On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:05:47 -0500, "Deborah Terreson"
 wrote:

>In article  , Grizzlie 
>Antagonist   wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:29:52 -0500, "Deborah Terreson"
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>Hey, Bob and I were talking about baseball ands he is kind of pissed off
>>>with the government's inquiry into steroid use -
>>
>>
>> Really?  Does he have a laissez-faire attitude towards the issue of
>> steroids?
>>
>> I'm not sure what I think about the issue myself, being of several
>> minds.
>
>*LOL!* ..and NONE of them is your right mind... Is that it? ;)



  I can never reach that place.



>>>This has come up before in
>>>the past, has it not?
>>
>>
>>
>> Steroids?  I don't think so.  Not as a high-profile congressional
>> issue.
>>
>>
>>
>>>He was standing at the coffee shop, looking at
>>>newspaper headlines today and got all pissy about it.
>>
>>
>> Do you know what I'm pissy at right now?
>>
>> Five Red Sox players appearing on "Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy".
>> This is more of an embarrassment to the game than steroids.
>
>That's what you get for being suckered into paying to watch commercial
>teevee.


>Shame on you for even having cable. You got entirely what you PAID for.
>
>Blecch.



Surely you don't think that I WATCHED it.  Surely you don't think that
I EVER watch this program.

I don't watch anything other than old shows on TVLand and sporting
events.

I simply ran into a news article making reference to those players
appearing on that program.



>>>He said when they had the 'reserve clause' in baseball,
congress just washed
>>>it's hands of the whole steroid use affair.
>>
>>
>>
>> The reserve clause was effectively eliminated in 1976 (I think).  I'm
>> not intimately acquainted with the BUSINESS history of the game, but
>> it had something to do with some arbitrator finding a loophole in the
>> clause and allowing pitcher Andy Messersmith getting to leave the
>> Dodgers and go to the Braves.  I'm open to correction or clarification
>> on that point.
>>
>> I don't think that steroids were an issue or anywhere near baseball's
>> radar until the last four years or so.
>>
>> They WERE an issue in professional wrestling in the mid-1990's.  That
>> sounds funny, but there were a large number of kids who took seriously
>> Hulk Hogan's cartoonish wrestling persona (which was a combination of
>> carny boss huckster and All-American good-guy) and who might
>> CONCEIVABLY gotten the wrong message from the revelation that the
>> "Hulkster" was taking steroids.
>>
>> But I don't think that this was enough to pique Congress's interest
>> very much.  Baseball, on the other hand, is more mainstream than pro
>> wrestling.
>
>Shit! Bob just left to go to work, but I think there was an issue of
>steroids in the past. I'll ask him tonight when he gets home and see what he
>comes up with.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Why the Big Beef now? Is it
>>>because there is more money in the game or what?
>>
>>
>> Perhaps.  And the consumers paying through the nose for tickets might
>> be entitled to wonder whether the competition is fair or whether some
>> athletes are taking the easy way out.
>>
>> By the same token, baseball is a game that requires more than brute
>> strength, so I'm not sure that steroids will have as huge an impact on
>> baseball performance as on performance in other sports.
>>
>> Then again, this is a made-to-order political whipping boy.  There are
>> no "good guys" in this drama - not the owners who looked
the other way
>> while home runs were filling the seats and not the players who abused
>> themselves for short-term money and glory and resisted all efforts to
>> test them for steroids.
>>
>> So it's easy for the politicians to wax virtuous in front of the
>> press.
>>
>> Then too, there are apparently legitimate health issues.  At least one
>> ballplayer, Ken Caminitti, probably died from a steroid overdose, and
>> there are reportedly young amateur athletes who have taken same and
>> suffered consequences - presumably believing that if the pros were
>> taking them, it was OK.
>
>Oh no, there are definite health problems from steroid usage. IIRC from my
>school days, it was kidney and liver problems that got alot of steroid users
>in the long run, and in the short term, there were/are the immediate real
>problems of fertility and gonad problems: From my collecting gay male nudes
>on the playgirl NG, I've seen several models who've gone from slim
>twink-sized young men a few years ago to huge overmuscled beefcake, 'big
>boys in boots' and quite literally, their testicles have all but
>disappeared. It's somewhat disturbing, really. Eww.



Ewww indeed.  Not just the story that you told but - your COLLECTION.

How can you criticize cable TV if you are in the habit of
collecting....I can't even finish?




>>>I'm a bit fuzzy on this, and Bob mentioned Curt Flood (whom I'm searching
>>>online for right now) and went off about how he was traded without his
>>>knowledge and left the sport entirely.
>>
>>
>> Flood was a pretty good baseball player, but all that he's known for
>> today is his Supreme Court case.
>>
>> He challenged the legality of baseball's reserve clause as being a
>> violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the Supreme Court sided
>> against him, ruling that Congress had not chosen to make baseball
>> subject to this Act.
>>
>> In fact, I think that was the third Supreme Court decision to make
>> that finding.  Whether that really was Congress's intent is a matter
>> of conjecture.
>>
>> I'm not sure of the details (again, I am not an expert on the business
>> history of the game), but somehow in 1976, Andy Messersmith was able
>> to successfully do indirectly what Curt Flood had failed to accomplish
>> directly at an earlier date.
>>
>> I don't remember if that caused Flood to leave the sport entirely or
>> not - wait a minute, that's easily enough checked -
>>
>> http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/floodcu01.shtml
>>
>> Well, it looks like he played his last series of games in 1971 before
>> retiring at the age of 33 - a time when he presumably still had a few
>> years of baseball left in his body - so yes, I imagine that his legal
>> challenge made him persona non grata among baseball's establishment.
>>
>> Flood is supposed to be a hero, but I'm not sure that the reserve
>> clause wasn't a necessary evil.  It kept ticket prices down and it
>> kept players from bouncing around from team to team, willy-nilly, in
>> search of the most money.
>>
>> Many people tell me today that they don't follow baseball as much as
>> they used to because they can't keep track of all of the player
>> movements, and I feel the same way myself, really.
>>
>> It's significant TODAY because baseball is still not subject to the
>> Anti-Trust Act - which, I assume benefits them in ways other than
>> those provided by the old reserve clause - and every time Congress
>> wants baseball to act, they flex their muscles and talk about
>> SPECIFICALLY making baseball subject to the Act (so as to leave no
>> doubt when the courts are again called upon to interpret the Act) - so
>> this is likely to lead to a showdown between MLB and Congress over the
>> steroids issue.
>>
>At the very least, I think that steroid taking players who break records
>should have an asterisk notating that they were using performance enhancing
>substances to do so. I agree with Bob on this, that Ruth, who set records on
>hot dogs, whores and bourbon had more vigor than today's pampered,
>chemically induced crop of players. They're lightweights in comparison.
>
>Deb.
>>


I disagree completely.

In the first place, while you may hold that opinion in good faith, A
LOT of the people who are arguing the same thing simply have a grudge
against Barry Bonds (who will pass Babe Ruth's home run total some
time early this year and who might pass Aaron next year) and want to
tarnish Bonds's records because they don't like the man personally (he
has never had an award-winning personality and has never had good
relations with the press).

To some extent - TO SOME EXTENT, mind you - this steroids thing is a
media feeding frenzy aimed at Barry Bonds, though obviously the story
is important enough and has enough "legs" to carry further.

More to the point, though, while brute physical strength can be
helpful in baseball, it's not all there is to the game.

Michael Jordan, perhaps still the greatest basketball player of all
time, who is taller and probably no less stronger than Barry Bonds
tried his hand at professional baseball a few years ago (he'd done
everything there was to do in basketball and he wanted to test himself
at something else).

Jordan's name sometimes also gets mentioned in steroid rumors.  But
Jordan couldn't even hit more than about .200 while playing at a very
low minor league level.

Again, there is more to baseball than brute strength.

Then too, even if you assume that some of today's star baseball
players were unduly assisted by steroids, it's still too much of an
oversimplification to say that the players from other eras were at a
disadvantage by comparison.

There were a large number of talented pitchers that Babe Ruth didn't
have to face because of the color line that barred dark-skinned
players from competing in the major leagues.

Moreover, Babe Ruth often used a 54 ounce bat and other players from
his era used similar sized bats - which would probably not be legal
today.

If some of today's ballplayers might have allowed some artificial
muscle producer to replace hard work and athleticism, by the same
token, you could say that the ballplayers from Ruth's era used an
unusually large bat surface to do the same thing.

Also, Ruth hit most of his home runs after the onset of baseball's
"lively ball" era.  Ruth's predecessors played in an era where the
regulation baseball wasn't designed to travel very far.  So you could
just as easily argue that Ruth's home run statistics should have an
asterisk next to them.

But back to the issue of the bat surface - you know, it is
INCONCEIVABLE to me that ANYONE IN THIS ERA could get a 54 ounce bat
around in time to hit a major league fastball.

It's impossible - a standard major league fastball is 90 MPH and there
are many pitchers who throw much much harder.

If Ruth could successfully use a very heavy bat, that strongly
suggests to me that the quality of the pitching in his day was nowhere
near what it is today, at least in terms of the pitchers' ability to
throw the ball HARD.

Some of this is due to evolution and some again is due to the color
line that was in existence in Ruth's day.

But anyway, at the risk of belaboring the point, what I'm trying to
say is that there are too many variations between baseball eras to
enable one to honestly say that today's ballplayers were unduly
assisted by steroids and therefore their records shouldn't "count" as
much.



------------------------------------

grizzlieantagonist{at}yahoo.com

"Ladies and gentlemen - let's have a round of applause for tonight's
player of the game - FRAN-CIS-CO SAN-N-N-N-TOS!
    - Brian Anthony (P.A. announcer at Grizzlie Stadium), June 11, 2004


"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their
disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as
their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their
soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and
presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the
counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. 
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be
placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must
be without.  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men
of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their
fetters."
     
     - Edmund Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)


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