Lesson from A-Rod ...

2»

Replies

  • scottaworley
    scottaworley Posts: 871 Member
    Cheating to me is not the issue. I get that people do it, and hey, if you don't get caught, more power to you. But you got caught, don't try to justify why. Accept it and move on.

    He wasn't caught. He never tested positive for PEDs.

    Neither was Lance Armstrong.

    A-Rod DID admit to it though..
    I thought Lance finally came out and admitted to it, though. Or was it just that he stopped fighting it? I thought he stopped fighting it and then admitted it later. I don't know. I don't follow closely enough to remember.

    Lance did, eventually.
    OK, good. I thought that happened, and then I thought maybe I imagined it and I really am losing my mind! lol

    A-Rod seems to be doing exactly what Lance did, though. I'm guessing he did it. It annoys me because I think it makes mockery of the game, but at the same time, I realize they all do it. In the end, it affects me not at all. None of the suspensions affected my team, either.

    Lose Nelly Cruz and tell me how you feel about it :(
    lol
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    Lose Nelly Cruz and tell me how you feel about it :(
    lol

    Seeing as I'm not a Rangers fan ....
  • lilRicki
    lilRicki Posts: 4,555 Member
    A-Rod got 211 game suspension, not 50...they wanted to set an example
  • GorillaNJ
    GorillaNJ Posts: 4,024 Member
    If someone came to you tomorrow and said I have a pill you can take that will make you 50% more effective at your job and guarantee that you will be rich beyond most people's dreams... would you take it? What would stop you from taking it?

    Morals?

    Ask your morals to make a mortgage payment...
  • tpittsley77
    tpittsley77 Posts: 607 Member
    If someone came to you tomorrow and said I have a pill you can take that will make you 50% more effective at your job and guarantee that you will be rich beyond most people's dreams... would you take it? What would stop you from taking it?

    Don't bring perspective into this. People are trying to be holier than thou.

    Hahaha I love this. So much performance is expected of these athletes, with so much on the line for them. Expecting them to play so much, injured and all. Its no wonder they use PEDs. And with someone that is contracted in with such a huge contract, there is more pressure on him to perform. Many things need to change in professional sports before this issue will go away.
  • miracole
    miracole Posts: 492 Member
    The problem is the new standard that has been set. The average number of home runs in a season now is about 5000. Compare that with the average of 3000 in the 70s or less than 2000 in the 50s. Who wants to pay MLB prices for games where you'd see less than a third the average home runs hit in comparison to what you get now? Clearly it's not just a couple players juicing here.

    ETA source of my statistics: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/hihr6.shtml

    Morally it's not right, but you can see where the pressure comes from. I think A-Rod is less than laudable for not facing the music, but would you really want to be made an example of if EVERYONE were doing the same thing as you and you just happened to be the bigger name? Especially if you were suspended for more games than what is in the player's agreement. Same goes for Armstrong, he was definitely not the only person doping in his Tour winning streak, he was just the best of the dopers. I think it's human nature to not want to be made an example of, even if you were doing the wrong thing.
  • ryry_
    ryry_ Posts: 4,966 Member
    With how prevalent steroid use is in professional baseball, I would say the playing field is pretty level. For every all-star who juices, there's a few hundred nobodies who also juice. Just about every record that currently stands in the sport was set by someone who juiced.

    Seriously this. As someone who was good, but not good enough to play professionally, looking back at the alternative (living a desk job life), I probably would have juiced my brains out to see if I could get another 5-10 mph on the fastball and go from a mediocre mid 80's to mid 90's give this guy a signing bonus.

    Off the top of my head I can think of 15 guys that openly talked about taking them that never did anything, except maybe make it to the lower minor leagues. People act he is the only one, no just the only one who got caught. You guys know there is an offseason right? Where testing doesn't occur. You can hit a cycle and take your other meds to come off of it and get ready for spring training. That's why you always see people get caught in spring training more than anytime else because they don't cycle off it right. Not to mention microdosing that isn't even detectable by current drug tests because the type of test is too expensive to administer on that scale.

    This conversation always reminds me a kid I played against in high school. Tall Lefty, threw low mid 90's and dropped bombs as well. First pick in the second round (million dollar or some signing bonus). He was a "natural" talent. A phenom. Oh wait, 2 years in he was suspended for PED's. Guess not.

    I'm sure there are clean players, lots of them. But this isn't a handful of bad apples, its an orchard.
  • TeachTheGirl
    TeachTheGirl Posts: 2,091 Member
    If someone came to you tomorrow and said I have a pill you can take that will make you 50% more effective at your job and guarantee that you will be rich beyond most people's dreams... would you take it? What would stop you from taking it?

    Morals?

    Ask your morals to make a mortgage payment...

    Thankfully I don't have a multimillion dollar lifestyle.
  • BeachIron
    BeachIron Posts: 6,490 Member
    With how prevalent steroid use is in professional baseball, I would say the playing field is pretty level. For every all-star who juices, there's a few hundred nobodies who also juice. Just about every record that currently stands in the sport was set by someone who juiced.

    Seriously this. As someone who was good, but not good enough to play professionally, looking back at the alternative (living a desk job life), I probably would have juiced my brains out to see if I could get another 5-10 mph on the fastball and go from a mediocre mid 80's to mid 90's give this guy a signing bonus.

    Off the top of my head I can think of 15 guys that openly talked about taking them that never did anything, except maybe make it to the lower minor leagues. People act he is the only one, no just the only one who got caught. You guys know there is an offseason right? Where testing doesn't occur. You can hit a cycle and take your other meds to come off of it and get ready for spring training. That's why you always see people get caught in spring training more than anytime else because they don't cycle off it right. Not to mention microdosing that isn't even detectable by current drug tests because the type of test is too expensive to administer on that scale.

    This conversation always reminds me a kid I played against in high school. Tall Lefty, threw low mid 90's and dropped bombs as well. First pick in the second round (million dollar or some signing bonus). He was a "natural" talent. A phenom. Oh wait, 2 years in he was suspended for PED's. Guess not.

    I'm sure there are clean players, lots of them. But this isn't a handful of bad apples, its an orchard.

    ^ This. And it's a business like any other. It's not been a "game" in decades.
  • PlanetoftheAtheists
    PlanetoftheAtheists Posts: 112
    Thank you for reminding me why I do not watch tv.

    What a sh$thead.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    Thank you for reminding me why I do not watch tv.

    What a sh$thead.
    What does this have to do with watching TV?
  • Looking4ward
    Looking4ward Posts: 23 Member
    If someone came to you tomorrow and said I have a pill you can take that will make you 50% more effective at your job and guarantee that you will be rich beyond most people's dreams... would you take it? What would stop you from taking it?

    This isn't just a question of professional proficiency and money or morals..

    There are those of us who are susceptible to unpleasant side effects including: life threatening reactions to antibiotics,migraines from use of pain killers, severe heartburn from aspirin, dizzy spells from ginko biloba, dermatitis from hydrocortisone cream, brain fog from statins, depression triggered by alcohol.

    I've even known people who have had bad trips on pot.

    There are no guaranteed results.

    How many people will try that pill and die of it? Or have a reaction that disables them?

    How much is health worth? Money? Prestige? World records?
  • zewolf77
    zewolf77 Posts: 173 Member
    I can't stand most of the Yankees anyways. I'm with ya on setting an example for kids though. You want more? Work hard for it... don't cheat to get there.

    On top of that, if they have all the evidence they say they have against A-Roid, and don't ban him for life... Well, they need to let Shoeless Joe back in and Pete Rose also.
  • Timshel_
    Timshel_ Posts: 22,834 Member
    He cheated and that's not right, but I still think that they should stop with the anti-performance enhancing drug drive in professional sports. Allow the professional athletes to use what they want, and the rest of us will reap the benefits in terms of better entertainment and improvement in such drugs that could result the in open and honest publication and discussion of them.

    So turn it into a race to see who can chemically enhance themselves the most instead of honoring true talent? At that point, of course, those with the most money start to take over and you've cut out every good come-from-nothing story that ever graced sports history. It becomes rich families juicing kids from birth to take part in multi-million dollar drug games.

    Good call.

Categories