Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

[Guest Czech please!]

Let's use the steroid era to abolish the designated hitter. Attendance and offense are back up, so its mission was accomplished, and maybe we can discourage the importance of hit ball hard far.

[Guest Czech please!]

From an excerpt of the Torre/Verducci book, printed in TIME:

That same winter, with the party raging at full throttle, one man rose up and basically announced the whole damn thing was a fraud. Rick Helling, a 27-year-old righthanded pitcher and the players' representative for the Texas Rangers, stood up at the winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players Association and made an announcement. He told his fellow union leaders that steroid use by ballplayers had grown rampant and was corrupting the game.

 

"There is this problem with steroids," Helling told them. "It's happening. It's real. And it's so prevalent that guys who aren't doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they're falling behind. It's not a level playing field. We've got to figure out a way to address it.

 

"It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that's what's happening. And I don't feel like this is the right way to go."

Honorable stuff. Now for the dishonorable:

The union's executive board paid little attention to Helling. The owners were of a similar mindset. In fact, within a matter of days of Helling sounding an alarm that went unheeded, baseball provided official proof that steroids were not considered an urgent problem. At those same 1998 winter baseball meetings in Nashville, baseball's two medical directors, Dr. Robert Millman, who was appointed by the owners, and Dr. Joel Solomon, the designee of the players, delivered a presentation to baseball executives and physicians about the benefits of using testosterone. Angels general manager Bill Stoneman was so surprised at the tone of the presentation — basically, the message he heard was that no evidence exists that steroids were harmful — that he wondered why Major League Baseball even had allowed it.

 

Also in attendance was Dr. William Wilder, the physician for the Cleveland Indians. Wilder was so disturbed by the presentation that he wrote a memorandum to Indians general manager John Hart that whether testosterone increased muscle strength and endurance "begs the question of whether it should be used in athletics." Wilder also endorsed sending information to players about the "known and unknown data about performance-enhancing substances."

 

Wilder also spoke directly with Gene Orza of the players association. Orza advised him to hold off on any education about supplements until more information was available. Wilder was incredulous. Of Orza's request to postpone any action, the doctor wrote, "That will be never! Orza and the Players Association want to do further study ... so nothing will be done."

So not only did labor lie about the risks of steroids, endangering players' health to make money, but ownership implicitly encouraged it as well by bringing in these quacks. I know the union has an obligation to maximize salaries for its membership, but not at the expense of their well-being; not in my world, at least. Ethically bankrupt, completely indefensible, that scumbag greaseball Orza should be hung on a meathook.

[snuffbox 0]

Why is it ok for A-Rod to leave a Spring Training game with his cousin?

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Why is it ok for A-Rod to leave a Spring Training game with his cousin?

Why not?

 

I mean it's not good PR but there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

[Guest Czech please!]

Is this the same cousin who's giving him the old Dominican Tic-Tacs? I'm just glad we've ascertained his existence.

[snuffbox 0]

Yeah, the same cousin that Rodriguez apologized for doing steroids with gave him a ride from the game. He's not allowed back around the ballpark anymore, though. So I guess that's good.