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1. Robert in Manhattan Beach Posted: February 01, 2013 at 06:19 PM (#4360380)Wow, that's like the most sad thing I've ever read.
I submitted this article, too. And, frankly, I think Simmons comes a lot closer to what Joe Six Pack thinks than what the typical Primate might.
In my circle of friends (twenty and thirtysomethings in NYC), the "who's using" conversation is very, very normal speculation and is factored into our assessments for fantasy league purposes (you don't want someone who seems likely to fail a drug test, obviously.)
Did he change it from iPhone to chainsaw after it was published? Hm. Silly.
Anyway, this is spot on, and not an argument you hear a lot:
What's the difference between taking HGH and Toradol, anyway? What does the word "performance enhancer" really mean? It's OK to borrow a dead person's ligament to regain your 95-mph fastball, but it's not OK to boost your testosterone for those same results? It's OK to travel to Germany to inject stem cells into your damaged knee to stimulate recovery and regeneration, but it's not OK to replace your blood with better blood to increase your stamina?
The one I feel sad for is Sammy Sosa. The only player to hit more than 60 HR in 3 seasons, and in none of them did he set a record or lead the league!
Seriously? We're not talking about it? I would kill to watch sports coverage on a regular basis that didn't discuss this stuff.
Edit: Coke to Jose.
As to the drug testing, if you are going to do it then do it right - blood testing, this biological passport thing (no idea what that is) or whatever. Random tests year round, increased for guys who do something suspicious (such as Jose Bautista with the Jays - he has peed in more cups than the number of hits he has had in the past few years I bet) just to help keep it from growing into a 'no way that is real' situation. The NBA having a 4 test rule is a total joke - I had no idea but I also don't follow it closely - yet somehow they get off the hook while baseball is still being held to the fire. Last I knew the NHL doesn't even do testing but people still ignore it all. Like I said though, do it full out or skip it, Olympics or NHL level - just don't do the sugar coating method the NBA does.
Also, football fans not only are OK with the players destroying their bodies* for the good of the team, but the fans seem to expect players to destroy their bodies. Gotta play hurt and all that ########.
*-Thankfully, this attitude seems to be changing.
They've had drug testing since 2005, and the WADA testing every four years for the Olympics (and World Cup) caught at least one player I know of (Bryan Berard).
Other than fat ass pitchers (and even then people will acknowledge the fat ass pitcher can throw), I disagree with this. People hate cheating in baseball but tolerate it in other sports because of the romanticism of baseball.
Jose Theodore for Propecia.
I would guess its more like of the major sports, baseball players look more like the average athletic guy, than the average athletic guy seriously thinks they are not far removed talent wise, but there is probably some overlap. Some of the romanticism of baseball comes from this id wager.
I've been making that argument for at least five years now.
I would've cut him a break for nearly losing his eye.
Preach it brother.
And Joe Six Pack is dumb.
Excuse me while I go look at Gifs of the Week.
Actually, Simmons is doing something bigger and better than rehashing the PED-in-baseball conversation we (fans) have been having here for years. He's doing an accounting of the disconnect between what fans do, and what sports journalists do when the cameras are not rolling, vs what the sportswriters do when they're on the clock. The first half of this column is a deadly needed bit of introspection that asks "why am I, Bill Simmons, famous sportswriter for ESPN, too scared to discuss the obvious things that I talk to death outside the office, while on the clock?" Kudos to him for writing this. More of the industry needs to grapple with the fact that the nut brigades at Baseball Think Factory have more in depth, nuanced and informative conversations about PEDs in sports than do the men paid to be "journalists" on the subject.
You'd think cheating in golf would be a huge issue based on this.
I am an average quasi-athletic looking dude and I look nothing like Justin Upton, let alone Aaron Hill or even Matt Williams.
(I had front row seats right next to the third base dugout entrance at Camelback last year, hence my comparisons.)
He's not asking anything new. No kudos for him. Or maybe he is and I missed it because I couldn't finish the article because he wasn't making any new points.
Isn't elite opinion almost always watered down/simplified/condensed/contorted when presented to the public via mass consumption? It's not as if USA Today is going to print something as analytic as Fangraphs or some other elite source. Ditto for whatever Fangraphs' politics/economics/philosophy counterparts are.
I just assumed its because Golf fans were all rich elite people who cheated to get where they are anyway....
<ducks>
Nobody wants to face the music that you can't just put everything in two easily defined categories of "oh that's not a PED" and "oh that's obviously a PED". The sooner we face up to this fact (and by we I mean as a serious society) then we can actually get to the real work of figuring out what we should ban and what we should allow.
I think there's more to it than that, though. If you recall a few years ago when a blogger made basically the same point about Raul Ibanez (though not quite, because the blogger set out to argue that Ibanez's stellar half season could be explained without PEDs), seemingly half the BBWAA went on TV acting scandalized that a player's reputation was impugned with only speculative evidence.
I think that there are still a lot of journalists who think it's unprofessional and ethically wrong to speculate in print (even if they're less likely to call out a fellow media member than a random fan blogger).
This may be true, but Tiger was one of the few who stood out as looking more athletic than Joe Six Pack.
(I watch about 12 minutes of golf per decade, so don't quote me.)
I'm sorry, but that sentence is a complete embarrassment.
It really is. Because when Bush had PEDs in the SOTU and Congress had a hearing on it that really cleaned everything up. It's up to the sports leagues to regulate themselves, they have the incentive, they have the means -- not the feds.
I'm really surprised that folks here would think that Simmons contributes to the discussion with this. It's not like he's suggesting having a conversation about the nature of drug use and athletic competition. He's almost making a threat: suggesting that either athletes agree to the most technologically advanced drug testing available, or else if they don't, reporters should start speculating "looks to me like so-and-so does PED" on the record.
Yeah, this sentence is stupid.
The rest of the article is not. I think he correctly identifies the crazy way the media currently treats PEDs. During normal, day-to-day coverage of sports they don't talk about them publicly. Then, when someone uncovers evidence of an athlete using PEDs it's treated as an aberration and the athlete is blacklisted. It both undersells the extent of the PED problem (assuming you think it's a problem) and overpunishes the athletes who get caught. Moreover, the media does privately speculate about who's using and acts on those speculations when it comes to things like the HOF. Better to speculate out in the open, maybe that way we can come up with semi-coherent and enforceable guidelines.
FWIW, I think most fans treat PEDs the way they treat most other things. It's a bad thing when a guy on the other team does it but understandable when it's my team. For instance, I think Roger Clemens is a dirty unrepentant cheater but Barry Bonds is a tragic figure who only turned to PEDs when his magnificent talents weren't properly recognized.
Yeah, but the standard Joe Public criterion for "gotta be roiding" is that the guy doesn't look like an average athletic guy. There's just no way any rational person could think Bonds's body was impossible while 240-lb linebackers can run 4.4 40s.
And the question of "how old are people"? I graduated high school in 1979 and the #1 overall NFL pick that year was Tom Cousineau who was 6'3" and 225 ... OK, I was only 6' but I matched the weight. :-) A guy named Mike Douglass played LB at 6' 220 (well, assuming I can kinda trust those numbers). Mike Webster, a center, was 6'1" 255 so all I needed to do was get in shape and put on some muscle. Ottis Anderson was 6'2" 200, Ted Brown was 5'10" 206.
Sure, if you were under 6 foot and weren't packing 200 pounds, you had a hard time relating physically to a football player I suppose. But there were some linebackers and some centers and certainly RB, WR, DBs who were "my size" or smaller.
It wasn't always the case that football players were this absolutely massive yet fast freaks -- that's happened in my adulthood and NFL fans didn't freak out about it one bit. Similarly the NBA used to be a place where a 6'5" guy would have been huge at point guard and might even play power forward to where 7 foot guys are putting the ball on the floor and NBA fans didn't seem to freak out about that. Here's a pic of old Bulls backup guard Bob Weiss ... your accountant could post him up.
They did this on Glee last week to prove that the preppy kids were taking steroids to help them with their glee clubbing. Maybe Simmons watched that episode.
Something none of the media wags paid much attention to was the massive proliferation of PEDs, specifically anabolic steroids, in professional boxing in the 1990s. There were a number of outstanding, singular talents making their cases for all-time greatness during that decade, and the majority of them have been linked to "the juice" with hardly a hiccup of media attention. Names like Tyson, Holyfield, Jones Jr, Mosley, Toney, and plenty of others are mentioned, and even the current heavyweight champions of the world, the Klitschko Brothers, admitted to having taken steroids when they were younger (purported before they turned pro, color me skeptical). Just recently Floyd Mayweather, arguably the only widely-recognizable boxer in the world now, said the following:
But nobody cares or has ever cared about boxers' health.
Did you just admit to watching "Glee"?
But what think is particularly interesting here is how fundamental that problem is for Bill Simmons himself. After all, he didn't rise to his current position by passing himself off as an expert (though I find him quite knowledgeable, particularly on basketball). He's the guy who tells you what he really thinks. That's his thing. And to a large extent, Simmons is struggling with the battle between the external media pressures on a guy like him (greater, I'm sure, at the WWL) and the very essence of why he is where he is today (candor/perceived candor).
It's problematic for an MLB beat guy every time he hedges on info to protect a player, or to make the six months of traveling with the team easier (and get a phone call a few minutes earlier about the next trade). But mostly, that's problematic for us, because we get inaccurate/incomplete info. Not for the beat guy.
But for Simmons? It cuts directly to his writing identity. I give him credit for attacking this problem head-on, even if I don't agree entirely with his conclusions. Ultimately, for instance, my belief in the paragraph quoted in 3 as making such distinctions largely irrelevant leaves me simply preferring less talk about the "PED problem", not more.
Still, I'm glad he wrote this.
Not only do they not care, but Mayweather is accused of ducking Pacquiao because he wanted stronger testing.
Vitamin D is a steroid. Why isn't fortified milk considered a PED?
The answer is that the only thing that corticosteroids and anabolic steroids have in common is the sterane backbone. There may be plenty of tough questions in this debate, but this isn't one of them.
And then Mayweather wouldn't agree to undergo the same testing that he wanted Pacquiao to go though. It was a dodge, though and though.
You're missing the forest for the tree. PED -- performance enhancing drug. If you take a shot, and it numbs the pain so much so that you can go out and hit a homer and trot the bases -- well that's a pretty nice performance enhancer.
The contrast has nothing to do with the chemistry of it, but everything to do with the actual effects.
This ish is hard to figure, that's the point.
To me, in the baseball world, as someone for whom the Hall of Fame has always been a very central part of my interest, it comes down exactly to this. Do you support the sportswriters, the BBWAA? Or do you support those accused of (or proven) of PED use?
And my answer is that sportswriters are so utterly lacking in moral authority that I will admire the alleged PED users more every time I read a rant against them by the moral midgets who make up the sportswriting profession.
Here is a writer who gets it. Great article.
I don't agree with all of Simmons' conclusions, but I think the key to appreciating the article is seeing that the "we" he writes about aren't sports fans, they're sports journalists.
Meteor.
No, I'm not missing anything. You just don't understand enough medicine or biology to know what you're talking about. And I'm also guessing that you've never had a cortisone shot yourself. Coritsone is an anti-inflammatory, not an analgesic. They add lidocaine to the injection mostly to know that they got the needle in the right place. Do you want to ban Nolan Ryan's Advil too? How about an athlete waking up with a headache? Is tylenol a PED for that guy on that day?
The actual effects are a direct consequence of the chemistry. You're lumping together effects that are actually enormously different. And the differences are not at all hard to understand with a little bit of common sense. There are grey areas, of course, but that doesn't mean that everything is a grey area. And I say this as someone who pretty much doesn't give a crap about PEDis in baseball or any other professional sport.
Now, there is a good argument to be had about why we allow (and even encourage) athletes to have multiple injections in the same joint over a short period of time so that they can play before an injury is healed, but that doesn't seem to be the argument you're making.
That's a better question, but it is not at all the same question as "why prednisone but not stanozolol?" People don't take anabolic steroids to recover from injury.
Sadly, yes. Felt it was worth it to take a dig at Simmons/steroid-mania. Of course, in Glee, you CAN prove your claims against another group of high school singers and dancers by looking at their heads. My girlfriend doesn't even like it any more, but watches it out of some sense of loyalty. I guess.
They don't?
It's hard to believe that you could write all this without understanding that this IS the point, but well...
P'shaw. P'shaw, I say! Primates are on the very far right end of the fandom bell curve. Joe Six Pack isn't. Joe Six Pack isn't necessarily dumb, but he's almost certainly less invested in the complexities of any PED issue.
Joe Six Pack is also an extremely important demographic. Once Joe Six Pack decides boxing will turn his kid into Ali, he's not going to let his kid pick up the gloves. 20 years later, Joe Six Pack will stop watching fights because there aren't any good heavyweights left.* We're starting to see that with football and CTE. Think Buckley vs Valeo: the primary purpose of anti-doping efforts is to prevent the appearance of corruption. This is all about the real AND imagined integrity of the game.
The PED conversation is maturing, even for Joe Six Pack. The dividing line appears to be "enabling" vs "enhancing". Joe Six Pack doesn't care that Andy Pettitte or Ray Lewis took something of questionable legality and potency to get over an arm injury (why he'd ever believe that crock is another story....) Joe Six Pack sure as #### cares when championships are won and records are set by dopers because the integrity of the competition is at stake and, wrt baseball in particular, Joe Six Pack holds baseball to a higher standard (as well he should. It's got an anti-trust exemption, after all.)
Simmons is right-on. It's time we really bring this whole mess into daylight and respond to changing circumstances. PED speculation is already a part of our discourse and a new kind of PED use is becoming a standard part of American life. Our general discourse would probably benefit from more honest sportswriting. It would help us understand and fuse what might seem, especially to Joe Six Pack, to be otherwise disparate narratives (why middle aged men can see a doc for "low T" but a ballplayer can't engage in similar therapeutic use.)
*Yes, this is a gross oversimplification.
A few points to this:
a) I realize this is an unpopular opinion on this site, but so long as taxpayers build stadiums and baseball enjoys an anti-trust exemption, I think government absolutely has a role in ensuring that controlled substances aren't being used for off-label purposes contrary to the inherit bargain engaged in by the taxpayer: that in exchange for these funds, professional sports leagues will promote athleticism and competition with integrity, and integrity includes "clean" ballplayers. There was a systematic failure in this regard.
b) Simmons is precisely encouraging "a conversation about the nature of drug use and athletic competition." He's also encouraging sportswriters, who essentially act as stewards of that conversation, to behave more honestly and he's calling himself out to start.
This is one of the more courageous sports pieces I've seen in quite some time. Just by writing this, he is taking a serious risk that half the athletes that might have talked to him before won't walk to talk to him now.
And please, nobody here should flatter themselves by comparing this article to the so-called "conversation" that has been going on around here for the last decade. Simmons actually has an audience and some real cachet within the industry; the BTF Nut Brigade is completely irrelevant.
Hopefully you'd agree, though, that the reason Obama doesn't get involved in sports PED issues is not because he "isn't a real sports fan." Who knows whether he is... all politicians pretend to be... I suspect that he actually is (and GWB sure was). But in any event, he could be the world's biggest sports fan and still not think it was the President's problem, based on his opinion of what the government can and should be worried about.
Just totally disagree here. Someone said earlier that the thing about the President was the dumbest thing in the article, but the dumbest thing in the article actually is this:Which couldn't be any more incorrect. And by coming from that starting point, naturally Simmons' conclusions are also then wrong.
Simmons is not saying that there are two or more sides to the issue. He's saying there is one side -- PED-using athletes are destroying sports -- and therefore, we need to publicly shame them until they agree to let us (quoting here):I am phrasing it a little dramatically there, and I don't even think Simmons is thinking about it that way himself, but in terms of consequences, that's what the man is suggesting. Quoting again:I am really not seeing that as an invitation to delve into the subtleties of this issue.
Even if I bought this line -- I don't, it would be no different than drug-testing anybody in a public school, drug testing anyone that received social security or took a deduction for mortgage interest, or eliminating the need for probable cause in searching cars driving on public roads -- that would be an argument for drug-testing owners or putting them under some increased scrutiny, not players. No players are given the stadiums, are named on the stadium lease, or made any negotiation with government to this effect. That the owners will frequently use a portion of that revenue to pay players is immaterial, I'm sure they're also buying real estate, fancy cars, and vacations, and making investments in other businesses, but that's not an argument to put Loria's real estate agent, car vendor, preferred airline, or companies that Loria invests in under heightened scrutiny.
Talking about continua and grey areas and all that is fine. But pretending that there aren't also glaringly obvious differences between two points that are miles apart on any reasonably drawn line doesn't exactly enhance one's argument. That's what I was objecting to, as I stated pretty explicitly.
Gross oversimplification or not, how worried do we suppose Roger Goodell is about this in the long term?
Seems like he's taking a bigger risk that his half of his colleagues won't talk to him any more. Anyway, he's not a beat writer; his job doesn't really depend on access in the same way. That's not a criticism; just pointing out that he's in a better position to do this than many other sportswriters would be.
I have. It was definitely performance enhancing.
If he's talking about the Frank Haith thing, what manner of corruption does he mean? Suddenly dropping an airtight case days before its conclusion is about as suspicious as it gets.
Corruption begets corruption.
There's a very good reason that the standards for public conversations are different from those for private ones, especially people who are publishing in a very public forum, as Simmons is. He can say whatever he wants to his buddies after a couple of beers; he can accuse Ray Lewis of anything he wants in that forum. But if he's going to do so publicly, he needs to adhere to higher standards of evidence and fairness.
If he's going to publicly accuse Ray Lewis of using PEDs, he has the obligation of talking to Lewis about the situation. Maybe there have been advances in the kind of surgery Lewis had, that allow him to heal more quickly than other people with similar injuries. Maybe Lewis' injury wasn't as severe as those suffered by the people Lewis compares him to. I have no idea if any of this is true, but I doubt Simmons does either. I don't think he wants to work that hard, and I'm sure he doesn't want to have Ray Lewis screaming at him.
If you extend his logic to other areas, you see that he can't possibly be serious about this. I'm sure sportswriters were conjecturing about why the Cubs traded Rafael Palmeiro. Should they have written public columns about that? "Did Cindy the Slut Send Palmeiro Packing?" (It's OK if you just ask the question. You're not accusing anyone of anything, you know?) Or about the famous fight between Cal Ripken and Kevin Costner? By Simmons' logic, they should have.
If Simmons wants sportswriters to be cover PEDs more responsibly, he should be encouraging to report on the topic more seriously. Encouraging sportswriters to publish their drunken banter based on rumors and conjecture is asking them to be more irresponsible.
Yea, right? It's not about the ####### chemistry (sorry Walt White) it's about the results. My examples of the cortisone shot and anabolic steroids had nothing to do with the medical science and everything to with their inherent shared property of being PEDs for athletes, regardless of how they arrive at their affect.
He has been pretty clear elsewhere that he understands this point. He's not writing about a dichotomy between a pure past and a decadent present, but rather the combined effect of A) a much larger variety of biological "enhancements" being available to athletes, B) the intense aggregation of wealth at the top end of major sports, and C) a vast increase in the interpenetration between sports, media, and the life of Joe Six-Pack.
Wait. Joe Six Pack can't grasp the "subtleties" of the PED debate but he's familiar with the nuance of baseball's anti-trust exemption? I'd be stunned if more than 5% of the population even knows baseball has an anti-trust exemption and almost none of that 5% would be able to put any sort of rational value on that exemption. The notion that baseball's anti-trust exemption has anything to do with why it and football are viewed differently by the general public is one of the sillier things we've seen on this site.
On performance enhancement:
Really, it's not hard. Player walks into the locker room with the current ability to perform at level X. Player receives treatment A and is now able to perform at level X + Y. Treatment A is a "performance enhancer" if Y>0.
This is useful. It makes it clear that the debate is not about performance ehnahcement. It is about several things:
a) "natural". Spending time in a batting cage or working on your pickoff move with the pitching coach are presumably performance enhancements. So is standard run-of-the-mill weightlifting, nutrition, etc. These are (rightly) considered "natural" or just part of "regular training" or what have you. Nobody is concerned about this but they are performance enhancers.
b) So widely accepted in general society they might as well be "natural." Glasses and contacts for example. At this stage, Lasik surgery is common enough to fall into this category. Standard, over-the-counter Advil and caffeine fall here.
c) Repairs. Surgery and rehab.
d) Accepted for no good reason. Greenies prior to 2005, spitballs, scuffed balls, corked bats.
e) Ewww, the East German women's swimmers look like men and people are injecting themselves with stuff.
The debate about "what is a performance enhancer (that should be banned)" is really around why something should fall under (e), not (d). As we move forward, we might get more into (c) as surgical enhancements arise. The question raised earlier is whether painkillers and anti-inflammatories should count as (c) or (d). I'd argue this depends a lot on how they're being used but, as they're used in sports to my knowledge, they fall under (d). If pitchers get cortisone shots on a regular basis, if Clemens is popping Vioxx in-between starts, if Jim McMahon is getting an injection on the sideline in the middle of a game, that is beyond "standard medical use." That is "doing everything we can to get this guy out there today in a state where he can perform and to hell with the consequences."
To clarify, my one cortisone experience. I have a spur in my heel that acts up on occasion. Usually it would just act up, cause me problems for a few days, I'd stay off it as much as possible for a few days, and everything would be fine. This one time though it just didn't stop and it was getting to the point where I could hardly walk at all. So the doctor gave me a shot of cortisone.
So, my heel was inflamed. Of course, every time I had to walk on it, it aggravated the inflammation. It had gotten to the point that standard "lay off it as much as possible" wasn't gonna work. To "get better", the inflammation had to be dealt with. Cortisone and laying off it as much as possible did the trick.
That, of course, is not the same as "Vioxx and give us 6 innings" or cortisone the day after every start in hopes you'll be able to go 4 days later.
Meanwhile, "my shoulder hurts" then "OK, we'll put you on the DL and hope it clears up -- here's some cortisone to relieve the inflammation in the meantime and 2 days of painkillers so you can get some sleep" would seem fine assuming 2+ weeks of rest might actually "cure" the shoulder.
One of Ray's arguments is that roids, HGH, etc use will become sufficiently widespread in society for "anti-aging" purposes that eventually they'll fall somewhere in the (c) and (d) range. I suspect they've been sufficiently demonized in sports that it won't happen that way.
Anyway, the mystery is why some things fall under (d) while similar things fall under (e). It's not about performance enhancement. It's not about "natural", it's not about general societal use. What is wrong about a cyclist injecting himself with his own red blood cells? What is wrong with using steroids to assist with rebuilding muscle after surgery? If steroids allow a player to extend his career by a few years at little/no health risk (or with informed consent to that health risk), why would that be wrong? Painkillers extend careers, scuffed balls extend careers, greenies surely extended careers so the issue isn't about "artificially" extending one's career.
I agree 100%. There will never be a clear division of *this* is an "enhancer", *this* is an enabler. What you rarely hear about in the PED arguments is the only thing that matters: risk to the athletes. Lots of people die or are seriously injured in weight rooms. Should we allow athletes to go to the weight room? Of course, but that's because the risks of debilitating injury or death are minimal. Would we allow athletes to have heart transplants that would enable their blood to be pumped faster or lung transplants to give them greater lung capacity? Probably not, as heart transplants are super risky and we wouldn't want players to feel forced into having heart or lung transplants just so that they could perform better. PED usage is a work safety issue and it's the only rational way to think about the problem. Every other direction leads to personal opinion. If you have people forced into making choices that they wouldn't normally make that lead them to unacceptable health risks, then that is where your dividing line is. So at one point in the past, TJ surgery *could* have been something that should have been banned, but it no longer likely is.
Now with things like steroids, it's complicated because we don't know the risks and it's probably better to be conservative than not (although that's open to subjective interpretation). This is truly (IMO) a work safety issue and, to a more general extent, a worker's rights issue (should a worker have to do things that make them personally uncomfortable in order to stay gainfully employed)?
This is why I hold the player's union mostly responsible for this mess. The player's union in baseball is a union that I generally admire, but they did not recognize (or chose to ignore) the safety and worker related issues on this problem in order to maintain some sort of negotiating leverage. I find that to be dereliction of their responsibility as a union to protect its members.
How do you figure? His colleagues are overwhelmingly against the use of PEDs in sports, the Baseball Hall of Fame vote we just had proves it. I suspect that deep down inside, many of his colleagues would love to voice the kinds of opinions that Simmons just did, but are afraid to because they just don't want to risk losing their access and/or their jobs.
No, this just shows they are against PEDs in baseball. They are clearly NOT against the use of PEDs in football. Ray Lewis' name shows up in a Miami investigation - we'll talk about it a little, but he'll still get to play in the Super Bowl. A-Rod? Let's just end his career right here and hope he never sets foot on a baseball diamond again. There will be no suspension for Lewis but baseball players will probably see some. Heck, here in San Diego Shawne Merriman got a big new Nike endorsement deal after he was caught taking steroids, indicating there was no perceived hit to his social standing and viability as an endorser. You still see fans wearing his #56 jersey all over town, parents and children, so obviously parents don't consider him as a bad influence on the kids, either.
Joe Six Pack doesn't give a rat's a** about steroids in football, or concussions either, for that matter. Just give me my weekly dose of violence.
So whatever Keith was taking was enhancing his performance?
Isn't it that people think that evryone is juicing in football, so it doesn't provide an advantage to any individual players, where in baseball it is a distinct minority that are using, so they are gaining an advantage?
It is kind of like income taxes. In Greece, everyone cheats, so no one is offended that any individual is cheating; everyone has just unilaterally (and illegally and inefficiently) reduced the marginal tax rates. In the US we have a good record of compliance and a rigorous enforcement arm, so people are more-inclined to be mad at tax cheaters.
It bothers me when the "enhance/restore" distinction gets trotted out in defense of a steroids/amps distinction, because it doesn't apply.
"This ruined my ability to keep my childhood fantasies alive, the worst crime imaginable."
Amps make you more focused, more energized and increase reaction times by artificially modifying brain chemistry.
PEDs make you bigger, faster, more powerful and stronger by artificially modifying muscle building chemistry.
The only distinction is the fact that you can't *see* the effect of amps in the brain, where you *see* the effect of PEDs on the muscles.
Even if you willfully ignore the direct increases in ability from something like an Amphetamine, if the drug is effective as a restorative measure, how can that possibly be separated from being a performancer enhancer? Anything that lets you feel energetic and fresh after hours of work/activity is automatically going to be a PED for an athlete because he's going to utilize these restorative effects to practice and prepare and work out more than he would if he weren't on said drug. If a normal athlete starts to get a bit tired after an hour of BP and hitting the ball off a tee before a game, he probably decides to conserve himself for the game at that point. If a guy is popping greenies, he just pops a few and heads back out for another hour of BP. Unless we're going to assume that enhanced ability to practice and workout without feeling to tired to perform in games won't lead to more effective practice and workouts, how can any "restorative drug" not be a PED by definition?
Nah. Simmons is a manager and a brand now, and pretty big in both areas. He does "event" interviews with big names, Bird, Magic Johnson, even Obama, sometimes has jocks on his podcasts, and he is also one of ESPN's NBA talking heads in addition to what he does with Grantland and 30 for 30. But he is not a beat writer, nor is he an analyst, and neither access nor deep thinking are huge parts of his work. As a writer, Simmons is selling, and mostly writes about, himself, and his sports fandom. There is no serious professional risk at all here for Simmons. I don't have an issue with the piece, but it not some ballsy move that is going to have massive reverb. If there is value to it, it is that people who like it should appreciate that Simmons has a big audience, most of whom will read it.
As to the public/private thing, Tom Nawrocki in post 64 sums a lot of it up well.
As I've noted before this shows how dangerous steroids are. Berard lost an eye. (Yeah. Before the positive test and as a result of a stick to the eye. Still, we've got a straight link between positive test and eye loss)
Jose Theodore also failed a drug test. Propecia. Can't have athletes with enhanced hair.
Worth noting that he was suspended even though there was no attempt to test him when he wasn't where he said he was -- and the story only broke because of a gushing piece about his preparations for the tour. The report mentioned watching him go uphill in a driving rain in Italy and mentioned a specific date. And somebody remembered that he was supposed to have been training in Mexico at the time.
How about the 60's? Maybe Bill Russell - though he had an aversion to needles and swallowed the steroids. A side effect of that was nausea, but it got him through the big games.
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