Sources tell SI Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

jayson stark is a moron obvs, but i still think this story sucks.

let's import a nonjuiced NFL player who can hit to RESUSCITATE BASEBALL

Neon Deion?

^^^ would pay to watch

yes morbs that really cuts to the heart of the issue.

What "issue"? Why, precisely, should I care about steroids in baseball?

i'm not saying one should or shouldn't care but there's a smugness to some of the "who cares" contingent (and i'm not talking about morbs or anyone here) with the subtext that anyone who does care is a naive retard.

but people experience fandom in different ways. i care fuck all for "the history of baseball" but some people love that shit and alltime records and whatnot; those people probably care about steroids. i like baseball on a micro level and think there is (or should be) an essential honesty in the pitcher/batter matchup so yeah i care a bit about steroids.

What "honesty"? How does integrity feature into one guy throwing a ball and another guy trying to hit it?

They have a testing system and penalties now (as flawed as they are, ie, guys are using undetectable stuff and will whenever they can). A "violation" at a time when there were NO PENALTIES is not one you can apply the "Hall of Fame ban" to, and remain reasonable.

What "honesty"? How does integrity feature into one guy throwing a ball and another guy trying to hit it?

― nosotros niggamos (HI DERE), Monday, February 9, 2009 11:41 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you being serious with that second question?

morbs, that's exactly right. however, i could really give a rat's ass about the hall of fame. it's just annoying to me to think that when a batter faces a pitcher, that batter may (without anyone's knowledge) be taking substances that make it more likely for his fly ball to become a home run than had he not been taking those substances.

i dont know abt personal integrity but the lol uneven playing field in baseball (tho more due to lack of a salary cap than steroids imo) has def hurt mlb - cause u know games are dependent on rules having some integrity

xxp: more pitchers than hitters have been caught abusing PEDs since the testing began.

This isn't a baseball slam, btw; I am hard-pressed to think of a single sport where I am concerned about the impact of alleged performance-enhancing controlled substances because I see them as an acceleration of something that is already happening anyway. People are becoming bigger, stronger, and faster by virtue of the wealth of our society and our obsession/insistence on "eating properly"; we know so much more about nutrition now, plus our livestock sciences are so thoroughly inundated with a myriad of substances to increase food production, that it seems that throwing in steroids is not going to give you an appreciable boost insurmountable by anyone else. Even if it does, if everyone else gets access to the same substances, it levels the playing field again, so I don't really see it as an issue. The people involved are adults; if they want to decide to do this, they are well within their rights. If they get caught and there are penalties, they will pay them. I still don't think they're "ruining the game". The game is the game; it always has been and it always will be. Players change all the time, records shuffle all over the place and it doesn't matter because 100 years from now someone else will be atop that leaderboard whether steroids are involved or not.

the lol uneven playing field in baseball (tho more due to lack of a salary cap)

Salary cap likely wouldn't work in MLB. Maybe someone can find that Prospectus bit a couple weeks ago that explained why.

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. I think people have a completely warped idea of what steroids actually do; they aren't magic make-you-perform-better pills.

im sure they could work something out doesnt have to be a hard cap - basketball has the whole bird rights system - just something where the rich teams dont take all the good players - obv they already have revenue sharing and the thing w/draft picks but its just not enough

dan they are basically magic make u perform better pills - obv yr starting w/a baseline talent - but theyll give a guy w/warning track power big home run numbers every time

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.

otm

Stark and others who are so precious about the damn records: OF dimensions, mound height, balls and bats, playing surfaces, DH, number of teams, length of schedule, and uh, oh yeah, racism -- all things that have had equal or greater effect on "hallowed" records than steroids.

Many xposts, nosotros y (*ﾟーﾟ)θ L(。･＿･)　　　°~ヾ(･ε･ *) particularly OTM.

theyll give a guy w/warning track power big home run numbers every time

this is OTM. baseball is affected by this more than, say, basketball, where strength is important but doesn't translate so instantly into tangible results. the tiniest augmentation of force applied at the moment of impact has a big consequence. yes you still have to be able to hit major league pitching, which is beyond the grasp of 99.99 percent of the population, but if you can do that, bigger muscles translate directly into better hitting performance. it doesn't help with running or defense so much though and could actually hinder them (in the Old Days, ballplayers were leery of weightlifting because they were worried about becoming "musclebound")

David Wells (A PITCHER) stated that "25 to 40 percent of all Major Leaguers are juiced".[2003]

José Canseco stated on 60 Minutes and in his tell-all book Juiced that as many as 85% of players used steroids, and that he credited steroid use for his entire career.[2005]

they are basically magic ... theyll give a guy w/warning track power big home run numbers every time

icey (and Tracer), u mad. read The Juice by Will Carroll. Also note the number of warning-track players on the assorted Dirty Lists who stayed just as mediocre as they were.

i am SO glad we're having the same arguments for the 5000th time, too, fuckin' Slap-Rod

if it didn't work they wouldn't do it

yeah, just like Wade Boggs eating chicken every day.

lol i may hav been a bit ott w/my every time assertion but basically "icey otm"

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 am going to learn to tell the fake excerpts from real

Why would you want to do that? Live in the mystery!

morbs, in the epilogue roberts writes about how, even though he wasn't very popular with his teammates, a-rod was very popular with his local crew of obama canvassers. one time, she writes, he treated them all to a showing of "i love you man"

Now see that's not at all credible.

"i love you man" is a metaphor for "the fun cooker".

"I worked out with him when he was 18. He could lift almost as much as I could"
Apr 30, 2009
Jose Canseco

"At 18, he could deadlift 300 pounds and his breasts were larger than some of my ex-girlfriends'. Me and Mark (McGwire) couldn't believe what we were seeing. He didn't need any help with his injections, he just fearlessly plunged these huge needles into his own oily, rippled ass without a second thought. Mark said to me one day, "that kid is the future of this sport". I rubbed my nipples and tried to laugh to laugh it off, but I knew he was right."

-- Jose Canseco, May 2, 2009

we thought spuds was fun. it turned out he was a chick. wtf spuds.

For her, a key insight into A-Rod's character comes with what some might call a fib: He tells people he hit with wood bats in high school because that's what the pros use, even though she found photo evidence he used metal.

SELENA ROBERTS, DID YOU WRITE WITH PENS IN HIGH SCHOOL?

Yes, I did.

WE HAVE OBTAINED PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE THAT YOU USED A PENCIL.

OK, there was this --

YOU HAVE TOLD WHAT SOME MIGHT CALL A FIB. WE FEEL THIS IS A TREMENDOUS INSIGHT INTO YOUR CHARACTER. (EVEN THOUGH IT IS POSSIBLE WE HAVE A PICTURE OF YOU USING A PENCIL THE ONE DAY YOU USED A PENCIL IN HIGH SCHOOL) IT IS APPARENT THAT YOU HAVE TOLD US YOU USED PENS AS A WAY TO PRODUCE THE ILLUSION THAT YOU WERE PERFECT IN HIGH SCHOOL, THAT YOU WERE SO PERFECT THAT YOU DID NOT NEED TO USE A PENCIL -- A WRITING INSTRUMENT WITH AN ERASER, AFTER ALL. YOU WOULD TRANSPOSE LETTERS, USE IMPERFECT GRAMMAR, AND MAKE OTHER MISTAKES AS YOU WROTE IN CLASSES. YOU USED A WRITING INSTRUMENT WITH AN ERASER AS A SAFETY NET -- YOUR ONLY BARRIER BETWEEN PERFECTION AND ABJECT FAILURE. YOU ARE A SAD, MISERABLE LITTLE PERSON.

But, I --

SORRY, GOTTA RUN. BOB COSTAS IS CALLING.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/07/26/alg_arod-kate.jpg

A-Rod went 0-for-4 Saturday - but he made it to first base anyway.

The randy Yankees slugger and stunning actress Kate Hudson put on a very public display of affection for the first time, locking lips during the team's annual family picnic.

Hudson, 33, was also spotted giving Rodriguez a big squeeze as the lovestruck pair canoodled following the Bombers' loss to the Oakland A's.

A-Rod's focus wasn't just on his flaming hot new gal pal. The Yankees star also spent time playing with daughters Ella, 1, and Natasha, 4, who were dressed in their Yankees best.

Notably absent from the family fest was A-Rod's ex-wife, Cynthia Rodriguez, whom he divorced last fall.

The very public smooching puts to rest rumors that Rodriguez, 33, and Hudson are just close friends.
Hudson, the daughter of Goldie Hawn, is believed to have met A-Rod last November in Miami.

Since then, she has been spotted slipping into Rodriguez's swanky midtown pad and cheering him on from the front row at several Yankees games.

The couple was first photographed together two weeks ago in Beverly Hills.

In recent years, A-Rod's exploits off the field have garnered as much attention as his slugging.

His rumored conquests include Madonna and a Las Vegas stripper, with whom he was photographed in a Toronto hotel two years ago while he was still married.

and a las vegas stripper? this guy