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 [...]
Does Roger Clemens’ personal and/or sexual relationships have any bearing on his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs (or vice versa)? Already, the blogosphere is suggesting that steroids may have caused Clemens’ infidelity. But as far as the legal proceedings are concerned, Yahoo Sports’ Tim Brown doesn’t think his philandering has relevance to his alleged steroid use
In regards to Novitzky’s new job, Dwight Sparlin, a retired I.R.S. manager who led the San Francisco office when the Balco case started nearly six years ago, said he had been hearing for two weeks that Novitzky was going to the F.D.A. to continue focusing on drug cases.
“I think it would give him more exposure to just doing that type of work,” Sparlin said by telephone Tuesday. He added: “For Jeff to go as far as he did in Balco was a stretch for the I.R.S., too. I think he was allowed to go a lot further than he would otherwise because of the impact.”
Jeff Novitsky has been involved in almost every aspect of the BALCO steroid scandal and steroids in baseball investigation.
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)
Major League Baseball has acted on some of the recommendations from the Mitchell Report with the implementation of an anonymous hotline to uncover users of performance enhancing drugs in the sport (”Baseball uses anonymous hotline to nab steroid cheats,” April 10).
The hotline, recommended by Sen. George Mitchell in his report on baseball and steroids and implemented by commissioner Bud Selig in January, is one of the tools the investigative unit is using to catch drug cheats, along with information from outside investigators.
Everybody is baseball is said to have access to the anonymous hotline which hopes to break the so-called “code of silence” of steroid use in baseball.
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.
Dr. Gary Gaffney from Steroid Nation posted an article on Huffington Post about the performance enhancing effects of human growth hormone. Gaffney responds to so-called experts who assert with certainty that growth hormone does not help performance in sports. As Lou Schuler stated in a recent post, the true effects of growth hormone on performance are not always empirically “knowable and measurable.”
Gaffney takes note of the lack of empirical research examining the performance enhancing effects of drugs that has historically resulted in mainstream medical organizations failing to recognize performance enhancing drugs. Given this along with results seen in “experiments of nature,” Gaffney feels it is reasonable to conclude that GH has performance enhancing effects:
Nick Garcia claims his “theory of roidactivity” is the most reliable statistical tool for predicting steroid use in baseball. It applies a statistical formula to the “career trajectories of suspected steroid users.”
Garcia began to study the career trajectories of known steroid users such as Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti and Jason Giambi.?His statistical analysis showed that each aforementioned player’s performance in the areas of batting average and home runs significantly and quantifiably spiked after he?began taking steroids.
Many people seem to assume that growth hormone and testosterone are both anabolic steroids. The media has shown very little interest in distinguishing the two throughout the entire war of steroids or the steroids in baseball fiasco. (Never mind the fact that there are dozens of different steroids with differing effects and side effects within the class of anabolic steroids.) When Sylvester Stallone tried to explain that growth hormone was a completely different class of drugs than anabolic steroids, he was met with widespread disbelief if not ridicule. Never mind the fact that he was correct.
So, I have to give credit to the few journalists who “try” to explain the difference between growth hormone and anabolic steroids like testosterone e.g. The Growth Hormone Myth:
I’ve added it to my reading list.