Mike Markson has an interesting proposal for confronting the problem of anabolic steroids (and performance enhancing drugs) in baseball - “let them cheat.” His steroid comments were included in suggestions to make baseball more exciting.
I started thinking, if I was to come up with a baseball variant to try and take on MLB, what would it look like? Well, it would be baseball, but, I’d market it as a faster, more exciting version. I’d make the following rules changes to try and re-enforce the brand […]
While high school football coaches like Chris Connolly of Dolgeville High School have banned Gatorade and other dietary supplements out of fear that they may be a gateway to steroid use, Major League Baseball has actually embraced Gatorade as MLB’s “official sports drink.” Major League Baseball has now taken it a step further and banned water from the clubhouse (”Don’t drink the water!” April 23).
Gatorade is Major League Baseball’s “official sports drink.” So instructions were sent that no player could be seen drinking anything but Gatorade in the dugout. Not even Aquafina, which is the “official water” of MLB. Not even bottles of water with the labels removed.
White Sox clubhouse personnel said if players take bottled water onto the bench, all the bottled water will be removed from the clubhouse as punishment.
This policy only reinforces the appearance of a pro-steroid agenda by Major League Baseball.
Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have modified a bill that would have added human growth hormone (HGH)Â to the Controlled Substances List. The bill was introduced as a kneejerk reaction to revelations of widespread HGH use in professional baseball. But in the end, legislators avoided making the same mistake with HGH as they did with anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) with the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990. (”HGH bill altered to help children,” April 16)
The federal government’s obsession with eliminating anabolic steroids from Major League Baseball is compromising state law enforcement efforts to fight drug dealers and violent criminals thereby jeopardizing the public safety…
The feds are spending more and more taxpayer money pursuing steroid-related investigations while at the same time cutting funding for narcotic-related investigations (via Byrne task force investigations). Grits for Breakfast responded by pointing out how the Byrne task force programs had no meaningful effect on public safety (”Byrne task force funds mainly financing low-grade drug enforcement,” March 10).
The jury in cyclist Tammy Thomas’ doping perjury trial did not reach a verdict after the first day of deliberations (”Thomas jury deliberations to continue,” April 3).
Thomas, whose case is the first to go to trial in the five-and-a-half-year Balco investigation, was charged with making false statements to a grand jury in 2003 about substances she is suspected of receiving from Arnold. For the jury to convict Thomas, it must conclude that her statements were false and that they were material to the government’s investigation.
I am certain that Tammy Thomas is anxiously awaiting the verdict. Not only is her freedom in jeopardy but also a future career as an attorney. She has been silent about the case and has not spoken to the media; however, she has been very outspoken in her fashion statements outside the courtroom where she was photographed wearing a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, no doubt in support of other athletes who have been targeted for perjury by this federal investigation.
WADA refuses to worry about trivial genetic factors. WADA is loath to do longitudinal tests of athletes. WADA might find a variable that might refute their laboratory findings or challenge their presumption of laboratory perfection. WADA would never invest time and money doing pedigree studies to determine if a single metabolite above threshold for exogenous testosterone is a trait common in a family, or among a group of people found in a geographical region. But idiosyncratic individual differences in medicine have been documented in many pedigree studies. For example, hematocrit levels above 50% have been found in fathers and sons of elite cyclists. These hematocirt levels are inherited tendencies, not based on EPO doping. The same is true for testosterone/epitestosterone ratio(s) and may be true for Carbon Isotope metabolite delta/delta scores.
State Representative Jeff Roorda has introduced legislation to coerce professional sports in the State of Missouri to change their rules by increasing penalties for anabolic steroid use in their respective sports.
Roorda, a Democrat from Jefferson County, filed a bill today that would bar state tax credits from going to professional sports teams in a league that does not place at least a one-year ban on athletes caught using steroids.
That would mean: No state breaks for the Cardinals, as well as the Royals, the Chiefs, the Rams, the Blues, the state’s minor league baseball teams, or pro soccer outfits…
“Since when in baseball is it four strikes and you’re out?” Roorda said in a statement today.
Never mind that in baseball, it is not one strike and you’re out either. Roorda obviously intends to highlight what he believes to be a weak steroid and doping policy in Major League Baseball.
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your preference) we have not reached the level of absurdity where everything that may offer an unfair advantage is banned in sports competition. The latest culprit in offering an unfair advantage is not any type of designer anabolic steroid created by a rogue chemist in a secret underground lab. It is a new Speedo swimsuit (”The suit that’s turned the swim world on its head,” March 27).
The new swimsuit? Speedo’s LZR Racer.
That modest meet last month in Columbia, Mo., began an unprecedented — and controversial — six weeks that turned competitive swimming upside down: 14 world records set as of Wednesday, 13 in the LZR suit.
While the controversy and debate over the use of anabolic steroids and growth hormone in sports continues, little attention is paid to the use of Adderall and Provigil in academia. Cycling Fans Anonymous discusses an interesting article that appeared in the New York Times earlier this month.
Doping in academia is common, with Provigil and Adderall being the drugs of choice amongst professors and students at university. Apparently these drugs make it possible to concentrate without getting distracted for long periods of time, and to never get sleepy when pulling an all-nighter.
The New York Times compares doping in sports to doping in academia
Slated for publication in September under the Skyhorse imprint, the book’s working title is “BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports.” Conte, in conjunction with co-author Nathan Jendrick, promises to share “the dirt, the drugs, the doses, the names, dates and places, and a ‘prescription’ for a brighter future.”
He promises the “complete truth in its honest, unadulterated and raw form” and says he is “ready to tell the world everything.”