You would have to be a pretty casual baseball fan to not know that A-Rod has come out and admitted to juicing when he was young and impressionable, though technically he was already a 6 year grizzled veteran and 25 years old, plus was being advised by Scott Boras, who is aware of many things and, one would think, given his athletic performance center, was doing all sorts of blood tests on what is in his athletes' body. I would find it hard to believe that he didn't know when his guys are using.
Immaculate Juicing
It was an immaculate juicing: he suddenly felt pressure to do well when he signed his big free agent contract and started using (with no mention how he knew how to easily get such illegal substances) and just as suddenly, he stopped using, reportedly because he was injured and decided he didn't need to use it anymore.
Which is pretty odd, injury is often a key point in the life of a PEDS using athlete. He's injured, finds it hard to recover or want to boost his recovery rate, and thus he starts using so that he comes back faster. Of course, not to be a cynic, but 2003 was when the BALCO mess hit the fan. In fact, he played in 485 out of 486 games while juicing for 3 seasons, but has missed 43 games in the 5 seasons since.
If It's Not One Thing Juiced, It's Another Thing Juiced
The funny thing is that this might be simply be a tempest in a teapot. We got hitters juicing but we also got pitchers juicing as well. People from the best, like A-Rod and Roger Clemens to the barely there, like Bobby Estalella and Jason Grimsley, to those who greatly benefited, like Marvin Benard and Jose Canseco.
And yet, baseball's major offensive explosion might only be tangentially affected by steroids, HGH (which college professors say does not give any physical superiority to baseball players and thus is another tempest in a teapot), and any other PEDS. According to Eric Walker, he of "The Sinister Firstbaseman And Other Observations" and A's Statistical Consultant fame, at his website, High Boskage House, the offensive explosion was due to a much more pervasive reason: the ball is juiced, producing the era he named "The Silly Ball Era".
Although Hgh is not supposed to give one "physical superiority", it is very useful in aiding one to recover from injuries a lot quicker than normal.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as baseball owners & union chiefs start acknowledging their part in this whole culture in baseball (which dates back as far as the '60s), I can't get real worked up about this. It is media-filled holier-than-thou hysteria fostered by people who seek gain by tearing down others.
So is aspirin and Tylenol and a nice ice pack and a good massage, only they are readily available.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree that the owners and union need to do a mea culpa at some point, particularly the union, the teams have been hamstrung for years. Like with the cocaine problems, really, was the greater good of baseball served by giving Steve Howe a million chances? It is the union that has created this environment where players can do whatever they want without much consequence. Playing major league baseball is a privilege, not a right.
I also blame the media as well. They were totally silent during the high points of the steroid era and in fact helped foster it by trumping up McGwire and Sosa and Canseco when they were going good, they just looked the other way, particularly McGwire, how much more did reporters need than the Andro bottle to get a good investigation going? Now, as you aptly note, they have a holier-than-thou attitude that I find inexplicable other than that they are acting like a jilted lover, mad that players pulled the wool over their eyes and thus taking it out on them now.