot of "OMG, they're taking something surreptitiously!" It was, "OMG, they're making a mockery of the game!"
Where does getting a great new supplement from your personal trainer fall on that scale?
Totally fair. I do think that at least some of the outrage was because of the surreptitious use of illegal substances thought to be superdrugs (the average fan sometimes forgets that you have to put the work in to get the most out of steroids.) Frankly, I think there was also a racial component to the outrage, and that has to be accounted for. I remember people being much quicker to accept McGwire's andro explanation than Barry's creatine explanation, though that could be shaded by McGwire's pre-Caminiti retirement. WRT the chase for the all-time record, Bonds' public image is a bit like a modern Jack Johnson, whereas Hank Aaron's image is something like baseball's Joe Louis. I don't mean to say there was outright racism, per se, but I think we'd be foolish to ignore that component.
@ Fanshawe:
Is it MLB approved? At least nowadays, there is sufficient awareness amongst players that they should check and see. Pre-03 (or whenever it was that MLB began publishing approved supplements), it's a gray zone and I'd be more willing to buy the explanation for record keeping purposes, even if I'm very skeptical.
I don't know about the "game," but Bonds did make a mockery of the record books. His homerun total is, really, a joke that no one but the most literal-minded should take seriously.
That isn't a "moral" wrong, but I'm not sure when that became the relevant measuring stick. It is, in the context of the sport's history and the attention paid by analysts and fans to the numbers it churns out, an ethical wrong.
Seizing on the difference in drug delivery methods as indicative of a fundamental difference between one type of PED and another is a mistake constantly made by amps apologists.By this rationale the cream and the clear, since they're as easily administered as a greenie, must not carry the same risk, physical or ethical, as a syringe full of deca.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that steroids could be banned because of significant health risks. I'm less sympathetic to the idea that the enhancement a player receives from steroids is "too much" relative to other legal (or in the case of amps, illegal but who cares I guess) forms of chemical or medical enhancement. It certainly could be true that steroids "work better" than coritzone, for example, but it's hard for me to see why I should care. Aside from the potential heath risks of course, but the it-makes-a-mockery-of-the-record-book arguments rarely concern themselves with heath risks.
*Edit* I'm talking about in the pre-testing phase. If a player uses now and gets caught, he broke a rule and he can deal with the punshiment. I think MLB's steroid punishments are rather arbitrary, but lots of companies have silly disciplinary policies.
Again. I guess I'm just not clear enough: I'm not just discussing how the drug is ingested. I'm discussing the institutional (i.e. MLB club) promotion of one form of PEDs (amps prominently displayed & furnished by team in clubhouse) vs. another (steroids, not prominently displayed nor furnished by the team.) That's a really big, important difference. A player will likely, at minimum, feel like he is incurring less legal risk if the drug is furnished by his employer.
Also, yes, I bet at least some players figured greenies were less harmful because they'd a) been around since WWII, b) were furnished by their employers, and c) do not have the same stigma as steroids.
Probably a little of hand A, a little of hand B. It's hard to generalize, no? We do know in the environment of the Steroid Era, none of these things proved to be enough of a disincentive for the majority of players.
There is no steroid equivalent in terms of explicit, team-sanctioned promotion. None.
A distinction without difference. Reds trainer Larry Starr was among the medical team that personally told commissioner Bud Selig, top union officlals and MLB brass all about rampant steroid use in 1988. The Dodgers front office overtly made a roster decision in 2003 based on Paul LoDuca going off steroids. In 2001, the Yankees explicitly agreed to strike penalty language that would have allowed them to void Jason Giambi's contract for steroid use. The Red Sox and Rangers were reported to have conducted "how to properly use steroids" spring training seminars for their players in 2002.
Teams were advising, protecting, negotiating, ignoring, and strategizing based on their internal steroid data. The premise that they somehow stood at a moral remove from a culture they did not promote or influence is ludicrous.
However, the phrase "Mitchell-approved depiction" is apt. Neither Larry Starr's documented history of warnings, which directly implicated Selig & Co., nor his four separate meetings with Mitchell's investigators made the Report's final draft. That would have required a 410th page.
Roger Connor is the the TRUE all-time HR champ!
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