Among the less startling assertions one could make today would be that we live in a drug culture. The vast majority of us gobble an aspirin here, gulp an antibiotic there, whiff a decongestant now or a few milligrams of nicotine then...However, after it has been admitted that most citizens dope themselves from time to time, there remain excellent grounds for claiming that in the matter of drug usage, athletes are different from the rest of us. In spite of being—for the most part—young, healthy and active specimens, they take an extraordinary variety and quantity of drugs. They take them for dubious purposes, they take them in a situation of debatable morality, they take them under conditions that range from dangerously experimental to hazardous to fatal. The use of drugs—legal drugs—by athletes is far from new, but the increase in drug usage in the last 10 years is startling. It could, indeed, menace the tradition and structure of sport itself.
-Bil Gilbert, writing for Sports Illustrated, June 23, 1969
The whole thing's basically a 6-page money quote, and really speaks to the great unaswered question I have for all the Jayson Starks, Wallace Matthews, and other handwringers:
If you claim an insider's connection to the sport, or even just a basic level of consciousness, how have you missed this for the last 40 years? If you were there, and saw it, why did you fail to report it with the same indignance? In either case, why should I ever trust you as a journalist again?
-Free A-Rod
Monday, February 23, 2009
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Bingo! We can complain about how the media handles their coverage of almost any area of society (see Podcast Episode 2, Ben's grading of the Obama presidency thus far), but to me sports writers seem like a particularly lecherous breed of journalist. The prevalence of tearing down the subject of their writing probably isn't any higher or lower than it is in other areas of journalism, but their is sort of a perversity to it in sports writing considering their simultaneous need to feed their egos by both upholding the glory of the sport while stripping certain members of their integrity within it. They're like a virus that feeds off its host's life blood, but always needs a healthy host because it can't live on its own. They're like a venereal disease - jock snifferea.
ReplyDelete...or jock sniffilis
ReplyDeletestark is an asshole and so are most of today's sportswriters. matt, did i email you the baseball prospectus article on a-rod? fortunately, i think that some of what you are talking about is finally being said and within a few years, all of this steroids stuff will have been put in perspective, i.e. not very important. who cares? as i've said a million times before. if curt schilling had not been given massive doses of prescription only painkillers before he went out and pitched with a sutchered achilles tendon, then he would have been able to pitch...at all. that is what i call performance enhancing drugs.
ReplyDeletego stick it curt schilling
Man this thread hits on a lot of issues that have been bugging me about sportswriting lately... there's this whole class of former meathead jocks who write just like former meathead jocks -- blind to nuance, incapable of depth beyond cliche, and just plain boring in their constant indignance. [In a nonsteriod case in point check out Wilbon&Korn's outrage over Michael Phelps's bong pic in the following video] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/03/AR2009020303468.html].
ReplyDeleteSchwizza--The only difference between the drugs Schilling took and the drugs ARod took is that the former were (let's assume, anyway) legal within the rules of the game. It's not a question of the drugs themselves, it's a question of breaking the rules--in other words, cheating. Now, is it an arbitrary distinction, why some substances are allowed and some aren't? Yeah, I'm sure in some cases it's almost entirely arbitrary. But why is a basketball hoop ten feet? Why is a penalty to have a twelfth guy running off a football field, even if he has absolutely no bearing on the play? The point is all sports rules are to some degree arbitrary--but if you play by them, you are worthy of at least a baseline of respect and admiration, and if you don't, you're a cheater.
ReplyDeleteAs for sportswriters--nothing about this whole situation frustrates me more than writers who now write, "We all knew about the steroids era--the athletes, coaches, leagues, writers, and fans." Uh, guess what sports journalists--*I* didn't know because *you* didn't tell me!!!!!!
yeah, the difference is clearly arbitrary and that makes all the difference! i smoke pot, i don't smoke cigarettes. pot is illegal, cigarettes aren't. and i also don't care if a-rod uses steroids or hgh. and i'll tell you that the advantages i reap in my career from smoking pot are probably on par with those that a-rod has reaped from his drug use. that is, basically nothing. and those advantages that a-rod reaps are certainly less significant than those of schilling. and a-rod's advantage is definitely less than those reaped by players such as babe ruth, who didn't have to play against about a third of the best baseball players in the world (also legal at the time) or roger maris or hank aaron, who played in a time when they still wouldn't let most african-americans pitch. this idea that the integrity of the sport and it's records are being compromised, is absurd. the game has always lacked integrity. it is constantly being compromised. citizens bank park creates far better players than steroids. ryan howard is a pretty good hitter, but he hits over 50 homeruns every year because everytime he hits a lazy flyball to left field, it manages to find a way over the wall. and that's only a middling example of the ridiculous ballparks they have built in the last 15 years.
ReplyDelete-josh
Schwizz, we can't really know what effect the steroids had on ARod, but you can't just assume it was none. The person who knows his body best is ARod, and why would he have bothered using something that didn't help him? And even if you conclude ARod wasn't helped by steroids, what about Barry Bonds, who basically became a different human being because of steroids? They certainly had a big effect on him.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am not part of the "legalize everything, the game is now and has always been full of dishonesty and unfairness and cheating" is because I think it is a total surrender to a cynicism that is eroding sports anyway. And if your concern is arbitrariness, you can't allow all drugs but not also allow, say, balks in baseball or moving screens in basketball. Yes, rules are arbitrary, but if you give up the ideal of making the game as fair and as fairly played as possible, you basically give up on the idea of sports.
as someone who hates Bill Belichick and his cheating ways, Chaucer, I'll confess a sympathy toward your principled position about breaking the rules... however in terms of steroids, I think you can make a distinction between Rules Within A Sport (size of rim, height of pitchers mound, motion of balk, depth of endzone, etc] and Rules Set-Up By Major Corporate Governing Body To Decide Access To A Sport (age limits, dress codes, drug usage, etc) -- intrinsic rules vs extrinsic rules. And while I completely agree that intrinsic rules have to be arbitrary [that is after all what makes sports great; creative performance within limits], the exact opposite is true for the extrinsic limits. Here there is a compelling reason for the rules to be as uniform non-arbitrary and fair as possible... So while I am not generally in favor of steroids [at a basic human level it reduces athletes to corporate lawyers and everyone else who debases themselves for advancement] I do think the old A Rule Is Rule justification for the current tangle fails short.
ReplyDelete[Also in total tangential aside, Schwizza, there is NO WAY performance enhancing drugs would be as widespread if they didn't work; these guys aren't idiots, they're experts about their bodies]
For a while I was of the opinion that steroids probably didn't make that much of a difference, but now I'm pretty sure that they do. I disagree that all athletes are experts on their bodies...some are, but a lot of them don't really educate themselves on this stuff, they just trust someone else that tells them that something will work. If they all educated themselves, then no one would ever get caught because they would all know to just take HGH, which there is no test for. Sports is still an industry that is not quite as sophisticated as people think.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of factors that could have led to the increased power numbers of the last decade - ballpark dimensions, the ball, increased general knowledge of weight training - but there is definitely a correlation between widespread steroid use and power...steroids could even have had a dual affect on power numbers because of pitchers using. Way more pitchers throw in the 90's and touch 100 than there used to be. If the ball is coming in faster, it's going to leave faster.
And the problem with sports writers is that they didn't tell us about it when it happened and they now write in pontificating tones as if they weren't then praising the very people they are now damning. And what I hate the most is exactly what Matt pointed out...that they write about how pure the good ole days were without any regard for how complicated a place the world has always been and for the writings of their predecessors like Bil Gilbert.
Josh S., I think I did read the BP article in question.
ReplyDeleteLook, I'm all for more testing, long suspensions, cleaning up the sport, etc. - I don't think it has ruined baseball (or football, for that matter), but it sets a bad example for the young'uns, and adversely affects the health of the players I love (and hate).
What I can't stomach is any attempt to retroactively "clean up" the game by denying the best players of the era entrance into the Hall of Fame or any other sort of record book.
There are far too many variables to say with any confidence that steroids alone were responsible for any player performance of the last 15 years. If steroids caused Bonds to become the greatest player of all time, why didn't it do the same for Matt Lawton and Neifi Perez? What about all the times roided up Bonds faced roided up Clemens (or Juan Rincon, or Jason Grimsley)? Who was cheating more?
Recommended further reading:
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/02/15/steroid-symphony/
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/omnibus-a-rod-post/
Thank God for the internet, which allows me to read consistently good baseball writing and not be stuck with Murray Chass.
Ok, you guys are really pushing it. Katie is planning a blog coupe kitten explosion, and I have to support her after all this.
ReplyDeleteok, a few points. i agree mostly with what raju has said about arbitrary rules. i'm not opposed to testing for drug use, but i am opposed to the idea that the line has to be arbitrary. the question here isn't whether certain drugs are performance enhancing or not -- there are plenty of drugs and supplements that are certainly as performance enhancing as hgh or steroids that are allowed -- the question really revolves around the aspects of health. and again, this shouldn't be about what we do or don't want our children doing either, because that is also not the way society works. we don't want our 10 year old kids lifting weights because it's bad for their health and we don't let our 16 year old's drinking beer because we don't yet trust their judgement. a non-arbitrary line can exist.
ReplyDeletesecondly, matt is also absolutely right. if you want to test for this stuff now then great. that is ultimately baseball's prerogative. but to go back in time and try to take away careers and records that existed before there were penalties and before the players were caught is absurd. if bonds doesn't get into the hall of fame, then neither should any sportswriter, manager, play-by-play guy or anyone else because we all know now that they knew what was going on and they all failed to report any of it. the finger pointing is absolutely despicable.
finally, as for the idea that these guys wouldn't use it if it doesn't actually help them is also absurd. when someone gets the hiccups, they drink water upside down. when i have a hangover, i eat greasy foods and drink caffeine. that stuff doesn't really work, but i think it does so i do it. yes, injecting your body with foreign substances is on a different scale than those examples, but so is the scale of baseball. the fact of the matter is that these players know that there is some risk involved in doing these things (although there isn't any proof that the newer drugs are doing any actual harm) but they're also being told that the rewards are phenomenal. a-rod claims he wasn't even doing it right and the fact of the matter is that his numbers have held steady from before he was alegedly using through his use and then after.
these guys are buying into what someone else is selling. according to basebll prospectus, the numbers in baseball don't show a correlation between these ped's and performance and that's a group i would trust far greater than kurt radmonski.