WARNING!!! WARNING!! Annual off-topic baseball thread!!

[Mark Dexter]

Originally posted by mick

Thing is, for me, stuff happens out of an athlete's control and I need to be shown intent.
mick

Unfortunately, we're still working on the test for that . . .

[mick]

Originally posted by Mark Dexter

Unfortunately, we're still working on the test for that . . .

Mark,
They do it every day in courts of justice.
mick

[M&M Guy]

Originally posted by mick

Mark,
They do it every day in courts of justice.
mick

mick - so the only time anyone's found guilty in court is when they prove intent?

[mick]

Originally posted by M&M Guy

mick - so the only time anyone's found guilty in court is when they prove intent?

From where did you pull that? I am disappointed that you choose to paint with such broad strokes.

In the case of these supplements, I think willful wrongdoing should be shown, and I think allowances should be made for mis-labeling, contaminated processing, and outright chemical fraud. If drug companies continue those practices, then instead of all the chemical names and formulas on the list, ban the manufacturers not the athletes.
mick

[M&M Guy]

Originally posted by mick

From where did you pull that? I am disappointed that you choose to paint with such broad strokes.

I must've been a journalist in a former life, so painting with broad strokes and selective editing must be in my blood.

Remember, I'm not part of that angry mob that's calling him a cheater. I agree that cheating and intent are intertwined. And there's certainly no evidence presented showing his intent. But, I am saying he's guilty of the policy that's in place. And it is his fault he's guilty. He did not take the proper precautions to make sure he was not ingesting anything that could violate the policy. You posted that article about how a few athletes tested positive when taking supplements, mostly from the same supplier. But there was no reason found as to why; so was it because that company had sloppy manufacturing procedures? Is the testing procedure flawed? Did the athletes lie about what they did and did not take? We don't know those answers, so we can't paint with the same broad brush that testing is flawed. Certainly, no test or procedure can be certified 100% accurate. Even DNA testing can only prove 99.99% accuracy. But it is, for all practical purposes, accurate enough to prove guilt or innocence in court. So, that's what we have here, a test showing a positive result on a substance that is considered illegal by an employer. Surely you aren't suggesting someone has been slipping steroids into his brownpop after games without his knowledge? Or, the people in the black helicopters switched a shippment of legal supplements with illegal ones to his hometown?

[Dan_ref]

Originally posted by mick

Dan,

Not even close to the Pete Rose denials. Gambling is an addictive sickness. Steroids are used with purpose.

Wasn't that on March 14th that he flatly denied that useage?
Anyway, like I hoped to imply, maybe he really didn't know back then; maybe he got a bad batch of milkshakes like Sanchez. Or, maybe a masking substance didn't work this time or was subsequently identified.

Thing is, for me, stuff happens out of an athlete's control and I need to be shown intent.
mick

I still don't buy it Mick.

Only a fool would not spend the coupla hundred bucks & the time to pee in a cup & verify through a private lab that none of the supplements he's taking would be flagged as a banned substance.

IOW there is no good reason for him to find himself in this trouble.

[mick]

Originally posted by M&M Guy

I must've been a journalist in a former life, so painting with broad strokes and selective editing must be in my blood.

Remember, I'm not part of that angry mob that's calling him a cheater. I agree that cheating and intent are intertwined. And there's certainly no evidence presented showing his intent. But, I am saying he's guilty of the policy that's in place. And it is his fault he's guilty. He did not take the proper precautions to make sure he was not ingesting anything that could violate the policy. You posted that article about how a few athletes tested positive when taking supplements, mostly from the same supplier. But there was no reason found as to why; so was it because that company had sloppy manufacturing procedures? Is the testing procedure flawed? Did the athletes lie about what they did and did not take? We don't know those answers, so we can't paint with the same broad brush that testing is flawed. Certainly, no test or procedure can be certified 100% accurate. Even DNA testing can only prove 99.99% accuracy. But it is, for all practical purposes, accurate enough to prove guilt or innocence in court. So, that's what we have here, a test showing a positive result on a substance that is considered illegal by an employer. Surely you aren't suggesting someone has been slipping steroids into his brownpop after games without his knowledge? Or, the people in the black helicopters switched a shippment of legal supplements with illegal ones to his hometown?

M&M Guy,

Don't journalists write to the 8th grade level? Or is it up or down in the last 40 years?

Yes.
He's guilty of the policy in place.
And like I said, "It's broke."

...A sprinkle of salt on your potato salad? ...Pinch of pepper on your steak? Possible, but I don't care to go there.
mick

[mick]

Originally posted by Dan_ref

I still don't buy it Mick.

Only a fool would not spend the coupla hundred bucks & the time to pee in a cup & verify through a private lab that none of the supplements he's taking would be flagged as a banned substance.

IOW there is no good reason for him to find himself in this trouble.

Dan,
Foolishness and ignorance can surely be offered as excuses, or reasons. For those there is no defense. Just is.

But with no one talking substance, quanity, quality or source, I maintain my contention that the process is foul.

mick

BTW: I don't feel anything for Raphael Palmeiro one way or another.

---

I only use my seat belt because it will cost me $75.00, if I don't.

[ChuckElias]

Originally posted by mick
Exactly, JR. We don't know.
Nor do we know anything about Babe Ruth's useage

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.

[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.

[Dan_ref]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/sp.../02vecsey.html

August 2, 2005
Orioles' Palmeiro Has Thrown Away His Credibility. Period.
By GEORGE VECSEY
WITH his Wayne Newton mustache and his expensive suit, Rafael Palmeiro oozed sincerity, under oath. He claimed he wanted to distance himself from the accusations of Jose Canseco, sitting right there, who had written that Palmeiro had used steroids when they were teammates in Texas in 1992 and '93.

"I have never used steroids. Period," Palmeiro testified March 17, in front of Congress. "I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never."

Now a new word has crept, and I do mean crept, into Palmeiro's vocabulary. The word is "intentionally." Because Rafael Palmeiro, with his 3,018 hits and 569 home runs, has tested positive for steroids and must sit out a 10-day suspension that sounds more like lifetime suspicion.

Palmeiro has been detected with some form of steroids in his system, in the first year of serious testing after many years of stonewalling by the players union.

The players were finally forced - against the dig-in-your-heels tactics of their union's executive director, Donald Fehr - to undergo tougher testing, and look who got caught: a bona fide candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame, at least until yesterday.

Other stars like Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have testified before the grand jury investigating the Balco laboratory in California. Palmeiro got tripped up by a basic steroid test, presumably administered since that March 17 session in Congress.

That day, he came off the best of the five stars, which isn't saying much. Mark McGwire was pathetic. Sammy Sosa hid behind an interpreter. Curt Schilling, not accused of anything, turned unctuously bland when asked about drugs in baseball. And Palmeiro insisted he wanted to set the record straight:

"I am against the use of steroids," Palmeiro said that day. "I don't think athletes should use steroids, and I don't think our kids should use them. That point of view is one, unfortunately, that is not shared by our former colleague, Jose Canseco. Mr. Canseco is an unashamed advocate for increased steroid use by all athletes."

Good grief. Given the current suspension, the brazen Canseco now comes off as the most forthright of that sorry lot.

Palmeiro wants us to believe he has no idea how the foreign substance got into his system. But something good will come out of this, he insisted yesterday. From this shameful day onward, Rafael Palmeiro is volunteering to be an object lesson to children.

"You have to be careful what you're taking," he said, adding that children had to be careful about accepting "supplements" and "vitamins."

Of course they must. Children must also be careful not to stuff beans up their noses or stick their tongues against frozen playground poles in winter. But they probably already know that. Only a ballplayer with 20 years in the major leagues is dumb enough to swallow a bunch of stuff without getting it cleared by a doctor or a pharmacist.

Palmeiro said yesterday that he could not discuss the specifics of his positive test. His logic for why he would never knowingly take steroids was: "Why would I do this in a season when I went before Congress? It makes no sense. I'm not a crazy person. I'm not stupid."

We have all seen prosecutors on "Perry Mason" break into helpless giggles at lines like that.

People cheat. People get caught. People rationalize. Having been around other sports in which drugs and testing are part of the culture - track and field, Olympic cross-country skiing and cycling come to mind - I have come to regard athletes as essentially an addicted subsociety, even worse than the general population because the rewards are so high.

Anybody who believes athletes' bluster and dog-ate-the-homework denials deserves the disillusionment that sets in down the road. I've heard Ben Johnson and Diego Maradona insist there must be some kind of mistake.

Unless Palmeiro can come up with proof that somebody maliciously sprinkled bad stuff on his pancakes, he has to live with the broader shame that now comes from this suspension. Ten days are nothing. Welcome back, Raffy, you're hitting fifth tonight.

But if he retires after this season, Palmeiro will be up for election to the Hall of Fame in five years. He was already facing skepticism as a hitter with excellent career totals who had never dominated his sport.

Aside from the Viagra commercials (exactly how much money can a star possibly need?), this suspension is now the defining moment in Rafael Palmeiro's career - not some hot streak when he carried his team through a September pennant race, not some midnight-hour showdown in late October.

Rafael Palmeiro will forever be known for his positive test, four and a half months after his steadfast denial to Congress. What a coincidence.

E-mail: [email protected]



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[mick]

Originally posted by Dan_ref


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/sp.../02vecsey.html

August 2, 2005
Orioles' Palmeiro Has Thrown Away His Credibility. Period.
By GEORGE VECSEY
WITH his Wayne Newton mustache and his expensive suit, Rafael Palmeiro oozed sincerity, under oath. He claimed he wanted to distance himself from the accusations of Jose Canseco, sitting right there, who had written that Palmeiro had used steroids when they were teammates in Texas in 1992 and '93.

"I have never used steroids. Period," Palmeiro testified March 17, in front of Congress. "I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never."

Now a new word has crept, and I do mean crept, into Palmeiro's vocabulary. The word is "intentionally." Because Rafael Palmeiro, with his 3,018 hits and 569 home runs, has tested positive for steroids and must sit out a 10-day suspension that sounds more like lifetime suspicion.

Palmeiro has been detected with some form of steroids in his system, in the first year of serious testing after many years of stonewalling by the players union.

The players were finally forced - against the dig-in-your-heels tactics of their union's executive director, Donald Fehr - to undergo tougher testing, and look who got caught: a bona fide candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame, at least until yesterday.

Other stars like Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have testified before the grand jury investigating the Balco laboratory in California. Palmeiro got tripped up by a basic steroid test, presumably administered since that March 17 session in Congress.

That day, he came off the best of the five stars, which isn't saying much. Mark McGwire was pathetic. Sammy Sosa hid behind an interpreter. Curt Schilling, not accused of anything, turned unctuously bland when asked about drugs in baseball. And Palmeiro insisted he wanted to set the record straight:

"I am against the use of steroids," Palmeiro said that day. "I don't think athletes should use steroids, and I don't think our kids should use them. That point of view is one, unfortunately, that is not shared by our former colleague, Jose Canseco. Mr. Canseco is an unashamed advocate for increased steroid use by all athletes."

Good grief. Given the current suspension, the brazen Canseco now comes off as the most forthright of that sorry lot.

Palmeiro wants us to believe he has no idea how the foreign substance got into his system. But something good will come out of this, he insisted yesterday. From this shameful day onward, Rafael Palmeiro is volunteering to be an object lesson to children.

"You have to be careful what you're taking," he said, adding that children had to be careful about accepting "supplements" and "vitamins."

Of course they must. Children must also be careful not to stuff beans up their noses or stick their tongues against frozen playground poles in winter. But they probably already know that. Only a ballplayer with 20 years in the major leagues is dumb enough to swallow a bunch of stuff without getting it cleared by a doctor or a pharmacist.

Palmeiro said yesterday that he could not discuss the specifics of his positive test. His logic for why he would never knowingly take steroids was: "Why would I do this in a season when I went before Congress? It makes no sense. I'm not a crazy person. I'm not stupid."

We have all seen prosecutors on "Perry Mason" break into helpless giggles at lines like that.

People cheat. People get caught. People rationalize. Having been around other sports in which drugs and testing are part of the culture - track and field, Olympic cross-country skiing and cycling come to mind - I have come to regard athletes as essentially an addicted subsociety, even worse than the general population because the rewards are so high.

Anybody who believes athletes' bluster and dog-ate-the-homework denials deserves the disillusionment that sets in down the road. I've heard Ben Johnson and Diego Maradona insist there must be some kind of mistake.

Unless Palmeiro can come up with proof that somebody maliciously sprinkled bad stuff on his pancakes, he has to live with the broader shame that now comes from this suspension. Ten days are nothing. Welcome back, Raffy, you're hitting fifth tonight.

But if he retires after this season, Palmeiro will be up for election to the Hall of Fame in five years. He was already facing skepticism as a hitter with excellent career totals who had never dominated his sport.

Aside from the Viagra commercials (exactly how much money can a star possibly need?), this suspension is now the defining moment in Rafael Palmeiro's career - not some hot streak when he carried his team through a September pennant race, not some midnight-hour showdown in late October.

Rafael Palmeiro will forever be known for his positive test, four and a half months after his steadfast denial to Congress. What a coincidence.

E-mail: [email protected]



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Dan,
George Vecsey is merely parroting what you have already presented.

Still no one answers the questions of why, where, who.
Still no one questions the system.
Secrecy runs rampant.

Burn the Witch! Burn! Burn!
mick

[Dan_ref]

Originally posted by mick


Dan,
George Vecsey is merely parroting what you have already presented.

Think I should sue him?

[mick]

Originally posted by Dan_ref

Think I should sue him?

No.
Burn the Witch! Burn! Burn!

[M&M Guy]

Originally posted by mick

Don't journalists write to the 8th grade level? Or is it up or down in the last 40 years?

Yes.
He's guilty of the policy in place.
And like I said, "It's broke."

...A sprinkle of salt on your potato salad? ...Pinch of pepper on your steak? Possible, but I don't care to go there.
mick

Actually, journalism is good practice for conversing with some of the people on this board...

I'm not sure the system is "broke". I wouldn't think Donald Fehr would allow anything resembling a defective system to be implemented. I'm not a big union guy, but I do recognize the MLPA is probably the most powerful union around, so it would be hard for me to acknowledge the union getting pressured into something "broken". So, it all comes back to Rafael and his choices.

You keep mentioning to burn the witch. You could be saying that about the system. Are you saying there's something you don't understand (the system), so let's get rid of it before it destroys us all?!

To me, this whole thing is like the day the skunk wandered into your backyard. The day was fine, then it started to stink. This whole mess stinks. I would rather (as much as it pains me) talk about how the Cubs will probably blow it again this year, than talk about steroids, cheating, gambling, whatever. It ruins the all-American game for me.

Care for any M&M's? I have plain, peanut, and the kind with sprinkles...(oops, never mind).