Slashdot Mirror
Juiced
Canseco, for those who spent the last 15 years hidden under a rock, played major league baseball for 17 seasons, from 1985 to 2001. He was most famous for belting massive home runs, but he was also pretty fast: in 1988 he became the first player in history to hit at least 40 home runs and steal at least 40 bases in a single season. For his career he hit .266, with 462 home runs and a .515 slugging percentage. He was a 6-time All-Star, won a Rookie-of-the-Year and MVP award, and picked up two World Series rings.
(How good was Canseco as a player? In his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, Bill James presents several methods of estimating how likely someone is to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the "Hall of Fame Standards" test, where 60 percent of players with a score of 40-49 have gotten into the Hall of Fame, Canseco scores a 38. On the "Hall of Fame Monitor" test, where a score of 100 indicates someone is likely to get in, Canseco scores an 103. So Canseco may not get elected to the Hall of Fame (and likely won't, after the publication of his book), but a reasonable case could be made that he belongs there. The answer to the question of how good Canseco was is "very, very good.")
What's important about Juiced, especially to the average Slashdot reader who may not know a baseball diamond from the Hope diamond? The answer is buried in the subtitle's heap of verbiage: "Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big." Canseco's book is about the growing user of steroids in baseball, something you hear a lot about today. But Canseco has an unusual opinion: steroids in baseball are not bad; in fact they are very, very good.
Spurred in large part by Canseco's book, the U.S. House Government Reforms Committee subpoenaed some of the biggest names in baseball -- including Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Sammy Sosa -- to testify at a hearing on March 17. Allegations are flying that Barry Bonds was on steroids when he set the single-season mark of 73 home runs in 2001. The typical press reaction to this is one of disgust: words such as "tainted," "artificial," and "cheating" are common.
Not so fast, says Canseco. Steroids in baseball are good. Steroids help players get stronger, and enjoy longer careers. And it's not just baseball players who can benefit: steroids can help almost anyone live a longer, healthier life. His book is a wakeup call not just for baseball, or sports in general, but for all mankind. That's his view, anyway, but he makes a decent case for it, using himself as an example.
Canseco explains how he used steroids (which in this context really means a combination of steroids and human growth hormone) to transform himself from a skinny kid to the beefed up example of manhood that gazes soulfully at you from above a bulging bicep on the back cover of his book. He gained confidence as well, and there's no doubt his ego was pumped up: the book is full of references to how good-looking he is, with some attempts to balance those with descriptions of how ugly he was as a kid.
The book also has a B storyline, which is that the media discriminated against Canseco because he is Cuban, in comparison to the All-American image of Mark McGwire. The current media dismissal of Canseco's claims that McGwire took steroids only adds fuel to his conspiracy theory. If you read the book, you would be hard-pressed to doubt that McGwire took steroids on a regular basis. Canseco is not describing rumor or innuendo; he is talking about obtaining steroids and then personally sticking a needle containing them into McGwire's gluteus maximus, repeatedly, over a period of years when they were both with the Oakland A's, and then later injecting his Texas Ranger teammates Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, and Ivan Rodriguez.
A glance at the rookie cards of players like McGwire and Barry Bonds shows that those guys have put on a lot of muscle since they reached the majors (rookie cards are a good source of pictures since a hitter with no action photos from major-league games usually gets the basic pose of bent elbow, bat over shoulder). A Giambi minor-league card shows a lot of loose sleeve around the bicep. If Canseco is making all this up, he is doing an excellent job, and the fact that nobody is threatening to sue him over the book lends credence to the accuracy of his claims.
Remember, Canseco is not "accusing" anyone of using steroids, in the usual negative sense of an accusation. He is merely stating that people used them, and in fact applauds them, considering it a wise decision both medically and financially. Unlike almost every other media report, Canseco's book discusses steroid use in a factual way, absent the finger-pointing and hand-wringing. He presents steroid users not as cheaters, but as vanguards of a new era of athletic performance.
So how should a libertarian, "I'll believe it when I see it" cynic view the accomplishments of juiced-up baseball players? People are talking about asterisks on records, Hall of Fame bans, revoking MVP awards. Is this reasonable?
It's a fact that in sports where achievement is measured in objective terms, athletes today are much better than they used to be. Yet in sports where opinions are subjective, the older athletes are usually recalled as being better than their modern counterparts. In 1920, the year that Babe Ruth began hitting home runs at a previously unprecedented pace, the world record for the mile was 4 minutes, 12.6 seconds; today it is 3 minutes, 43.13 seconds. That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but if you picture the race as four laps of a quarter-mile oval, as it is usually run, the modern miler would finish almost half a lap ahead of his 1920 counterpart, an obviously dominating victory. Today a good college runner can run the mile faster than the 1920 world-record-holder. It would seem logical to assume that a good college hitter (a good college power hitter, anyway), if magically transported back to 1920, could hit more home runs than Babe Ruth.
Almost any baseball analyst today would laugh at that notion. I think they are wrong; I think a modern hitter, or pitcher, would in fact completely dominate their counterparts from early in the last century (even if you let the pitchers throw spitballs, which have now been banned from baseball, yet their erstwhile practitioners are considered crafty, not cheaters, and their statistics remain unblemished by any asterisks). It's documented that pitchers of yore could mostly take it easy out on the mound. In books like Christy Mathewson's Pitching in a Pinch, it was explained that pitchers could save their energy for the dozen or so times in a game that they really had to bear down.
I'm not saying that Babe Ruth or Christy Mathewson, if born today, could not become great major-league players. They obviously had natural talents that separated them from their peers. What they were lacking was all the knowledge that has been built up over the years. It's not just diet and conditioning -- it's all the miracles of modern life that keep us going. Even up to the 1970s, pitchers could never see video of themselves pitching (a huge advantage in correcting flaws in their pitching motion) unless they happened to pitch in the World Series. Jose Canseco had surgery three times for back injuries, any one of which presumably would have ended, or severely curtailed, his career 85 years ago, yet nobody accuses him of cheating for undergoing surgery.
One of the miracles of modern baseball medicine is "Tommy John surgery", named after the pitcher on whom it was first performed. It involves repairing the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow using a ligament from another part of the body. A pitcher who undergoes this surgery is not only avoiding a career-ending injury (the linked article above says that Sandy Koufax, who retired due to a self-described "dead arm," is thought to have had damaged UCL). The surgery usually leaves the elbow stronger than it was before. And more than 10% of major-league pitchers today have had this surgery. Are they cheating? Do they need an asterisk next to their records? There is no doubt that in the near future, athletes will undergo surgery not to repair injuries, but to prevent injuries that have not yet occurred. One day athletes with artificial limbs will be relegated to their own Olympics not because they perform worse than their non-bionic counterparts, but because they perform better.
The Olympics, of course, have taken a hard line on pharmaceuticals: popping a Sudafed before the big event will disqualify you. Nobody is suggesting that baseball go that far, but what is the dividing line between steroids and a lot of other substances that athletes put in their bodies? As Jim Bouton points out in his classic book Ball Four, baseball players have long been searching for that extra chemical edge. His diary of the 1969 Seattle Pilots describes rampant use of "greenies," or amphetamines. Bouton expounds further on this topic:
"I've tried a lot of other things through the years -- like butazolidin, which is what they give to horses. And D.M.S.O. -- dimethyl suloxide. Whitey Ford used that for a while. You rub it on with a plastic glove and as soon as it gets in your arm you can taste it in your mouth. It's not available anymore, though. Word is it can blind you. I've also taken shots -- novocain, cortisone, and xylocaine. Baseball players will take anything. If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins but might take five years off his life, he'd take it."
The issue with steroids, of course, is that they really work. They're not magic: you still have to work out, hard. But you do get stronger, and according to Canseco, even more important is the increased stamina, the ability to hit as well at the end of a 6-month season as you do at the beginning. Canseco also points out that baseball players used to be known for drinking and recreational drug use. But a steroid-user can't afford to tax their liver with alcohol and drugs, and they don't need to mess around with greenies, so Canseco feels that the arrival of steroids also ushered in a time of "clean living" among baseball players.
Canseco presents himself as "The Chemist," the one who did the experiments with steroids, learned how to use them properly, and then passed his knowledge on to others. He maintains that he taught McGwire in Oakland, then Palmeiro, Gonzalez and Rodriguez in Texas (and that McGwire taught Giambi), and when Canseco returned to Oakland, he taught Miguel Tejada. Canseco views the $72-million, 6-year contract that Tejada signed with Baltimore in December 2003 as proof that Tejada made a wise decision to increase his physical ability (although Canseco adds a disclaimer in this case: although he claims to have taught Tejada about steroids and saw him grow bigger and stronger, he did not actually witness Tejada using steroids).
Fans, of course, do love home runs. I saw a baseball game in St. Louis in 1999, and I have never seen an audience so clearly devoted to a single player. The only jersey you saw in the stands was Mark McGwire's number 25. The fans loved him, and the place came alive when he was batting. And when, mirabile dictu, he cranked a four-bagger over the left-field fence, the place went nuts, and I bet every fan felt they got their money's worth. What about those kids, the ones in the stands, when McGwire is revealed to have feet of clay?
Canseco has an answer: we shouldn't worry about those kids having fallen heroes, because in his eyes, they aren't fallen. Furthermore, he accuses baseball's owners and management of being complicit in trying to hush up steroid use, in order to give the fans what they wanted.
Juiced, as mentioned earlier, has problems. Canseco states that young athletes should not use steroids, but beyond a blanket disclaimer at the beginning of the book, does little to discourage teenagers from attempting to emulate the professionals. He gives an unsurprisingly sympathetic and glossy account of his various run-ins with the law: gun possession charge, a couple of domestic violence cases, a bar fight, three months in jail in 2003. He tosses around the names of various steroids, but for someone who claims to know so much about the subject, he gives little background on them: how they were discovered, the legal uses for which they are manufactured, how suppliers obtain them.
But as background reading for today's steroids controversy, and as a potential harbinger of the future of our species, it's worth a look.
You can purchase Juiced from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
News for jocks. Stuff that doesn't matter.
Uhm, yeah. Steroids are "biotech". Nice justification for submitting a baseball story review to /.
And here I thought that slashdot had crossed over into sports, and had an article on yesterday's congressional inquiry into baseball players "juicing " with steroids. I know this place gets political once in a while...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
"Juiced"
Wasn't that Nicole Brown Simpson's Biography title.
Sorry.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Maybe he'll get around to a steroid book someday. I'll have to wait until his "Roidless Joe" novel.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Why is this review on /.?
Canseco's nick name is "Can Strike Out"
I think that's fair for here, too.
There's a reason why I no longer follow baseball, do you think they can figure it out without first going through a lot of ass-covering and denial?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If so, this is the best thing ever. I could submit a review of an Alton Brown cookbook, because it at least has some geek appeal.
Er, um, excuse me. I have something to do.
(Rushes off to submit another worthless book review to /.)
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Like every other Slashdot reader, I LOVE sports!
Please post more sports stories.
this gets posted under the guise of 'biotech'?
this book was written by JOSE CANSECO!. The man is a moron. His knowledge of anything 'biotech' is right up there with my knowledge of the female psyche.
Baseball's that game with the ball and the stick, right? Or am I thinking of something else? Cricket?
(Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)
If you don't like drugs in baseball, stop watching it on TV, and paying for tickets until they come up with a policy that the fans demand. I hate the sport and only participate in its business to the extent the state demands (ridiculous taxpayer funding, etc). The government should have NO ROLE in this. They will but they shouldn't. That doesn't stop them from the myriad areas where they get involved with no business. Much like Terri Schiavo. There will always be some lobby somewhere for some government involvement everywhere. And government from the left and the right will honor this desire in different areas. This is precisely why our constitutionally-limited government is turning into mob rule democracy.
what the hell does womanlike writing mean ?
do you wonder why you don't have a girlfriend ?
What is this... "baseball" you speak of?
So the book sucks and has nothing to do with Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Technology. I'm confused, why is it being reviewed here?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
We have horses, so it's interesting to see two well-known horse meds mentioned (though not in Canseco's book):
I've tried a lot of other things through the years -- like butazolidin, which is what they give to horses. And D.M.S.O. -- dimethyl suloxide. Whitey Ford used that for a while. You rub it on with a plastic glove and as soon as it gets in your arm you can taste it in your mouth. It's not available anymore, though. Word is it can blind you.
Butazolidin is commonly known as Bute (byoot), and it's available in tablets (those work best if you grind them up and mix with molasses in the horse's feed) or as a paste you squirt into your horse's mouth (whether they like it or not).
DMSO is hardly "not available anymore." One informative article notes that "there is hardly a trainer's trunk that is without DMSO. It is used because it works."
But I wouldn't use it on my own horses -- it has a distinctive and somewhat nauseating odor. A fellow boarder at one stable used it on his mare, and it was hard to even walk past her stall. It's hard to see how something that smells that bad could be doing any good. If a ballplayer were using DMSO (either on its own or as a carrier for some other drug), the fans behind home plate would know as soon as he came up to bat.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
There's a basic logical blunder that the media is leaping over so they can short stroke this thing and make the Next Big Scandal. That is that roids only increase an athlete's ability to recover from hard workouts. They don't make you magically hit a 95 MPH fastball. If they did there would have been dozens of players hitting 75+ home runs. But everyone wants a scandal and the facts don't matter. Make them legal to us and leave it alone, or illegal to use and punish offenders. Case closed. Move on.
. . . or am I the only one who feels this way? Seriously, if there wasn't a baseball/steroid scandal, would this book even have come out? Who the hell would care?
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
I want to see the "Extra Special Olympics". Only people barred from competing in their sport for "performance enhancement": steroids, cocaine, adrenochrome, implants, unsportsmanlike conduct, battery, card counting. There's even an "exhibition event" for cheaters, where everyone wins a tin medal. I want to see footballs thrown 85 yards, followed by a ripped-off arm in a final gesture. I want to watch ESO scores and action make all these official leagues look like schoolyard charades. If we're going to pay these freaks millions to perform on TV, I want a legion of mutants and cyborgs making the greatest spectacle possible. All this "fair play" and "model citizen" crap is holding back sports. The Extra Special Olympics is long overdue on my Pay-Per-View
--
make install -not war
....well, I can't use them to mod this submission as -1 offtopic. Thanks for the story.
Disclaimer, slashdot is part of espn...er osdn network
Señor Canseco is just trying to make money. His baseball career turned to utter shit because of injuries (injuries he says he tried to avoid by taking steroids???) and he really has no other source of income.
But is he really lying? And is everything about this book bad (talking about how steroids helped him, how it helps other professionals = bad influence)? This book is the only reason a congressional hearing was called so they could force a clean up of america's (former) favorite pastime. Without this book we wouldn't have known that MLB was lying about (or at least hiding) the dirty secret of its steroid testing program (pay a fine instead of serving the time).
I applaude Jose for coming forward, I just think his method was a bit self-centered. Perhaps he should donate portions of the books profits to an anti-drug program for youth athletes to make up for it. It will certainly help clean up his image.
Am I the only one who thinks Congress's priorities are completely out of whack? Aren't there more important things they could be focusing on? Sheesh.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What in the world are the asses in congress doing judging anyone? They feel baseball players have a moral obligation to their fans? Maybe those pompus, egocentric numbnuts should take a look at themselves -- both Democrats and Republicans. People in glass houses....
Listen to the guy, read the tripe, it's simple, he's an idiot (rich one though) and i'm not sure why this is on /. either. Hell, it shouldn't have been in Congress either - they should be doing more important shit.
And we sports fans put up with similar lame justifications for submitting a story about the latest inane Star Trek/Wars spinoff/episode/whatever. So deal with it.
Regardless of the merits of the Congressional focus on baseball, it's a whole lot more newsworthy than the usual popular media related drivel on slashdot.
This has everything to do with tech, as in videogames. What is MLB any more than something that provides material to EA for one of its sports games? After reading this, you will not be surprised when they add the hypo needle icon to the setup for the players in the game.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
a recipe for making your own V8 or other disgusting drinks. What a rip!
Let's have a look ...
On his rookie season (1986):
We went to Detroit ... Walt Terrell gave me a good pitch to hit. I took a big swing and hit a home run to center field that ended up in the Tiger Stadium upper deck. They told me afterward that I had already hit a home run in every AL ballpark as a rookie.
-- p. 65
Jose Canseco
Jose Canseco back in his heyday with the A's.
Canseco didn't hit a home run in Detroit in 1986. Or in Kansas City, for that matter. So what "they" told him about hitting a homer in every ballpark as a rookie was wrong, even if you take into account his 1985 September callup.
According to Retrosheet, Jose went 4-for-8 (three singles and a triple) in three games against Terrell in 1986. That monster shot? Canseco is probably remembering Mark McGwire's first major league homer, a colossal 450-foot blast off Terrell in Detroit on August 25.
On Bret Boone:
I remember one day during 2001 spring training, when I was with the Anaheim Angels in a game against the Seattle Mariners, Bret Boone's new team. I hit a double, and when I got out there to second base I got a good look at Boone. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was enormous. "Oh my God," I said to him. "What have you been doing?"
"Shhh," he said. "Don't tell anybody." Whispers like that were a sign that you were part of the club ...
-- p. 264
This conversation almost certainly didn't take place.
The Mariners and Angels played five spring training games in 2001.
On Friday, March 2, the Angels beat the Mariners, 5-2. Jose went 0-for-2 as a DH, and did not reach base.
On Friday, March 9, the Mariners beat the Angels, 8-3. Canseco struck out twice in two at-bats. Boone did not play.
On Sunday, March 11, the Angels beat the Mariners, 5-4. Neither Canseco or Boone played.
On Monday, March 12, a Mariners split-squad beat an Angels split squad, 4-2. Canseco did not play.
On Tuesday, March 27, the Mariners beat the Angels, 15-2. Canseco did not play.
In spring training 2001, Canseco hit only one double in 39 at bats. He did not steal a base.
On the 2000 Subway Series against the Mets:
In Game 6, though, I was sitting there on the Yankee bench on a cold night at Shea Stadium ... But all of a sudden, Torre called down to me. "Canseco, you're hitting." ...
I went up to the plate to pinch-hit for David Cone, and it was bad. Three strikes and you're out.
-- pp. 232-233
There was no Game 6 of the 2000 World Series!
????
Anyone who knows about what steroids do to
the body can take one look at Sosa and tell
he has used and it probably using right now.
But yet, even in the context of congressional
review...still he lies....
So sad that many athletes and bodybuilders
never learn that they cannot follow
the workout regimens of a typical
steroid user and expect to make progress.
Thanks god for the sanity of books
like Brawn...
Bush mentioned baseball and steroids in his State of the Union a couple of years ago. At the time I thought "Huh, thats seems incongruous." but now I'm starting to see why he did it.
This baseball steroid issue is a great smokescreen to distract the media from several much more important stories:
1) Jeff Gannon - gay prostitute/republican media plant gains access to Whitehouse without security clearance, the second gay hooker security controversy in as many Bush administrations
2) Propaganda - Whitehouse pre-packaging new stories for anonymous airing, secretly hiring pundits like Armstrong Williams to advocate policy, coordinating political coverage with Roger Ailes at Fox news
3) Iraqi Corruption - Who walked off with $9,000,000,000 in cash?
4) Political Appointments - Karen Hughes (no experience) at State, Bolton to the U.N., Wolfowitz to the Wold Bank
The whole world is talking about steroids in baseball and it's hardly an important issue. That W. staked out this political cover years ago is a testament to Karl Rove's genius.
evil bastard,
-dameron
with all the talk of this, you have to consider the source. Now while Jose does want to sell books (and this controversey has done that) would he really lie about SO MUCH that he claims has happened? I mean really, one or two it'd be hard to believe, but with all the allegations, I find it hard that no one is buying it. Heck, even 'big mac' didn't deny anything. The cat is outta the bag IMO. bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Not only that, George W. Bush put a boot sector error in my hard disk lask week. Is there nothing that diabolical genius Rove won't stop at in order to distract me from the "Ignored Important Issues" (TM) ?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Baseball players will take anything. If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins but might take five years off his life, he'd take it."
I had to ask myself, if I could take a pill that increased my IQ by 60 points, but might take five years off my life would I take it?Yep.
"think of it as evolution in action"
yeah. something REAL like.... Star Trek! Yeah, you tell em!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
this place is really faggoting out, i'm heading over to k5
Like micro managing Terri Schiavo's Life? Sounds like they've already moved on to bigger priorities.
Mark Maguire shooting steroids shouldn't cause any more or less of a stir than Jack Nicholson snorting a big ol' bag of coke.
Are they both entertaining to the people who like sports/Nicholson movies? Yes. Okay, then there's no negative impact on the industry.
Sure, there's the "role model" factor. But in that case, players taking steroids is EXACTLY as bad as actresses who starve themselves. Young people attempting to emulate both will end up hurting themselves.
Also, the "role model" factor goes out beyond the entertainment industry, to any public figure. We've had two Presidents in a row who have used drugs. We've had two Presidents in a row who dodged the draft. I really doubt the feds would really want to get deeply involved enough in this issue to have to consider what that might be telling kids.
People think athletes are something different than entertainers. They're not. They might sweat more, but they deliver the same value to society.
Human Growth Hormone has implications not just for athletic performance but cognitive performance-as does for that matter testosterone. I'm personally hesitant about the athletic use of steroids because you wind up with men with far higher levels of testosterone than ever occur in nature. Plus steroids are an artificial substance with little real track record-I don't think it is worth the risk except to handle a risky medical condition. One prominent doctor using Human Growth, testosterone, DHEA and Melotonin in his practice is Dr Elmer Cranton as are a hefty portion of docs in the American Academy for the Advancement of Medicine.
It's not like Fridays are slow news days or anything. Steroids is now biotech?
Slashdot needs open voting on the submission queue.
It's one thing to use them to treat real medical problems, after having weighed the risks and benefits. Using them to outperform the non-juiced competition is dishonest, unethical and stupid. I don't care if J. Random Ballplayer smokes dope or snorts cocaine. I do care if he uses drugs that artificially enhance his performance and make it difficult or impossible for the "all natural" player to play at a competitive level.
If it was up to me, I'd expel any player that was a chronic user of these drugs for performance enhancement.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...when I could post a rant about Microsoft's evil monopoly, or a comment on the latest mouse technology, or even uncover a kick-ass algorithm, and it would be completely off-topic.
That being said, sports and l33tness aren't exclusive groups. However, hockey is more my taste :P
Neither did, when you look into it. Clinton was not actually dodge, and Bush served (albeit what many would call poorly) in a section of the United States military during the time. Partisan enemies of both have trumped up false accusations.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Baseball? Is that the game where there are all these guys with beer guts standing around scratching their balls all the time?
If I was on steroids, I'd be careful with that scratching.
I had heard that OJ was in talks of creating a knock-off of "Punked" and the title was gonna be "Juiced".
Can you imagine the unsuspecting celeb's face when OJ jumps out from behind the bushes(in black gear)?
I seriously hope this show is gets picked up.
If you think
Steroids have helped me become a better programmer.
wow, best reply to a misread sentence ever.
Yeah, hockey is cool. The college playoffs have been exciting. You know, someone out to try making big national professional leagues to play ice hockey. It might go somewhere.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Dr. Who was on steroids?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I agree with one thing about this book - Steroids are effective and have been unfairly deamonized by the media.
I consider them to be similar to elective surgery (i.e. cosmetic surgery or elective joint surgery) - both have non-trivial risks that must be understood and managed. Both also have substantial benefits, including better body image, more energy, and improved athletic performance.
In addition, the risks of steriod use have been massively overblown by the media - for example, liver damage does not occur with injectable steroids, only (7-alpha alkylated) orals, which are specially forumlated to avoid being broken down by the digestive process - this in turn makes them hard on the liver. Yes, you can get gynecomastia (enlarged breasts in men), but this can be prevented entirely. Some "journalists" even cite HIV from dirty needles as a steriod risk!
If you research the subject, you will find out (as I did) that the US government made anabolic/androgenic steriods controlled substances not because of their health risks, but because of fear of cheating in sports.
I don't necessarily agree that steriods should be allowed in athletic competition - because it would lead many players to take them even if they didn't want to, just to "keep up". But I don't think that this is valid reason to keep their benefits from the rest of the public.
I've always just assumed that any given professional athlete is on roids. I imagine there are a handful of 'natural' athletes out there (especially in baseball), but come on. Look at the freakshow that is the NFL. What percent of NFL players DON'T use roids? 300+ pound men do not run a sub 5 second 40 yard dash naturally.
/.? Does this mean I can submit a product review of the new garden hoe I just bought?
BTW - what the hell is this doing on
Sweet informative mod.
It's not like there's more important issues to delve into currently.
I'm sure Eliott Spitzer has time to add investigations on the abuses carried out in the name of "Teh war on tERROR" along with Tycho, Worldcom, Enron and George II's plan to destroy social security and medicare (actually, that's his brother -- so far).
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Check Canseco's account. There's ass-UNcovering and denial.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's been done, and it was called the XFL...
Here's why steroids suck:
Once you walk down the path of comparing these people, not on the basis of what they can do with their bodies, but how augmented their bodies are, we begin to dehumanize the concept of sports, and as long as you're paying $1m for "the best", you'll get a constant lineup of folks who will subject themselves to ANYTHING in order to be the best.
I don't want to watch several hours of the finest machines money can buy slugging balls out of the park. I want to watch human beings doing what they're good at. In order to achieve that, baseball should start testing EVERYONE before every game, and remove ANYONE who fails two tests in a row for the rest of the season. They don't do this. There's a long and complicated process of testing and re-testing where the first n failures aren't even reported! The system ENCOURAGES this kind of thing.
I also think that serious injuries should get you removed for the rest of the season. It sucks, but I'd rather watch a game where everyone's holding back just a bit, because they know that getting seriously hurt means they won't be able to play. I want these guys to stay healthy, not play one great season and never see them again (other sports suffer from this more than Baseball, but still).
I live in Boston. I want to feel good about the Red Sox winning the series, but I'm constantly reminded that they didn't do it until steroid use became the norm (hey, this is Boston: the biotech capital of the eastern US).
[sniff] You had me at hello. [sniff]
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
All the MLB records set since the last strike should be tossed out the window.
Hopefully they won't ignore other drugs, like HGH, in their crackdown on steroids.
As to why this matters - it's having a trickle-down impact into colleges and even high schools. Cracking down at the professional help should at least slow this absurd trend.
Is it anything like pong?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Just had a flashback of Phil Hartman's "All-Drug Olympics" sketch from SNL (transcript). Anyone got the video?
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
In his Congressional testimony, Canseco changed his mind -- now says steroids are bad, not good.
BTW, why do Slashdot reviews always have to suck so bad. Why do they always have to feature nonsense sentences like,
"Canseco, for those who spent the last*15 years* hidden under a rock, played major league baseball for *17 seasons*"
Is it some sort of rule? Slashdot won't accept book reviews unless they have some arbitrary number of giberish sentences?
From the review:
It would seem logical to assume that a good college hitter (a good college power hitter, anyway), if magically transported back to 1920, could hit more home runs than Babe Ruth.
Almost any baseball analyst today would laugh at that notion.
Did you actually check with any? Every time I've heard this discussed, people point out that one of today's hitters playing against a 1920s team would hit an absurd number of homers.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Thanks for your opinion, but what I think people REALLY want to know is: What would Roland Piquepaille think about this???
They prolly need bigger fans for those. Hehe
This reminds me that I need my daily fill of SportsDot.Org
What's with all the anti-baseball comments? Out of any sport, baseball is probably the nerdiest one, since it is ALL about statistics. Who to put in as pitcher, what pitches to throw, who to walk, how to arrange your batting lineup, etc etc. It's certainly not a sport with a lot of action in it. The real strategy involves probability and math, I would say even more so than a game like poker. You can see why the athletes will do anything, including steroids, just to raise their stats by a few points...
Congress threatened contempt of congress to baseball
players but declined to charge the world's most dangerous and inarticulate "leader" and his gang of military-industrial fascists.
Thanks for nothing,
Kilgore Trout, CEO
Juiced is not a great book. The End.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
This is a SPORTS STORY! What's it doing on /.?
Man, the slippery slope is getting steeper and steeper!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I mean, I still have nightmares about dodgeball in gym class... Is no place a safe refuge from the terror of sports?
Fuck baseball
I am a die hard Cards fan, and will be till the day I die.
I believe Canseco is telling the truth for the most part. As in steriods, HGH, AMP's and other drugs are a problem. He's probably exaggerating a bit on the whom's and when's, but thats not really the point. There is a problem with baseball and it needs fixed.
I disagree that a modern player will dominate a player from the 20's and such. There have been a few MAJOR changes that everyone seems to forget.
1 - Batting Helmets
2 - Arm Protection
3 - Mound Lowered
4 - Smaller Parks (debatable)
Remove all the armor and raise the mound back up, how many home runs does a modern slugger hit? Put armor on Musial, Hornsby, Ruth, Williams, or any of the old greats and drop them in a modern park with a lowered mound, and they will do better.
Most likely a great from the past will be a great in modern times, and vice-versa. Bob Gibson would have owned Ruth and such. He put fear into guys WITH batting helmets.
Baseball needs to be cleaned up.
For those who don't know the game, it's really a lot like cricket in many ways.
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, anyone?
I don't think I've despised any other main character as much as that sniveling spoiled ass, Pip.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Boobies and weeners, boobies and weeners, OH MY!
This is especially important because some docs are thinking HGH/bioidentical hormonal supplementation just may have life extension possibilities. Whether life extension technology takes off-and how it is accepted is an important question. It would be a shame IMHO if baseball players were prevented from using the best available medical technology for purposes of life extension. There is a fine line between experimental life extension treatments and risky practices.
Why read this book review? The book sounds stupid and has a dull cover. Isn't that enough to determine the quality of the book?
Kris Ennay - http://www.nigmanet.net/
This was actually a very good review of the book. I don't think of this as being a sports issue as much as a political one. If it were just a sports issue, Congress wouldn't be trying to intervene.
Unfortunately, people think of Canseco in the same breath as Pete Rose and John Rocker - people who have destroyed their reputations on bad judgement. This book, as the reviewer describes, could prove amongst the most important baseball books ever.
If this book really breaks open the steroid concerns, and better bans are put in place, then Canseco has done a huge service to the game - unlike Rose or Rocker. It's important to point out that Ken Caminiti was the person to really start getting people excited and concerned about what was going on with steroids in the game. Ken died late last year of a heart attack.
From the review, I probably won't buy this book because it's too much biography, not enough substance - Jose Canseco did thrive during the time of Vanilla Ice, and his career went pretty much the same way after 1991.
Thanks for the review. It's surprisingly appropriate, and definitely interesting.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And how about them Toronto Maple Leafs eh?
If you have any voip services (like vonage) they can be configured to foward all calls to another number. Like when you go on vacation have it forwarded to your cell. Pretty hot. If you have it.
I suppose that's American for "those who don't live in baseball-speaking countries"?
I mean, there are more countries that play cricket at the top level than baseball. And an order of magnitude more people who follow it.
I mean, not only is this Slashdot, but Baseball is the sport where the most exiting thing that can happen is absoltely nothing, and this is what they call a perfect game!
Feel free to regeek this topic with some good nekkid Madonna hot grits action.
Thanks,
Apparently the last non-jock on Slashdot who only comes here for the cool pr0n links
by the way...
Q: What did the Judge say to Jose Canseco after finding him guilty of steroid use?
A: All your "BASES" are belong to us! Do you get i-- ugh!! (looks down to see an arrow sticking out of his chest with "Slashdot Moderator" stenciled on the side)
Isn't that nethack?
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Steroids are passe -- the new trend will be gene doping...
Imagine it's the summer Olympics, 2008, and athletes are shattering records like never before. Tests for traditional performance-enhancing drugs like testosterone and anabolic steroids are coming up negative, yet something about the athletes is different: their genes have been altered to increase strength and endurance.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
It's a fucking game. Start a neighborhood league if you want sportsmanship and integrity and stop worshipping MLB like some teeny-bopper that throws her panties on the stage at a concert.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
y'know
It amazes me how blind congress and the public are to what goes on in sports. During the hearing the other day, I heard congressmen actually praise cycling and football for being clean sports.
There are so many performance enhancing drugs out there that they can not or do not test for. People are naive if they think these things aren't being used. All steroid testing does is force people to use newer and more sophisticated methods of doping.
Just off the top of my head I can think of numerous performance enhancers that were not mentioned in congress's long list of compounds. Interleukin 15, erythropoetin variants, PGF2a, anti-myostatin antibodies, oxyglobin (bovine haemoblobin that doesn't require a erythrocyte carrier), just to name a few.
Drugs are a part of sports, accept it.
That's 10 "Test-playing" countries (really only 8 good teams though), in case you were wondering.
And an order of magnitude more people who follow it.
And that's because one of them is India with a billion people.
Look... I like Slashdot. I think dupes have a certain quaint charm. I like the discussion and am not overconcerned about "Slashbots" or "group think". I believe that open source is morally superior to closed. Heck, I have journal here and 2000 posts under my belt. Slashdot's a good place.
... BUT DO NOT EVER POST A STORY ABOUT SPORTS AGAIN, YOU MOTHERFUCKING FUCKERS. I GO TO SLASHDOT TO GET AWAY FROM THIS BULLSHIT. OKAY? READ MY LIPS. NO MORE SPORTS. NO SPORTS. OR SOMEONE DIES.
Gah.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
He belts home runs sufficiently far and in record-breaking numbers. He steals bases like mad. And he's very small in stature (by MLB standards). Has it ever been suggested that Ichiro is juiced? And if not, doesn't his approach make the juicing approach look rather, well, dumb? Extending this, if Ichiro can demonstrate amazing prowess as an unjuiced base (beating 99% of juiced players), imagine what juicing could do.
I guess I'm suggesting that a strong, juiceless foundation is enough for record-breaking professional baseball. But then, maybe the little guy is juiced up. I don't know.
I've got two observations to make here. Firstly, this article's claim to belong on Slashdot is tenuous at best. If simply using pharmaceuticals makes this a biotech story, we are in for an awful lot of biotech stories, mostly involving Courtney Love.
And secondly, despite that, this is one of the best-written articles to appear on Slashdot in some time. It smacks of actual journalism, which isn't something that happens often here.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
There are many nootropics (smart drugs) available that range from stuff you can buy at a super market, at GNC, to stuff you can buy only from mail order, to gray market, to prescription drugs, etc. There a lot of fun and can really improve one's life without side effects. However, dangerous illegal drugs and prescription drugs with lots of nasty side effects are far better promoted and much more expensive.
He was good, all right, but he's no Clem Johnson. And Johnson played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory!
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Instead of going on a paranoid rant, you could have pointed out the GWB was the owner of the Texas Rangers, a team Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmiero played for.
Asswipe.
I dont know how this got by the moderators, but this story is nothing but pollution of /. Just like the holocaust - NEVER AGAIN!!!
You're absolutely right about everything up until the reason they were banned. Anabolic steroids were criminalized not because of fear of cheating in sports, but because of fear of use by children. If professional athletes use steroids, then college players start using to have a better chance of going pro, and then high school players start to have a better chance of getting a college scholarship. The side effects of steroids are much more severe in boys who are not fully developed and in women, which is the primary reason they were banned. Of course making steroids a scheduled substance just means that those who are going to use them have to get their drugs from the black market instead, which means that they come from some guy at the gym instead of a doctor and may not have the quality controls that the FDA would be able to provide if they were legal to obtain from your doctor. The guy at your gym may or not have issues with distributing them to minors, either. It sounds great for members of congress to say they are protecting the children, but there is little to back up their words. What they are doing discussing the issue in congress now when they are already illegal to possess in the US under federal law, I don't know.
-- Adam
Cripes. Did Canseco get it wrong, or just the reviewer? Here's a link. It's used a solvent for a lot of chemical applications and it's used in NMR almost to exclusion as the solvent of choice. It's considered kind of dangerous because of the rapid uptake through the skin--spy novels use it a lot as a delivery mechanism for nefarious compounds. I remember when working with concentrated HF we had to have a DMSO cream nearby to flood the bloodstream with calcium ions to keep HF from killing us if exposed. Good times.
blarg.
Signed by George W. Bush as owner of the Texas Rangers, so when they were grilling some baseball executive (I forget who) yesterday asking him why he didn't intercede with Canseco's steroid use I almost puked.
They asked for a "zero tolerance" policy for baseball because steroids are illegal, but they change the House ethics rules so DeLay can stay in power even 'though he's going to be indicted in Texas, and there's certainly now "one strike" rule for getting kicked out of the government for breaking the law.
-dameron
Baseball and almost all other sports are about competition. Baseball players are not producing anything of which the actual quantity matters. Canesco claims that steroids are good for baseball because players get stronger, run faster and have longer careers with it. But if everybody does it, everybody is back to square one. There is no true improvement for the sport.
Same thing about him gaining confidence by using steroids and growth hormone to grow from skinny to grotesque. This is again no general solution for those who lack confidence because of their bodies. Increased use of steroids and growth hormone will simply shift the perception of what is skinny.
Sorry, this is a big deal
Take the Boone conversation that could physically never have happened. That story implicates Boone as a criminal, one who used an illegal (under US law) substance. Since that story is very obviously a lie... ie: phyically impossible that it happened... then Canseco's implication of Boone as a steroid junky is a lie ie: based on evidence that is not real.
Thus, Canseco lied when he implicated Boone as a criminal. Thus, Boone should be able to sue his chemically enhanced butt for millions in a basic libel suit. And sue the publisher as well.
Accusing someone of being a criminal based on evidence that does not exist is not a small matter. It could be criminal, IANAL.
Now, use your head... if Canseco made up stories that we can prove to be false, what are the odds that he is telling the truth about the stuff that we have no proof of? If he making libelous claims that can be proven false, what are the odds he is telling the truth in the libelous claism that are not verifiable? Seriously... if this guy offered to sell you a used car, would you buy it without driving it first? And yet you believe him when he makes criminal claims against peole with no known record (Palmeiro)?
Here's hoping Palmeiro does file that libel suit he is considering and bleeds this stupid jerk out of every last dime that book made him.
This makes it sound like there are no steroids or growth hormones in the Olympics. I'd bet over 90% of olympic medal winners in the last 20 years have used illegal substances. The problem is that the testers are always a few steps (years) behind the users.
Is this just a bigger story because this is the first sign of people cheating by physically altering their bodies?
is that FOX should broadcast the olympics?
If Barry Bonds or Jason Giambi or whoever wants to take steriods, risking hairy backs, tiny nuts, and swollen heads for the sake of their craft, let them! So much the better. Who are they harming?
... it's a pretty good chance that if you have Tommy John surgery and can make it back to the bigs, you're going to have a lot more zip on your pitches. How long before pitchers start having this surgery voluntarily?
Does it bother you that your kid takes steroids because they think a professional athlete is? That's a bigger indictment on your inability to instill your values in your kid.
And just so no one thinks this is the only problem in baseball
See that? It's the big picture.
Haven't lost a game all year, those Leafs!
Dang, beat me to the punch.
This steroid controversy is nothing but a distraction. The federal prosecutor in this case could investigate anything he wants to. There are huge looming issues with MediCaid, America's waning financial strength, corruption in the Iraqi occupation with poor pentagon accountability, war crimes committed. But what does he investigate? A poorly hidden scandal of athlete performance enhancement.
But what of the children?
Well, now the children know more, don't they? I don't see any protection of Children from sugary cereal, flus, or an epidemic of asthma -- So please, spare me this; "concern for the children" bit. It's a little old.
It also seems that maybe steroids aren't bad, just that their illegal nature has meant that we don't know how to use them. I'm just going by the fact that a lot of these steroid using athletes could, like bench press me, and seem to be healthier than my un-steroid infested body, that is subjected to indoor office air. Who's getting excited about that?
I thought the original post had a lot of good insight. We can't have knee-jerk reactions to; "enhancing people is bad." The logic and moral insight in such statements is thin and not very interesting. And most of the people who are most upset would be the first to use the advantages of emerging science if it save their own ass.
I think people will enhance in every way what they were born with, if it gives them an advantage and doesn't have too many downsides. When you are competing, the pressure is too great to improve. If someone is doing something you are not, they have a better chance at winning. And the one thing I've noticed is that this culture cares about winning more than any other value. The shock and dismay of people at torture to get an advantage in war, at steroids to get an advantage in sports, to sex to get an advantage on the insipid "The Apprentice" is about as deep as saying; "God bless you." when someone sneezes. It has no more thought or feeling than that, and they are both something we say so that we can feel like; "good people." Most people don't know the tradition stems from the belief that spirits entered and exited the body through the breathe. The "Bless you", was to protect someone from actually losing their soul. Note, that this also means that most Christians at that time, thought that the first breathe was when the soul entered the body. So, as a form of birth control, smothering a newborn before its first breathe was little talked about but generally accepted. Abortions were usually only done to preserve the appearance of propriety in a lady--manual labor and having a lot of kids was something people actually wanted in those days. I just think history is chock full of examples of "moral outrage" becoming part of the everyday life. It's amazing to think that a woman would at one time be put in a stockade for uncovering her hair in public. How obvious is drug use a sin against God? I reject outright simple statements that these answers are obvious. Obvious moral insights have changed more than fashions over the years.
I'm not promoting drug use--I myself have never used an illegal drug. But I question everything, and I sincerely question the point of making drugs illegal. We should inform people and do what we can to protect them from unintended harm. But everyone should own their own life. My God thinks that is obvious. What I don't think is obvious is whether to allow performance enhancing drugs in sports. Is stopping it worse than allowing it? If you try to stop it, does it just benefit people who know how to hide the drug use? And if you succeed, won't the fans just get bored of the sport, and have moral outrage over performance enhancing surgery in rugby?
When it comes to the issue of "enhancing" what God gave us, I look at my own life; It took me 35 years of life to actually become really productive--not that I'm lazy, I just have higher standards and a non-linear life, others, might have been satisfied at 20, just defeating
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Nice justification for submitting a baseball story review to /.
I have zero interest in sports. Yet I find this item interesting.
For starters, it's the first indication I've seen on a public forum that _Juiced_ took a political position against drug bans. And that it had already raised some of the issues that I've been meaning to raise since the flap started - but the media ignored them.
Anti-drug laws block, not just "harmful" drugs, but beneficial ones. Drugs that treat or cure a breakdown of ordinary health are permitted - after ENORMOUSLY expensive hoops are jumped through. But drugs that enhance life are not.
Suppose drugs are developed to retard or reverse aging, enhance strength, or boost intelligence, without non-existant detrimental side-effects (or side-effects so benign that their use is a massive net gain)? Under the current regulatory regime those drugs could not be used for such a purpose, and couldn't be marketed AT ALL unless they had some OTHER use. It is "natural" to be dumber and weaker than we COULD be, to become infirm, pain-ridden, and then dead after only a few decades. So biotech need not attempt to enhance life or prolong vigor - governments won't approve it and investors won't be able to make a return.
Even with "harmful" drugs most of the harm is not from the drug, but side-effects from the bans. Availability only from ciminal sources (who sell impure product, try to move users to more lucrative - and more harmful - products, and settle disputes with violence), artificially inflated prices (leading to massive theft to support drug dosages that could be paid for by pocket change wtih legal products), etc.
Where does the constitution even authorize the government to limit what people can put in their bodies? (They had to pass a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to authorize this for alcohol. Why not other "substances"?) Where does it authorize the government to penalize doctors who prescribe "too many painkillers"? To ban drugs that MIGHT enhance and/or prolong life? Or to ban drugs that just make it more fun?
The courts have found an argument that blocks the government from interfering in the doctor-patient relationship when the "treatment" is an abortion. Why does the same argument not apply to prescribing painkillers? Strength-enhancers? Mood boosters?
This is NOT just a "baseball story". It is a biotech story. And a political story. It is "stuff that matters".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
should we even care given that Major League Baseball is so closed-source? I mean, have you ever listened to their disclaimers? You'd swear Canseco himself would come beat you into a frothy pulp if you disseminated one iota of MLB information. I'd rather pay attention to the pick-up games of local softball which are FOSB (Free Open Source Baseball) and as such have no restrictions on anything.
(Tongue planted firmly in cheek, here's the pitch...)
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
And how do you associate WORKmanlike with WOMANlike? Maybe you should read what you quote.
You can see some of this in portions of northern Iraq that are peaceful enough for US forces to interact with civilians without full body armor... they're teaching the kids baseball.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think every baseball record for the last 10 years should be thrown out with the exception of Cal Ripken who has the record for showing up for the most consecutive games. It didn't take drugs to accomplish that.
01/20/09
I know the story's offtopic and all, but jeez, take it easy with the 'roids, alright?
My draft comes up April 10th. Time to look over my rosters. And time to write a Python program to determine how much a player is worth in my league.
An athlete that forgoes the use of steroids is a true athlete- he/she is relying on natural skill, strength, what have you - those qualities that MAKE an athlete. The use of steroids is notthing more than a form of corruption - way to get ahead without acutally being ahead. Unfornuately, wherever there is big money at stake, various forms of corruption almost always take hold.
Both are triumphalist control freaks, products of American Puritanism. The former are hobbyists who regularly demand exceptional treatment for their game. Baseball must be exempt from antitrust laws because--well, just because. No other nation is invited to compete, and yet their championship is the "world" series. And when it comes time to build stadiums for this sport of millionaires? Here, in Minnesota, as elsewhere, the public is routinely badgered and bullied into lavishing welfare on some of the richest members of society, purely for the reason that it will enrich other affluent members of society (bar, restaurant and parking lot owners) while creating peonage jobs for the young and the underemployed. To our credit, my city has consistently told these special interests to piss off.
Baseball purists have a special gripe against steroids, which they believe are spoiling the record books. (On NPR's Talk of the Nation the other day, you could hear one steroid foe cry that he longs for a future in which he can tell his son that home run records are "real.") Like those who promote and profit from our expensive, wasteful, violent, and crime-producing drug prohibition, they draw a line in the sand between what they imagine to be authenticity and its opposite--purity and its bane. It's a species of silliness, as hypocritical in a sport that uses high-tech bats and shortened outfields as in a society pickled in alcohol.
Much of America is either drunk in the evening or zoning on the SSRIs that by day allow them to survive their cubicle or Wal-Mart-defined existence. We are a druggie nation, sloshed, soothed, uplifted, downturned, turned on, freaked out, fucked up. And that's just those doing the legal drugs. If we were a free society--like the one that you hear a lot about whenever we invade another--then we would not pretend that it matters whether baseball players pop steroids or your next door neighbor smokes pot. But the Puritan ideal drives us onward in the sweatshop of our godliness. Jesus wants your urine to be clean, you know, and He'll greet you outside the Pearly Gates with a little cup, just like His emissary on earth, your Human Resources Piss Taster. So be ready.
Besides the obvious angle that steroids makes a sluggish game more exciting, there's a good public policy case for their use in baseball. Performance-enhancers, according to free market logic, should improve the market value of players. More homers, more dough. And judging from salaries, it seems to work. Great: give them to each and everyone on the team, and the poor pill freaks may finally be able to afford to build their own stadiums.
He also looked much, much smaller now than then (when he was playing)
Aside: take that than/then slashdot nazis!
So? Baseball is a competition. This guy makes it sound like they are actually doing something where the quantity of work matters by itself.
If everybody uses steroids, then everybody will run faster. So how are steroids going to improve the sport as a whole?
Same thing about him gaining confidence by using steroids and growth hormone to grow from skinny to grotesque. If everybody does it, we're back to square one.
Speed me right into the 90s where things really get kickin, cuz of the chicks.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Same goes for senior citizens, diabetics, cancer patients and caffeine-addicted, slashdot-reading geeks.
YOU may be a GEEK, but I am a NERD!
relying on natural skill, strength, what have you - those qualities that MAKE an athlete.
Really? So it's just natural skill and strenght that make an athlete? So if we just love them for some random genetic predisposition to run and jump it's OK, but if someone doesn't have those magic genetics it's corruption when they attempt to improve their skills?
If anything, I think it's the opposite of corruption. I think it brings opportunity to kids, like Canseco (at least according to his book), who may not have had the natural ability to be a professional but had the desire and will to succeed.
Find coupons in Greeley
Given this completely cool intro to the review, it proceeds to scroll for several pages of sheer drudgery and other crap I'm not interested in reading.
Here's a hint, if your review opens like this, I don't want to read the rest of your review or the book.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
the Glowing Fox Puck
:P
it has a comet tail too!
actually *had* (RIP)
this sig has been discontinued.
Why is a segment of the news devoted to sports? It's just a hobby people have like any other hobby. I'd like to see an entire segment of the new devoted to my hobbies: brewing, music, euro-gaming.
I'm so sick of people confusing sports with things that really matter.
OK, time for my medicine now.
"Is he an idiot?
... i'm talking about telling stories like they are, not how you imagine them to be ... unless you are writing fiction.
Seems to have gotten what he wants out of life."
To "write" a book with glaring errors in very simple timeline work and proclaim to "know all" is idiotic at best. And sure, he got what he wanted out of life, if that is to fuck up what a lot of people thought of him and his integrity. And no, i'm not talking about the 'roids
Since it seems common for pros to take enhancement drugs then make it safe for all teams to take it.
Right now it is a cat and mouse game. The league doctors could control the drugs and administer them safely to those who wanted them. That way we know how many on them are on the stuff.
That would make it safer for the players and for the individuals betting on the game.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
How are you going to like it when you want to inject some longevity nanobots or install cybereyes, and you're not allowed to, because the government has declared you're not allowed to modify your body as you please?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Many of us hang out at baseballthinkfactory.org. However, most people who post there have played a lot of ball; I would say the average proficiency is high school, but I don't know for sure. Certainly, we're not very good (compared with the players we follow, at least), but it's probably unfair to say we've never picked up a bat or ball our entire lives. Certainly a much more athletic crowd than the one here, judging by the reaction that this and any other athletic-related thread gets.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
I mean, there are many things you can be nerdy about. My roommate knows so much about football, watchs football, plays videogame football. He drones on and on about football. He is a football nerd. Not an fanatic, 'cause he never /PLAYS/ football but just a nerd. And this book is definatly something to be read by football nerds.
Maxim D. P.
And this long long speach comes to one point... That-- OOOO! QUARTER!
In Soviet Russia, baseball hits YOU!
THanks Man, thats some great info...
The answer to the question of how good Canseco was is "very, very good."
.250. The only reason anyone knows who Canseco is is because he hit home runs and apparently did that with the help of steriods.
BS. Canseco was a mediocre player at best. His career batting average is barely above
He wasn't a baseball player, he was a batter. And this isn't a knock on the DH rule in the American League, it's a knock on Canseco. One time when he was playing outfield a fly ball bounced off his head and out of the park for a homerun and it should've been easily caught. Being an all-star is about popularity and hitting homeruns will make you popular, but where's his batting title? Where's his gold glove?
The hall of fame is for players who changed the game not cheapened it with one-sided play and CHEATING. Didn't his parents teach him that no one likes a cheater?
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I come here so I don't have to read about sports and stuff that I am not interested in.
I juiced about 15-10 years ago, purely for aesthetic reasons. I did crazy stuff like 36 month cycles, mixed proper "juice" with halotestin (god bless HT - that stuff brought me closer to God that anything else I've ever experienced. Not so much closer as convinced me I was...) and just plain abused the drugs. None of this was illegal at the time (in the UK) but if I'd been an athlete it would have barred me from competition. For a while. Like most things, concern about steroids is misplaced. You may be able to point me to a relative who went berserk, killed his girlfriend and kid before killing himself, but millions more die from automobile accidents. Nobody wants to ban the car. Control of drugs, of any kind, is pointless. I appreciate that controlling who is exposed to drugs is important but trying to stop people doing what they want with their bodies is pointless, or more accurately it only serves to empower those who want to control the access to these drugs. Or, indeed, access to anything. These days I'm a comfortable 220 pounds, carrying a little extra weight, but feeling far better than I did when I was 18, 6 foot tall and weighed 140 pounds, dripping wet. And, for the record, I stopped using anabolic steroids because I got into a couple of fights at work. Sweet sweet HT. Woke me up with a hard-on, convinced I was God just ready to fuck the world. When my Greek pharmacist in Thessaloniki (maybe - been a while - I went inter-rainling there in the 90s and apparently they made wine there too) got rattled by EU moves to control roids I stopped using them . By then I'd gotten to where I wanted to so it wasn't a wrench.
We're quivering nerd. Jocks rule Adams now.
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
...a daemon for juice.
First, your suggestion is fallacious, because it presumes that only less-abled athletes use steroids - as you well know, nothing could be further from the truth. Second, I fail to see the logic in using steroids as a way to "level the playing field." This sounds as misguided as giving every kid a trophy just because they happened to be on the team- whether or not the team actually did anything worthwhile. Some people are athletes, some aren't. That's life.
I won't even get INTO the nauseating mentality that has become part of mainstream America: "Got a problem? Pop a pill!"
Frankly, I don't give a shit about baseball, but it's food for thought. Consider this:
What if there was an illegal supplement you could take that would dramatically increase your programming ability? If it let you double your salary, would you accept a little risk... say, increased risk of brain cancer down the road?
OK, now what if a substantial number of your peers were using it... so much so that you might have trouble finding work, or at least have to accept a reduced salary, if you were unable or unwilling to use it as well?
WTF do hemorrhoids have to do with baseball? Or does it appropriately describe timothy and friends?
...we'll see people outfitting themselves with USB-enabled, reinforced combination arm/hard drives in some decades that can also make batting easier. Enhancements, I think, will be a fact of life. We scoff at steroids, IQ pills, and cyborgs now, but I think it will be sports that'll be obsolesced in the long term, not the 'roids; things like baseball, basketball and track require a large amount of fairness and we are tempted (as sex-crazed people who want to succeed in life) to gain an advantage in life by any means. It will soon be impossible to keep sports fair, I believe.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It's not like the article has a very good grasp on the problem today:
Yeah, like kids in college can't get steroids. 9-year-olds are using steroids http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/contentEveryone loves sports.