Letters to the Editor
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Steroid fatigue
I personally think that people are caring less and less the more and more people get implicated. When it was a few marquee stars being trotted out before Congress, it truly was a national story. But with each subsequent indictment, and as more information comes out that these superhulks were not the exception but rather the rule, it's not only fatigue that sets in ... it's bewilderment. So basically just about every major league ballplayer in the 80s and 90s was using some kind of performance enhancing substance (be it steroids, nutritional supplements, speed, etc.) ... just what are we supposed to do with that information?
Are we supposed to go back and pretend those 20+ years never happened? Are we supposed to turn our back on the game? Are we supposed to look forward to an era where the line between legal and illegal performance enhancers is a complete gray blur? (Creatine - OK; Andro - not OK; Ripped fuel - OK; HGH - not OK; ultrasound treatment - OK; bionic implants - ????)
As far as I'm concerned, any professional ballplayer not taking some kind of PED during the 90s was foolish. They weren't banned by the leage, and everyone else was doing it. You suffered a clear competitive disadvantage - which is why I maintain that the Cubbies were all clean during that age and that's why they never won a World Series.
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Conflict of Interest
I wonder why the big cable sports stations aren't covering the steroids story. Might it have anything to do with the fact that they also broadcast the games?
If a huge steroids controversy causes fans to lose faith in the game, they may stop watching. If they stop watching, ESPN and Fox Sports lose a ton of money. So, perhaps these guys think it's best just to make a perfunctory mention of it and hope it goes away.
Meanwhile, I think many fans don't realize how much their love for sports is affected by television coverage. We love curling and figure skating during the Winter Olympics, but who's thought of it recently? Look at how quickly the NHL was replaced with the World Series of Poker. If it's in front of us, it's great, but if the TV emphasizes something else ... well, that's just as good.
So, if ESPN tells us that Cleveland beating Miami is bigger news than the destruction of the integrity of Major League Baseball, who am I to ask why?
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My Gal
Says I'm a better lover after smoking some chronic.
She doesn't demean it with an asterisk.
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Well, Wes, it's very hard to hold down both the shift key and the 8 at the same time
when you have hoofs.
I kid, I kid!
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gimmie some names
I agree with Melody: When the names get named, that'll be headline news. The news that someone was dealing PEDs to big-league players and he may name names in the future just doesn't pack a punch anymore. Plus, it seems likely to me that things will ultimately be arranged so that no names get named at all, and I'm probably not the only one with that cynical expectation.
Also, King, has there really been much blame directed at the sports media for not covering the drugs issue enough? Seems to me everyone's blaming MLB officials for ignoring it or covering it up, not the press.
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I envy us
That was pretty good. I'm gonna keep an eye on you.
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Although I Will Add
That a time or two when I've done the chronic and my gal was out, I took a look or two at the cat Powderpuff.
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Drug Out & Shot
Hawkins & Melody and others make some good points - without any "whoah" factor (big names, new facts), the story is just another reminder that something folks want to be clean isn't.
I have that feeling every time I slap my alarm clock and see the pile of books on my night stand that I keep meaning to shelve. They haven't fallen over and scared the cat or brained me in my sleep, so they're Not That Big A Problem (Yet).
I, personally, want the ne'er-do-wells brought forth and shamed for sullying "The American Pastime," not just because they're doing a disservice to the game's history, but also because I think baseball is one of the worst ways to mow a lawn known to man.
My gung-ho NHL zealotry has been set aside, at least until the conference finals, knowing King's general malaise towards the league. John Buccigross and E.J. Hradek and Craig Burnside (if you'll pardon my pimping the competition) have provided an interim fix. King's column is a part of my daily routine, and covers stuff in an interesting way that I normally wouldn't be exposed to out of pure heaps of apathy and disinterest, so I treat those times when he does speak to stuff I'm passionate about as a treat.
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Show me the money.
She doesn't demean it with an asterisk.
How many people are betting on it? What's the over/under?
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So We Need To Clean Up Sports
To make the gambling legitimate and fair?
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Wes
Take a joke.
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I Categorically Reject
The accusation or the implication or the insinuation that I was or am serious.
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cheating?
"Why we always single out athletes.....The Beatles were trippin' when they did Lonely Hearts Club band....Edgar Allan Poe was a druggie when he wrote much of his stuff....You know Jack Nicholson would not have been to present his characters the way he did without some juice.
We don't seem to want to belittle or disqualify those achievements."
Isn't the point that folks on steroids are cheating? Unless ALL the athletes are equally doping... Floyd Landis for instance - isn't it possible that there were some folks in the tour who weren't juiced? Weren't they f _ _ _ed over by Landis?
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Not fatigue, exactly. More like dishonesty and confusion.
Here's the problem I have with the so-called steroid scandal. Nothing you have read, heard or seen about the subject is honest in any way, shape or form.
Here's what I mean: MLB players have been using perfomance enhancing drugs openly for decades. Anyone who doubts this need only re-read "Ball Four" and see how "Greenies" (amphetamines) were distributed like candy in 1969. Bud Selig himself has acknowledged that when he visited the clubhouse of the Milwaukee Braves as a teenager in the late 50s, amphetamines were distributed openly. And by the way, amphetamines are a class 2 drug - considered to be much more harmful than steroids and regulated as such.
When players discovered in the 1980s that steroids suited their purposes even more than Greenies, many made the switch. And fans weren't dumb - we knew that Jose Canseco was on the juice a good 15 years before he told us. (Or were you confused about what the Boston fans meant when they serenaded him with chants of "Ster - oids" when he played the outfield in Fenway Park?) And it was obvious that players like Lenny Dykstra were using, because normal people simply don't bulk up in their early 30s and go from being a slap-hitting outfielder to a home run threat. It just doesn't happen. As for Mark McGwire? He acknowledged using a supplement that, because of it's steroid-like effect and signature, was commonly used to mask other PEDs ... right in the middle of his quest to break the home run record. So it's not like we didn't know.
And let's not forget the least honest people in the sports world right now: the legions of former players who work in broadcasting and who have yet to be put on the spot by the networks who have hired them. Because if the "journalists" at ESPN really wanted to get the story, all they'd have to do is have one of their crack reporters sit down with Kruk and ask him point blank: "Did you ever use steroids while you were playing? Did you know of any players that did? How about Lenny Dykstra?" But for some reason, ESPN doesn't seem to want to go down this road. Jeez, I just can't imagine why.
The steroid scandal (a/k/a the "please indict Barry Bonds before he does sonething foolish like breaking the all-time home run record" scandal) will spin to it's ugly and inevitable conclusion soon enough. Bonds - a gifted but intensely disagreeable and probably dishonest person - will be burned at the stake and baseball will try to get on with it's business. But they won't fool anyone with their nonsense. Because we all know the truth. It's been right in front of us all the time.