[mick]

Originally posted by ChuckElias

Well, Ruth finished playing in 1935, and anabolic steroids weren't invented until the 1930's (I couldn't find an exact year). Pretty safe to say that with all the women, beer and hot dogs, the Babe didn't have much time for injecting his own butt.

I think Palmiero leaves us with two choices about how to view him: either he's a cheater or he's an idiot. Neither is flattering, but that's all that we're left with.

MLB and the individual ballclubs bent over backwards to inform the players about what could trigger a positive result. This is not a stealth operation, they're not trying to trick people into testing positive. After the new agreement went into place, it was probably stressed almost as much as the rules about gambling on baseball (which are posted in every clubhouse).

Palmiero had to know the things that would trigger a positive test -- he's on the Zero Tolerance Committee, for cryin' out loud. So did he take them on purpose (cheater) or by accident (idiot)?

I agree with Dan: he's at least guilty of gross stupidity for taking anything that might have triggered the positive result. Doesn't make it any less sad for me, tho.

Drugs were out there.

Even before the discovery of methamphetamines in the 1940s, amphetamines had been synthesized and widely used 60 years earlier.

In 1920, a small amount of cocaine stimulation was found to improved performance on an arithmetic calculating test and a word association test. Cocaine seems to work better for a free flow of associations. Students long ago sometimes studied on cocaine the way students use amphetamines now.

As late as 1909, there were 69 Coca-Cola imitations that still contained cocaine. People ordered soft drinks by asking for a "shot in the arm."

Psychomotor stimulants, most notably cocaine and amphetamine, produce a characteristic stimulation of behavior in both humans and experimental animals. At low to moderate doses these drugs induce wakefulness, increase activity, decrease appetite and stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. In humans, these doses also produce feelings of euphoria, well-being and self-confidence. The latter effects are reflected in experimental animals as powerful reinforcing actions. In appropriate experimental situations animals will work extremely hard, sometimes to the point of death, to obtain these drugs.