What stands out to me is how little the debate about steroids post Jose Canseco's book Juiced has been about facts. After Roger Clemens defeated the government perjury case against him in 2012, Bill Madden and Mike Lupica-the kind of pundits who try to set themselves up as baseball's conscience-lamented the result.
Madden dismissed the result: we just know Clemens is guilty and that's it. You know, the steroids scolds had decided what the facts about Clemens-or Bonds, Sosa, or McGwire-are and they don't need to hear any further facts about it. Baseball's conscience had made up it's mind.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/roger-clemens-not-worthy-baseball-hall-fame-induction-not-guilty-verdict-perjury-trial-article-1.1098265
Mike Lupica felt that this was a loss for baseball fans. Why is that exactly? What would the public have gained from Clemens being found criminally guilty? Well, I guess it would have made the Lupicas and Maddens of the world feel good and they presume that the average fan feels like they do on the matter.
"So Clemens wins, the government loses. And guess what? Baseball loses, too, because this verdict is also a great big slap against George Mitchell’s report. That is a shame because that report mattered. The government doesn’t even get the one conviction, on obstruction of justice, it got on Barry Bonds."
"Now Clemens waits to see what the voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America think when his name goes on the ballot for the Hall of Fame. He will find out soon enough what the voters think about him, and his version of things, whether they think he is a falsely accused man, or a rich sack of lies. Bonds walked on perjury, too, because of one holdout woman on the jury. But does anybody on the planet still believe that Bonds didn’t use steroids?"
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/roger-clemens-perjury-trial-7-time-cy-young-winner-walks-government-swings-misses-baseball-fans-loss-article-1.1098195
See, we just know-ie, Lupica and Madden just know-so why even bother with a trial? Let's just do like they did at the Salem Witch Trials and string em up. We know what we need to know-or at least the scolds know what they need to know.
Ok, then Lupica correctly gauges my feeling about it:
"If you don’t care and never cared whether ballplayers use their own version of Viagra to hit more home runs and strike out more guys and make a lot more money, then you are allowed to see what happened on Monday as both justice and vindication for Clemens."
"If you believe that Clemens, with a great career in decline, suddenly decided he needed a personal trainer for B12 shots, then go ahead. You are allowed, and allowed to be outraged if Clemens isn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer."
Paragraph one correctly states my feeling: I really don't care what they did or didn't do. From the standpoint of the Hall of Fame. I think that we should just go by the numbers. I don't buy that steroids makes it an unfair playing field. I don't think steroids is the worst scandal in baseball history.
It's ludicrous to me that people like Madden have suggested that steroids is on the level-if not even worse-than the Black Sox scandal and it's absurd that Madden feels that Pete Rose deserves a chance in the HOF if McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, and Clemens get their shot.
What Pete Rose did was much more troubling, I normally would agree that a lifetime ban is too much but this is one case I can understand. However, if Madden-who unfortunately gets to vote on the HOF-were willing to let these great players in I might consider giving Rose a hearing.
I see that a commenter-who calls himself Reflex-to an article about Clemens attacks him for allegedly going with a 14 year old girl:
"Always amazing to me that people care more about Roger’s relationship with PEDs than his relationship with a 14 year old. Seriously messed up priorities that its the PED use that will keep him out of the hall on the ‘character clause’.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/03/23/a-roger-clemens-biopic-no-thanks/
Look, I don't know anything about what Clemens did or didn't do with a 14 year old-and I'm not really chomping at the bit to find out. I do note that Canseco in Juiced claims that Clemens is the only player he knows who is faithful to his wife. At the end of the day, I'm not going to hire an private investigator to find out.
However, for the Lupicas and Maddens of the world, you can rest assured they'd much sooner vote for a child molester than someone who has any taint of that evil thing steroids. I think they'd sooner let Manson off than allow a Clemens or Bonds into the HOF.
As to whether or not Clemens did steroids, I'm reading the book by Kirk Radomski now
http://www.amazon.com/Bases-Loaded-Steroid-Baseball-Central-ebook/dp/B001QEQRJM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427196249&sr=1-1&keywords=kirk+radomski
and he definitely also believes Clemens did-and backs up Brian McNamee. One thing that irks me about the discussion about McNamee is when people say 'why would he lie?'-I mean there are all kinds of reasons someone might lie Why do you have to be psychiatrist to question his claims? The two did recently settle. McNamee gets his payday. I know that proves Clemens did steroids although the fact that the government couldn't prove he was lying when he said he didn't do steroids proves nothing. For the record Clemens' lawyer says his client won't be paying McNamee-it will be AIG.
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/roger-clemens-reaches-settlement-with-his-ex-trainer-brian-mcnamee-1.10079668
It does seem very likely that the Rocket-who it's a good thing came to pitch for the Yankees later as if he had retired a Red Sox I would have a harder time defending him, LOL-at least used HGH-Human Growth Hormone. Radomski-who is the big source for the Mitchell Report-who knows about as much as anyone about steroids and HGH-I wouldn't necessarily recommend that someone do steroids but if I were going to, I'd want to speak to someone like him-says it makes no sense that-whatever policy MLB wants to have for steroids-has banned HGH.
HGH can prolong a player's career-and is not performance enhancing-as that's what steroid phobia is really so afraid of-it just helps players recover much quicker from injury and puts years on a player's years in the league-like Clemens got. After the way the Red Sox dumped him-I had to take a dig at the Sox-he had 11 more years in him and ended up playing till he was closer to 50 than 40.
Had he not used HGH he probably would have washed out the same time Dwight Gooden did-the two came up almost the same time-Doc was one year older than The Rocket. So why is this a bad thing? Why do we want athletes to say out longer than they need to and end their careers earlier than they need to?
It's because steroids furor isn't rational. It's just this obsession with 'only using what God gave you'; it's a moral prejudice not an intellectual position. HGH just gets painted with the same brush because after Canseco's book we had a big moral panic-it didn't hurt that the owners wanted to keep down players' salaries either.
As for side effects, there are far fewer with HGH-the main concern is that if one has a predilection for cancer it can be dangerous. Obviously anyone who used it would want to get checked out first. But it was able to prolong careers and for even regular people it can heal against disease and maybe prolong life. HGH seem to be what helped Magic when he got HIV.
"20 years have passed since Magic Johnson has revealed he is HIV positive. With the help of anabolic steroids and growth hormone cocktail he remains healthy and strong."
"But he lived on, larger than ever with the help of HIV / AIDS coctail of drugs. Anabolic steroids, HGH and many other medications keep the HIV baring patient healthy. Primobolan depot, deca durabolin and other similar drugs prevent muscle wasting while giving the body's immune system a boost. Many HIV patients look better than „healthy“ people, Magic Johnson included. We were all devastated by the news and Magic was a basketball hero, one of the very best, comparable to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquile O'neal at their best."
"Luckily he had good doctors and lots of money so he was able to buy the best anabolic steroids and the best http://www.decarshop.com/buy-HGH.html growth hormone and it shows."
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/health/after-20-years-magic-bigger-than-ever-are-anabolic-steroids-the-cure-for-aids.html
Look, it's certainly possible to abuse steroids-using them too much, using the wrong ones together, etc.. bodybuilders very often abuse them-you have to know what you're doing-and the way to know is consult doctors and health professionals.
We always hear how dangerous steroids are but I have never felt like this is the reason people-or at least baseball writers-get so hysterical about them. Do you believe that Lupica hates Alex Rodriguez so much because A-Rod endangered his own health? No, it's a worry about a level playing field in assessing greatness-that as steroids are 'cheating' if you ever in your life took anything that could be called 'steroids' everything you ever did is tainted.
What this does, is make the old white men happy as it gives us the result that only the Old Timers' records-Ruth, Mantle, Maris-are legitimate. The Old Timers never had help supposedly-conveniently forgetting about segregation.
So the vehemence about steroids isn't rational. The legacy of Canseco's book at this point is pretty bad. Maybe in the future we might start to have a more rational discussion about the real benefits and dangers-which you'd have to be a fool to discount-and the legacy will look better. At least when Canseco first wrote the book he didn't intend a witch hunt-though later, in his second book-Vindicated-he seemed to want to join the witch hunt if it made him more popular again.
A lot of people say that Clemens, Bonds, and company won't sniff the Hall in their lifetimes. That would be a real pity-though it may well be right considering we have folks like Madden doing the voting. Still with time, perhaps as society becomes more rational on this issue maybe that seeps through to baseball and maybe this changes.
P.S. I will admit, that I've come to feel really bad for these athletes. I mean even if you take steroids you have to work your ass off for them to work-and not everyone who uses them will be great. Players like Bonds, Clemens, and McGwire were naturally very gifted as well. If you think that taking steroids will magically make someone with no innate talent a superstar, how do you explain the Giambi brothers who both took the same steroids but while Jason was great, Jeremy never achieved the same level of stats?
It must really suck to put your whole life into something like this and accomplish so much and then just see some sanctimonious baseball writers-and some chickenhawk US Congressmen who can't achieve anything important so try to disguise their uselessness by bullying Mark McGwire on C-Span-decree that none of it means a hill of beans based on their own ignorant prejudice. I mean Lupica is not speaking from any level of informed fact about steroids just pure sentiment.
As HGH was probably the main thing that explains Clemens performance it makes even less sense not to put him in the Hall. To me, this robs the fans.
Some people feel differently. Selena Roberts, who wrote the book that first nailed A-Rod for using steroids-she got her hands on the results of baseball's first test in 2003 that the player's union was supposed to discard-seems to revel in bringing athletes and sports low.
https://twitter.com/SelenaRoopstigo
http://www.roopstigo.com/
She's less a sportswriter than a sports scandal writer.
P.S.S. I'll return to an observation I've made a few times lately: baseball has just gotten really boring the last few years. Runs scored team by team are way down. It's shocking that not a single team scored over 800 runs last year and that the average team scored 660 runs.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting
In 2006, only two teams scored less than 700 and Tampa Bay, which had the fewest runs in the majors, scored 689-which is 30 more than the average team scored in 2014.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/year/2006
If this is what the integrity of Baseball looks like I can do without it.
Madden dismissed the result: we just know Clemens is guilty and that's it. You know, the steroids scolds had decided what the facts about Clemens-or Bonds, Sosa, or McGwire-are and they don't need to hear any further facts about it. Baseball's conscience had made up it's mind.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/roger-clemens-not-worthy-baseball-hall-fame-induction-not-guilty-verdict-perjury-trial-article-1.1098265
Mike Lupica felt that this was a loss for baseball fans. Why is that exactly? What would the public have gained from Clemens being found criminally guilty? Well, I guess it would have made the Lupicas and Maddens of the world feel good and they presume that the average fan feels like they do on the matter.
"So Clemens wins, the government loses. And guess what? Baseball loses, too, because this verdict is also a great big slap against George Mitchell’s report. That is a shame because that report mattered. The government doesn’t even get the one conviction, on obstruction of justice, it got on Barry Bonds."
"Now Clemens waits to see what the voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America think when his name goes on the ballot for the Hall of Fame. He will find out soon enough what the voters think about him, and his version of things, whether they think he is a falsely accused man, or a rich sack of lies. Bonds walked on perjury, too, because of one holdout woman on the jury. But does anybody on the planet still believe that Bonds didn’t use steroids?"
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/roger-clemens-perjury-trial-7-time-cy-young-winner-walks-government-swings-misses-baseball-fans-loss-article-1.1098195
See, we just know-ie, Lupica and Madden just know-so why even bother with a trial? Let's just do like they did at the Salem Witch Trials and string em up. We know what we need to know-or at least the scolds know what they need to know.
Ok, then Lupica correctly gauges my feeling about it:
"If you don’t care and never cared whether ballplayers use their own version of Viagra to hit more home runs and strike out more guys and make a lot more money, then you are allowed to see what happened on Monday as both justice and vindication for Clemens."
"If you believe that Clemens, with a great career in decline, suddenly decided he needed a personal trainer for B12 shots, then go ahead. You are allowed, and allowed to be outraged if Clemens isn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer."
Paragraph one correctly states my feeling: I really don't care what they did or didn't do. From the standpoint of the Hall of Fame. I think that we should just go by the numbers. I don't buy that steroids makes it an unfair playing field. I don't think steroids is the worst scandal in baseball history.
It's ludicrous to me that people like Madden have suggested that steroids is on the level-if not even worse-than the Black Sox scandal and it's absurd that Madden feels that Pete Rose deserves a chance in the HOF if McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, and Clemens get their shot.
What Pete Rose did was much more troubling, I normally would agree that a lifetime ban is too much but this is one case I can understand. However, if Madden-who unfortunately gets to vote on the HOF-were willing to let these great players in I might consider giving Rose a hearing.
I see that a commenter-who calls himself Reflex-to an article about Clemens attacks him for allegedly going with a 14 year old girl:
"Always amazing to me that people care more about Roger’s relationship with PEDs than his relationship with a 14 year old. Seriously messed up priorities that its the PED use that will keep him out of the hall on the ‘character clause’.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/03/23/a-roger-clemens-biopic-no-thanks/
Look, I don't know anything about what Clemens did or didn't do with a 14 year old-and I'm not really chomping at the bit to find out. I do note that Canseco in Juiced claims that Clemens is the only player he knows who is faithful to his wife. At the end of the day, I'm not going to hire an private investigator to find out.
However, for the Lupicas and Maddens of the world, you can rest assured they'd much sooner vote for a child molester than someone who has any taint of that evil thing steroids. I think they'd sooner let Manson off than allow a Clemens or Bonds into the HOF.
As to whether or not Clemens did steroids, I'm reading the book by Kirk Radomski now
http://www.amazon.com/Bases-Loaded-Steroid-Baseball-Central-ebook/dp/B001QEQRJM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427196249&sr=1-1&keywords=kirk+radomski
and he definitely also believes Clemens did-and backs up Brian McNamee. One thing that irks me about the discussion about McNamee is when people say 'why would he lie?'-I mean there are all kinds of reasons someone might lie Why do you have to be psychiatrist to question his claims? The two did recently settle. McNamee gets his payday. I know that proves Clemens did steroids although the fact that the government couldn't prove he was lying when he said he didn't do steroids proves nothing. For the record Clemens' lawyer says his client won't be paying McNamee-it will be AIG.
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/roger-clemens-reaches-settlement-with-his-ex-trainer-brian-mcnamee-1.10079668
It does seem very likely that the Rocket-who it's a good thing came to pitch for the Yankees later as if he had retired a Red Sox I would have a harder time defending him, LOL-at least used HGH-Human Growth Hormone. Radomski-who is the big source for the Mitchell Report-who knows about as much as anyone about steroids and HGH-I wouldn't necessarily recommend that someone do steroids but if I were going to, I'd want to speak to someone like him-says it makes no sense that-whatever policy MLB wants to have for steroids-has banned HGH.
HGH can prolong a player's career-and is not performance enhancing-as that's what steroid phobia is really so afraid of-it just helps players recover much quicker from injury and puts years on a player's years in the league-like Clemens got. After the way the Red Sox dumped him-I had to take a dig at the Sox-he had 11 more years in him and ended up playing till he was closer to 50 than 40.
Had he not used HGH he probably would have washed out the same time Dwight Gooden did-the two came up almost the same time-Doc was one year older than The Rocket. So why is this a bad thing? Why do we want athletes to say out longer than they need to and end their careers earlier than they need to?
It's because steroids furor isn't rational. It's just this obsession with 'only using what God gave you'; it's a moral prejudice not an intellectual position. HGH just gets painted with the same brush because after Canseco's book we had a big moral panic-it didn't hurt that the owners wanted to keep down players' salaries either.
As for side effects, there are far fewer with HGH-the main concern is that if one has a predilection for cancer it can be dangerous. Obviously anyone who used it would want to get checked out first. But it was able to prolong careers and for even regular people it can heal against disease and maybe prolong life. HGH seem to be what helped Magic when he got HIV.
"20 years have passed since Magic Johnson has revealed he is HIV positive. With the help of anabolic steroids and growth hormone cocktail he remains healthy and strong."
"But he lived on, larger than ever with the help of HIV / AIDS coctail of drugs. Anabolic steroids, HGH and many other medications keep the HIV baring patient healthy. Primobolan depot, deca durabolin and other similar drugs prevent muscle wasting while giving the body's immune system a boost. Many HIV patients look better than „healthy“ people, Magic Johnson included. We were all devastated by the news and Magic was a basketball hero, one of the very best, comparable to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquile O'neal at their best."
"Luckily he had good doctors and lots of money so he was able to buy the best anabolic steroids and the best http://www.decarshop.com/buy-HGH.html growth hormone and it shows."
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/health/after-20-years-magic-bigger-than-ever-are-anabolic-steroids-the-cure-for-aids.html
Look, it's certainly possible to abuse steroids-using them too much, using the wrong ones together, etc.. bodybuilders very often abuse them-you have to know what you're doing-and the way to know is consult doctors and health professionals.
We always hear how dangerous steroids are but I have never felt like this is the reason people-or at least baseball writers-get so hysterical about them. Do you believe that Lupica hates Alex Rodriguez so much because A-Rod endangered his own health? No, it's a worry about a level playing field in assessing greatness-that as steroids are 'cheating' if you ever in your life took anything that could be called 'steroids' everything you ever did is tainted.
What this does, is make the old white men happy as it gives us the result that only the Old Timers' records-Ruth, Mantle, Maris-are legitimate. The Old Timers never had help supposedly-conveniently forgetting about segregation.
So the vehemence about steroids isn't rational. The legacy of Canseco's book at this point is pretty bad. Maybe in the future we might start to have a more rational discussion about the real benefits and dangers-which you'd have to be a fool to discount-and the legacy will look better. At least when Canseco first wrote the book he didn't intend a witch hunt-though later, in his second book-Vindicated-he seemed to want to join the witch hunt if it made him more popular again.
A lot of people say that Clemens, Bonds, and company won't sniff the Hall in their lifetimes. That would be a real pity-though it may well be right considering we have folks like Madden doing the voting. Still with time, perhaps as society becomes more rational on this issue maybe that seeps through to baseball and maybe this changes.
It must really suck to put your whole life into something like this and accomplish so much and then just see some sanctimonious baseball writers-and some chickenhawk US Congressmen who can't achieve anything important so try to disguise their uselessness by bullying Mark McGwire on C-Span-decree that none of it means a hill of beans based on their own ignorant prejudice. I mean Lupica is not speaking from any level of informed fact about steroids just pure sentiment.
As HGH was probably the main thing that explains Clemens performance it makes even less sense not to put him in the Hall. To me, this robs the fans.
Some people feel differently. Selena Roberts, who wrote the book that first nailed A-Rod for using steroids-she got her hands on the results of baseball's first test in 2003 that the player's union was supposed to discard-seems to revel in bringing athletes and sports low.
https://twitter.com/SelenaRoopstigo
http://www.roopstigo.com/
She's less a sportswriter than a sports scandal writer.
P.S.S. I'll return to an observation I've made a few times lately: baseball has just gotten really boring the last few years. Runs scored team by team are way down. It's shocking that not a single team scored over 800 runs last year and that the average team scored 660 runs.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting
In 2006, only two teams scored less than 700 and Tampa Bay, which had the fewest runs in the majors, scored 689-which is 30 more than the average team scored in 2014.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/year/2006
If this is what the integrity of Baseball looks like I can do without it.
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