Are we being naive about steroids all over again?

Adding 15 pounds of muscle strictly through the gym is not far-fetched, especially if you are talking about a guy who has never taken weight-lifting seriously before.

 

Me, I think someone either needs to do some digging, or ask some tough questions. Given the current sports climate, if you're covering this player and this doesn't ring bells for you, then what are you doing?. Doesn't mean he's doing PEDs, but it sure as hell raises the question. And that's your job, raising the question.

 

I'm more annoyed by the Joe Pos stroke job on Pujols on the cover of SI last week. It's the kind of fawning thing Verducci would have loved to write about A-Rod three years ago. "This guy gets it! His family would never let him use roids! His reputation and integrity means so much to him!"

 

Nope. Pretty sure I never said that. I just find it funny that some people think pro athletes are the largest group of people juicing.

Doesn't mean we should give a free pass to anyone. But why are people coming down hard on athletes and not the actors and rappers that have blown up as big as NFL linebackers? It needs to stop across the board.

 

Exactly. There's no indication that the reporter did any critical thinking here. He just accepted the story at face value, which is exactly what many journalists from the steroid era are now kicking themselves for.

And that fawning Pujols piece in SI was ridiculous. Pujols swears, scout's honor, that he doesn't juice. Great. A-Rod swore the same thing a year ago. I hope for Posnanski's sake that Pujols doesn't make him look like a fool by testing positive someday, but if he does, would anybody really be surprised?

 

There's a coach in our town like that. Small private school. A few years ago they had a phenomenal class come through. Won a state title in baseball, went deep in the football playoffs a couple times. And a few of them showed obvious signs of roiding. Bad tempers, ridiculous physiques, some bacne, the works. Everyone knows what was going on, but it's one of those stories nobody talks about and you don't dare write without the smoking gun.
Anyway, last season I was in their fieldhouse and one of his current players started asking about that last group. He point-blank asked the coach if such-and-such was using.
Coach says he never asked the players. The less he knew the better. I could tell from his reaction he knew, though. I lost a lot of respect for him after that.

 

Those are fast-twitch fibers used selectively. Baseball and track are different games, hours of boredom followed by the minutes of fast twitching.

Football is different, to a lesser extent.

And hocket and basketball, with the hundreds of games and full-on practices spread out over eight months straight, just doesn't lend itself to that sort of help. Anyone who has ever used the stuff would let you know. It doesn't work that way, not with those amount of games, not with those practices, not with those late-morning run-throughs in any sport.

You just can't possibly compare certain types of sport with another, and the pointlessness goes to another state once you take into account the schedules that we're dealing with. This isn't baseball, where certain players stop taking BP by late July. There is mandatory testing, here, with day-after shootarounds and practices that just don't lend itself to trying to 'roid up.

Unless you're an idiot like Don MacLean.

And unless you think that NBA players, for whatever reason, have somehow out-smarted the testing system. That's a pretty big reach.

 

They aren't being tested on a consistent level like in pro sports.

The problem with equating naivete in baseball coverage from the 1980s and 1990s and early part of this decade and naivete in covering other pro sports (let's say, basketball) is that MLB did not have an actual steroids program in place until the early part of this decade. And anyone who would have tested positive in 2003 would have had their results stay secret, at least until last month, and that exception was for only one person.

Pro basketball has had that program in place for years and years and years. This isn't some wilderness for you tough-talkin' scribes put on the cynic cap 20 years too late and act all hard.

The failure of Fehr and Selig to adequately save their constituents from themselves (in terms of health for the former, and the health and stature of the game for the latter) has blinded you to the already in-place and collectively bargained testing procedures that have been in place for the NBA and NFL for decades.

There's nothing there. Jackson was one of the worst eaters in the NBA until last summer, when he made nice with his owner and his owner's choice for GM over the head of the actual GM (Chris Mullin), and worked his way in the offseason to a contract extension handed down by the over against the wishes of Mullin. Stupid move for Jackson's team, because Jackson is a dope, but that doesn't mean he's on dope.

 

Singapore, sorry but you are clueless on this, Bottom line it make you recover quicker that more than anything else helps you. If you don't think it is prevalent in hockey, especially the minor leagues, you're crazy. And I have first hand experience about steroids and minor league hockey.

Any sport that involves working out, has steroid use in it. Why wouldn't it?

 

Yeah, we were going to get there sooner or later.

 

Singapore, you're wrong about the track testing. Olympic sports test year round, in and out of 'season.' Testers can show up at your doorstep and you have to comply.

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Basketball and hockey don't lend themselves to steroid use? What? Drugs that help you recover more quickly, maintain your strength throughout the season and improve your explosiveness are of little use in those sports? And I have no idea what your point is with the practice schedules and "late-morning run throughs." Finally, why is it a stretch to think that some NBA players may have out-smarted the testing system? You think these guys are too dumb to use their wealth to pay off whoever the current Victor Conte is, creating the latest designer steroid? If track athletes can beat the testing (which is far more rigorous than the NBA's), why couldn't anyone else?

I repeat, what the hell are you talking about?