THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Isn’t it also a legal issue?  Aren’t some PEDs against the law?

Legal issues are dealt with by the justice system, not by the vigilante media.

So, as long as murderers, rapists, wife-beaters, drug abusers, and dog killers are given a pass, PED users fall below that line.

Yes it is a legal issue.  And so is players occasionally driving while intoxicated, cheating on their taxes, or even exceeding the speed limit while driving.  What has that got to do with baseball or with the HOF?  And I absolutely HATE when someone equates legality with morality in any way, shape or form.  EVERYONE does illegal things in their lives.  If legality equaled morality, then smoking grass would be immoral.  So would exceeding the speed limit while driving.  And cheating on your wife and verbally abusing your kids would be perfectly OK.

From Tango’s comment above it appears that he is suggesting that it’s the “players” who should be deciding a legal issue (PEDS).  My comment was directed at that.
vr, Xei

With regards to the legal issue, OBVIOUSLY players are not going to decide that. If you think I am suggesting this, then I have obviously taken for granted how I write things.

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On the ethical issue, this is what I am talking about.  What kind of workplace do the players themselves want?

It is not up to the media to decide after-the-fact further punishments than the players and their teams have already meted out.

Bob Gibson has stated the painfully obvious: players are competitive, and there is a large group of those players that will put whatever they can in their bodies, and ask questions later.  This was as true 80, 40, 20, 10 years ago as it is today.

bob gibson sounds all right to me.  the media witch hunters can get lost.  i know that among my friends the predominant view on players and roids was if guys on the team you root for wasn’t taking steroids and they weren’t testing for it then that player was being selfish for not doing more to help the team win.  we are being only semi-facetious when we express this opinion.

When a guy of Gibson’s stature as a pitcher comes out to say this, it forces people to reconsider themselves.  And remember, he was active when Dock Ellis was tossing a no-no after dropping LSD.  Probably a bridge too far for most guys, but if it’s out there and it could help, there’s probably at least one guy who’d try it; hence the ample supply of “greenies” and amphetamines in major league clubhouses prior to this season - and the litter of Red Bull cans and other energy-boost elixirs under the benches and in the locker rooms of every league I’ve ever played in.  I guess that I’m more hard-line about the ‘roids than most, but it’s a broader, fuzzier line than I thought originally.  The difference between a Red Bull and the Vitamin Water in my bottle is more of degree than of kind, after all.  The liquid chemicals, herbs, sugars, and etc. in an energy drink are somehow more moral than chemicals in a pill?  I don’t like it, but there it is.  (And if I don’t like it, Gibby is still liable to put one in my earhole.)

What would happen if the cost of steroids was as low as the cost of an energy drink? 

Indeed, what would happen if the cost of steroids was zero (freely available)?

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Related story:

Stranger: “Will you sleep with me?”
Lady: “Get lost”
Stranger: “I’ll pay you one million dollars!”
Lady: “Really?  Uhmmm, ok.”
Stranger: “How about one hundred dollars?”
Lady: “A hund-? What do you take me for?"”
Strange: “We have established what you are.  Now we are negotiating a price.”

Moral of the story: we are all wh-res.  There’s always at least one thing that you are willing to check your ethics at the door, in order to satisfy your selfish needs.

From the title of the thread, I thought that Gibson was admitting that he took something but he wasn’t sure if it was a PED or not…

Amid a really entertaining interview, Earl Weaver seems to say “meh” about steroid use too..

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1157671/index.htm