Sources tell SI Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

who else has come to believe that 40%-70% of All-Star caliber players in the '90s and early '00s were "doing it"?

It was the environment of MLB in the era. Deal, or be Bob Costas.

don't steroids also heal you faster from nagging injuries- and prolong your carreer? or is that HGH?

anyway, come up with some hard and fast rules about it. apply it evenly and be done with it. more homeruns don't make baseball any more interesting to me

Deal, or be Bob Costas.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 9, 2009 12:18 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg which path 2 choose :O

There are "hard and fast rules." All the shitstorm around Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod is based on Pre-Penalty Era leaks to the media.

notice Curt Schilling uncharacteristically lunging for the spotlight:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2009/02/08/2009-02-08_curt_schilling_i_want_all_the_names.html

I know there are tools in every sport but why is it that the baseball tools are the tooliest (standing exception made for Terrell Owens)?

http://cache.thephoenix.com/i/OldBlogs/SoxBlog/schilling-curt-main.jpg
i want all the names

OMG schill is the bestest

can schill make an appearance in the peyton manning movies

Also guys, and this is important, Alex Rodriguez is a gigantic preening douche, and something embarrassing and 'image'-sullying has happened to him so let's keep our eyes on the prize and enjoy this as a cause for celebration.

― Safe Boating is No Accident (G00blar)

even if you don't care about steroids, please think of this and all the laughing, pointing children

btw i'm not a scientist and i just sort of can't get mad at steroids users now. these days i would just be slightly more impressed if i found out for 100% certain that some dude who averaged 45 HR a year for awhile never did use any PEDs. i guess i do think that steroids help some of these guys, but probably only the already good or great players. steroids can't really help you make solid contact or take a walk, so if cesar izturis started juiced he might hit 2 more HR per year but then he would still be only hitting 3 HR per year.

juicedjuicing

yeah, just like Wade Boggs eating chicken every day.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 9, 2009 12:15 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ pretty strong zing

boggs invented obp by eating chicken fyi

nothing's changed, argues Tim Marchman (note "no one has ever presented credible evidence proving that performance-enhancing drugs make athletes better at playing baseball"):

http://www.slate.com/id/2210814/

In the end, no matter how much the shrieking moralists might like to pretend otherwise, drug use hasn't done much harm to baseball at all. In their day, genuinely likable players like McGwire and Sosa were held up as real paragons of virtue and saviors of a benighted sport; the destruction of their reputations and the actual admissions made by equally likable players such as Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte haven't damaged baseball a bit. You can prove that more or less every great ballplayer is an outright fraud, but you can't make anyone like baseball a jot less for it. It's still an open question whether this fact will ever settle in: People don't care much more about whether their favorite ballplayers take drugs than they care about whether Michael Phelps likes to get high. In the meantime, expect Alex Rodriguez to hit a lot of home runs and to be hated by everyone who watches baseball—exactly what would have happened had SI never run its report at all.

is there any way to actually prove or disprove the effects of steroids on performance other than statistics? serious q.

casting everyone who thinks steroids have damaged the game as a shrieking moralist is no more insightful than shrieking moralizing

uh

uh what

i would argue that most ppl in column 1 tend to come with more science than those in column 2, but yes we've had this discussion before

OK so then there are two options:

1) PEDs make athletes better at baseball. well this sucks because not every baseball player uses PEDs and so the game is unfair.

2) PEDs do not make athletes better at baseball. ok wtf you morons stop taking them! why am i supposed to feel better about this?

Honestly everyone in the who cares camp should be arguing for full amnesty for players who used (and continue to use) provided they admit it publicly.

I also want to point out that unless you're dealing with identically-raised clones, there will always be an imbalance between pitcher and hitter regardless of the use of steroids.

again, are you serious w/this?

having to deal w/peoples opinions abt steroids has def damaged the game - like me for instance i dont even really like baseball - i just came here to lol @ arod and now im engaged in this redundant argument - now in my mind baseball=inane hand wringing

nice1 canseco

You can prove that more or less every great ballplayer is an outright fraud

If this guy can back this statement up he'll be set for life

xpost well yeah this is the problem--previously i could lol at arod for plenty of perfectly valid reasons but w/this i would technically have to lol at like 200 other guys as well.

lol the world brody http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:xqDSIkAyxTmQiM:http://microscopiq.com/images/mushroom-clown-ps3.jpg

like me for instance i dont even really like baseball

we could tell when you mentioned "salary cap"

and perhaps by the "magic make u perform better pills" thing

mets sux

call me blinky...

arod supposedly being interviewed by gammons later today

yah i'm with morbz on the 'doesn't really make u better' idea. like someone said above 'roids are designed to shorten recovery times and yeah build muscle mass but until i see some real evidence that shows an appreciable change in the ability to PLAY BETTER, i'm not going to care that much. (not that no one should care--for example i think it sets a shitty example for kids, considering how terrible roids are for yr body and the fact that most kids who take roids in HS arent going to amount to anything in pro ball.)

it's like, a pitcher putting vaseline on the ball will be able to manipulate the ball better and thus have a real, tangible, DIRECT advantage on a micro level; a batter (or pitcher obvs) taking roids might have more muscle and might be in better shape than he would have, but it's an indirect advantage and doesnt necessarily make him better at baseball. does any of that make sense?

That makes perfect sense.

i think that's a bit naive. i think PEDs make better players better... but it can't turn a nobody into a superstar... except for ken caminiti.

guys strength is super important to hitting fyi

But it's not of primary importance, which is why Gabe Kapler never hit 20 HR.

btw, Gene Orza denies tipoff angle.

“It’s not true,” Orza said in an e-mail message. “Simple as that.”

“It makes juicier stuff to suggest there were tip-offs,” Orza said about the SI.com report. “But there weren’t.”

He added: “I don’t care about the press coverage. It’s irrelevant.”

I was amused to see former NY Times hack Selena Roberts was apparently the lead SI reporter on this when Costas interviewed her on MLB. Wow, her AND Jon Heyman, SI really scoops up the best and brightest these days.

but it could be just a coincidence that bonds had the best seasons ever at an age when players are typically over the hill that mcguire et al were roided to the gills when they were breaking records etc etc

if yr good at baseball and want to hit the ball harder steroids can help

well what's he gonna say? "yeah i completely tipped those guys off." xp

ice cr?m... you're buying into a lot of mythology dude.

o plz enlighten me

If you can't hit the ball, bulking up after taking steroids will not help you.

If you can hit the ball, bulking up after taking steroids may or may not help you.

i-rod's career to thread

yah i'm with morbz on the 'doesn't really make u better' idea. like someone said above 'roids are designed to shorten recovery times and yeah build muscle mass but until i see some real evidence that shows an appreciable change in the ability to PLAY BETTER, i'm not going to care that much.

beyond statistics, is there any way to actually prove if it makes a player better or not? i mean tbh looking at the stats on bonds or sosa or mcgwire and then assuming that they started using steroids around a certain time, it makes perfect sense for people to believe that their subsequent "best of all time" kinda seasons were assisted just a little bit. i mean sammy sosa was, despite his HR power, a pretty mediocre player up until 1998.

like i said i can't get too pissed off about this stuff but there is some proof there, in a certain way. i'm not going to do anything other than ¯\(°_o)/¯ at this point though.

If you can't hit the ball, bulking up after taking steroids will not help you.

If you can hit the ball, bulking up after taking steroids may or may not help you.

― nosotros niggamos (HI DERE), Monday, February 9, 2009 2:26 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not sure why people always bring up the 1st part of this formulation as its completely moot cause were talking abt guys getting an edge over other players who CAN hit the baseball

icey, we're not denying that numbers for certain players were very likely inflated, but it's a fog. There's no "control group" -- ie, no players can ever be proven "clean" -- so ppl who claim that Player X's use of Substance Y affected his output by Z-factor are just whistlin' Dixie.

i mean are people so far gone on this thing that they're now saying that strength only has an indirect relation to hitting? any one physical factor only has an indirect relation to hitting. no one is suggesting that big muscles create bat speed and hand/eye coordination but come the fuck on. how many weird spiky brady anderson in '96 seasons would you need to see to conclude that this has impacted games on the field?

eckstein is clean!

but morbs is otm

(xpost)

so because it's a fog we're just going to say it is what it is? i understand that to a certain point but i would like to see that list of 104 because it will increase my understanding of exactly what has been happening to the game.

this isnt a court of law or a peer reviewed journal - i just looked at the aging comically inflated bonds demolishing the record books and lold @ the farce - sometimes things are pretty easily seen and understood that dont offer the right circumstances for statistical or forensic or whatever analysis