Buy The Book
Along the lines of something is better than nothing, just as MGL was nice enough to give us his notes on his pitching and fielding presentation, here you will find Andy’s presentation slides (only with IE browser), entitled: “Statistical Confirmations of Steroid Use?” You can also download the entire Powerpoint file (right-click, Save Link As).
One for athletes who never put anything other than what god has provided (if you can kill it, drink it, or smoke it, it qualifies), and another league for athletes that will take anything that is produced in a lab, be it Sudafed or the latest in gene-doping.
Then, let the fans decide which league they want to watch. After the first league dies a quiet death after 10 years, we can all stop the hypocrisy and admit that we have failings as human beings that make us sick but are afraid to admit it.
We can also have three types of bars: one wear they serve alcohol and allow smoking as long as you are at least 16, serve alcohol with no smoking as long as you are 16, and one where they don’t allow either. Given the choice, there’s no question that you will choose either option 1 or option 2, even if that means you as an adult have to watch a 16yr old drink alcohol. (I’d also make the drving age 21, or equip cars with Breathalyzers tied to the ignition.)
(Hat tip: THT)
I’m moving posts from another thread to here. Will help in not cluttering up more threads than we need about an issue that most people would prefer marginalized anyway…
Here’s a list of all players in the four major team sports who have tested positive for a banned substance.
MLB: here you go
NFL: who cares?
NBA: who cares?
NHL: who cares?
I haven’t read it yet, but here’s the summary:
From Eric Walker of HighBoskage.
This is the book to which Don Fehr was showing at Congress. That book was published 10 years ago. And in the Amazon list, there are tons of hGH books. Baseball simply reflects society: it is not the virgin that all these old white men would like it to be.
This is what the Mitchell Report says (pp168-169):
I don’t normally like to get involved in these speculative discussions/issues, but after listening to the tape of the Clemens/McNamee phone conversation, there is little doubt in my mind that Clemens is a lying sack of ****. There is also little doubt in my mind that he is also dumb as a brick.
So, is it just me, or is Clemens essentially saying on the phone, “I can’t believe you ratted me out,” and, “I just want you to tell the truth (wink, wink)?” You call a guy up and tape him with the expressed purpose of proving your innocence to the world, and you never say something like, “We all know that you never injected me with steroids or HGH. Why did you lie and say that you did?” It is unfathomable that ANYONE would not say that in that conversation IF they were telling the truth and if their intention was to prove that to the world. Unfathomable as in there is a 99% chance that Clemens is a liar and has weaved a tangled web. I only hope for his sake that no one can prove that HE is lying, which is probably the case. The first rule of defense is that if you know or are pretty sure that your adversary cannot prove their allegations, is to deny them to the hilt, even if they are true. That appears to be what Clemens is doing. I say that there is little doubt in my mind that Clemens is stupid (and his lawyer is borderline incompetent) because to think that that tape recording is going to HELP his cause is preposterous. That tape recording was the biggest joke (sad is more like it) that I have ever heard.
Trying to bust a slump? No worries, it’s only women. Voting in drug abusers and addicts into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? We need someone in there. Wife-beaters already in, or eventually in, various hall of fames? They all deserve redemption. A presidential candidate admitting to past cocaine use? Presidents abusing alcohol? What’s a little vino among friends. But, gosh-darn it, if I am an old white guy, and I have my Harlequin fascination with baseball, then I expect my baseball players to be virgin with cocaine, steroids, and hGH. Let them abuse all other vices, including amphetamines, alcohol and women which you probably term as “harmless vices.. but drugs is a dirty business”.
Live in the real world, baseball writers. You want to make baseball as romantic as you want. Fine. But, don’t try to impose your fantasy into the world’s reality. If an athlete is going to abuse something, I’d rather he do it to himself. It’s not my fault you give the number 61 such romantic properties.
Really? I mean, really? Of the 90 players, 33 improved their “statistical performance” in the first year following PED, and 46 improved in at least one of the two years. Stop the presses! Given TWO chances at improving your performance, 50% did so. This means that 50% had a worse performance in BOTH of the following two years (compared to the 15% who had a better performance in both of of the following two years). They should change the name to PDD, changing enhancing to declining.
In all seriousness, I applaud the research and effort. But, the conclusions and headline are totally at odds with the researchers’ own data.
Let’s listen. He also addresses corticosteroids as it related to Sandy Koufax. Last year, I brought up Sandy issue as it related to Kirk Gibson. I was going to write this to Will, but I’ll post it here, and hopefully Will will see it too:
Here’s the Summary of Congressional Hearings:
Mr. Kutz began by summarizing the results of a study done… particularly on the circumstances surrounding the death of 10 separate youth in 10 different ... programs
My bad. It’s not athletes and steroids, but youths in private residential treatment programs ("boot camps"). But, they did have congressional hearings.
Line up the wife-beating, child-abusing, criminal athletes on the left. Condemn those guys before you start on guys on the right sullying your idea of a perfect game and hallowed numbers.
Courtesy of baseball analyst and lawyerKeith Scherer.
Will Carroll had an interesting blog entry on the detectability of a set of drugs. But he curiously did not cite his source because “I don’t want to make it any easier for this type of information to be found.” In fact, he made it incredibly easy for me to find it, as you can see right here. Go to google and put in this:
how to pass a drug test F1 F2 F4 F5
And you’ll see a whole set of sites, each seemingly with the same list. Thanks for the public service Will!
What I found interesting is that they roll the dice for “random” drug testing, by match the roll of the die to the last digit in your social security number. Obviously, guys with a last digit of 7 are going to be tested far more (or at least far earlier) than anyone else, on average. I think there is a limit to the number of random drug tests per player, so rolling a 7 one week likely precludes a 7 from rolling a second time. A nice game of craps.
This is disappointing to read from someone in charge:
“Discipline for wrongdoing is important, but it is also important to create an environment so players can feel free to honestly and completely cooperate with this important investigation.”
Unless he’s creating an environment of immunity from baseball prosecution (and keeping his statement confidential so that admitting to having committed an illegal act isn’t going to bring the real prosecutors after him), what the heck is Selig talking about? What environment? Talk or else we’ll suspend you for whatever we think we can get away with?
John Zeigler once suspended Borje Salming for an entire season for having admitted that he used cocaine several years prior:
Published: September 5, 1986
The National Hockey League has suspended Borje Salming, a Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman, for eight regular-season games and fined $500 because he used cocaine several years ago, the league announced yesterday.John Ziegler, National Hockey League president, said the penalty was the ‘’the very minimum.’’ Salming, who is 35 years old and a 13-year veteran of the team, was quoted in a Toronto newspaper in May as saying that he used cocaine ‘’five, six years ago, but not since and I feel good about saying no.’’ The league suspended him for the entire season, then commuted the suspension.
Here’s the list of NHL players. The basic rule is: don’t ask, don’t tell. Pro leagues care about its image first, and the players last. There’s nothing wrong with that, since the players care about themselves first. But, don’t be a hypocrite and say otherwise. Leagues and players will do anything to ensure that they maximize their revenues.
Except for someone like Dominik Hasek, who told the Redwings a few years ago to stop paying him, since he was injured. And Pavol Demitra who would have had a sizeable bonus kick in if he scored one more goal. As it turns out, he had an empty net, and instead of shooting, passed the puck to his teammate. That act of generosity cost him something like 500,000$ a year, for two years. The Blues *wanted* him to score since they had an insurance policy against the bonus. It would not have cost them an extra cent. Why did he do that? Because he passed the puck to a teammate who had a 300,000$ bonus on the line. The shot was deflected, and both players got nothing.
I’ve long said that when it comes to performance enhancing druges (PED):
Tim talks about the double-standard that MLB faces with regards to drugs.
Ken Fidlin ponders a what-if, which I’ll paraphrase for baseball purposes:
Suspend reality for a moment while we paint a grim, fictional picture. It is the day after the final game of the World Series and the Yankees, America’s most decorated franchise, have won their 25th title, double the total of any other team in MLB. There is, however, little joy in New York, or any other city in America for that matter.
The team general manager has resigned, embroiled in a game-fixing scandal that appears to involve league referees and administration officials. The scandal already has claimed the MLB commissioner, who was forced to resign in disgrace the week previous. Former President George W Bush has been appointed “extraordinary commissioner” to sift through the allegations and clean up the mess. The entire Yankees board of directors has resigned and shares of the publicly-traded company are sinking faster than the Titanic.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ highest paid player is under investigation as part of a massive gambling and game-fixing scandal from two years previous. The star is accused of betting on games in which he was playing. In all, dozens are under investigation for various roles in the scandal, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg. If the allegations are proven against the Yankees GM, it is very likely that the World Series victory will be nullified and the team banished from the league.
With that horrifying, fictitious scenario fixed firmly in your brain, we welcome you to the wonderful world of Italian soccer. And this is no fantasy. It’s real and it’s happening, almost on the eve of the 2006 World Cup.
European soccer can weather its gambling scandal. The NBA, NHL, and NFL would be able to weather any drug scandal that will come its way. If I were to tell you that rock stars dabble in drugs, you’d hardly be surprised. The surprise would be that they didn’t. And the truth is that teenagers are far more influenced by musicians than athletes. Parents know this because they’ve lived it.
We’ve all come to accept that everything in our world is tainted, and we’ve gotta live with it. But, not baseball. Baseball is above it all, a pure and beautiful game that MLB has the privilege to control. A right that it must abdicate if they don’t keep it pure and beautiful. That’s the bullshit that Field of Dreamers believe.
Baseball is baseball, and MLB is MLB, and MLB is Eurpoean Soccer, NHL, NFL, and Rock Stars. When you are watching MLB, you are not watching baseball, that pure and beautiful game. You are watching an event, like any other event performed by the best money (and other things) can buy. And all the sellers (the performers) and all the middle-men (management) and all the buyers (you) are complicit.
Live with reality.
Nov 20 19:19
Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season
Nov 21 03:34
Nate Silver: hero to interviewers
Nov 20 20:34
ABSO-lutely… not!
Nov 20 19:23
R.I.P. Tom Boswell, sabermetrician; P.A.L.L.(*) Tom Boswell, human being
Nov 20 18:06
Top Free Agent Pitchers
Nov 20 17:45
NBA’s Marcel
Nov 20 15:44
Marcel 2009 is here
Nov 20 15:24
Ball the vote
Nov 20 15:07
New BBTN
Nov 20 15:06
David G. checks in again on whether experience matters in the post-season
THREADS
September 30, 2008
Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season
November 20, 2008
New BBTN
November 20, 2008
Top Free Agent Pitchers
November 20, 2008
R.I.P. Tom Boswell, sabermetrician; P.A.L.L.(*) Tom Boswell, human being
November 20, 2008
David G. checks in again on whether experience matters in the post-season
November 19, 2008
Offense by position groups by decade
November 19, 2008
NBA’s Marcel
November 19, 2008
Nate Silver: hero to interviewers
November 19, 2008
MLB logo
November 18, 2008
STAR TREK preview!
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 75 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date