Whatever. This is NOT a particularly sad day for baseball. It IS a sad era for baseball, football (college & pro), basketball (college & pro), soccer, curling, hockey, competitive table tennis, track & field, cycling, golf, tennis, and probably bowling. Any competitive "sport" where increased recovery, eyesight, or any slight advantage might come in handy. If baseball is sullied, then football is completely debased. Just because the mass media spoon feeds us these sound bites about baseball and doesn't give a damn about anything else, doesn't mean we need to run with it. The world will go on, and society will need to deal with its impact on the concept of competition in general.
Remember, everything we've heard about Bonds, Clemens, Petitte et al. is that they're on HGH, at least primarily. There is no sufficient test for this, and its clear to any reasonable person that a large percentage percentage of professional athletes were using this as their preferred method of cheating.
What about better drug testing? Isn't it the Union's fault that we're stuck in this mess? Boy, if only baseball was as well run and was as visionary as the NFL, or, dare we dream, the Olympics Drug testing program. Bullshit. Everyone seems to sight the Olympic testing program as being the gold standard, but they've never caught ANYONE using HGH. Either this is because no Olympian uses this particular drug, or it means the current method of testing isn't worth a damn.
Having said that, we can all be angry at the unions, the commish, and everyone else involved for their perceived intransigence, but there was nothing to be done about most of this cheating in any event. Yes we're all frustrated, and if it makes anyone feel better, I'll start stomping my feet in order to start a big group tantrum, but at the end of the day, all that means is that we're more concerned with PR spin and perception than the facts as they are.
Finally, lets not be so foolish as to fall for corporate tactics that encourage us all to disdain union activism for no particular reason of consequence. I'm just glad that baseball players are represented decently, and I'm saddened that football players are left to die young after lives of disability and mental torment with little or no support from their brethren.
Everyone involved in professional competition is culpable, if anyone is (apart from the offending players themselves that is). Just because people seem to care more about the sanctity and 'pure' competitive balance of baseball, MLB is the only sports entity admonished. Though if professional baseball is guilty of sin, then the NFL is the devil.
1 comment:
HGH is human growth hormone - that's why it's hard to detect because our bodies make it and metabolize it very quickly. Additionally, testosterone is often added to HGH coctails because our bodies make that too. From Reuters:
"A urine test, developed more than two decades ago, measures the ratio of testosterone with epitestosterone, a hormone produced along with testosterone but without its effects. The ratio in most people is 1:1. Until 2005, a ratio of 6:1 was considered to be evidence that testosterone had been administered artificially. The ratio now used by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is 4:1"
Yup - you can be at 4 times the normal level and still be "O.K." But you know, I long for the good old days, when athletes would just dull the pain of proffesional sports with alcohol and ether. And Laudanum- don't forget that magical liquid.
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