- Thread starter A.Hidalgo
- Start date
Sosa will soon retire....officially
aranoid:You grossly underestimate the effects of a well-administered doping regimen. If you do not have to deal with the regular aches and pains that athletes endure because of steroid use you will be fresher. Your bat speed increases and you can hit the ball farther and with more power.
HGH improves eyesight. So you see the ball better and your reaction time increases-put those two together and it is easy to see why not only these players were hitting home runs farther than ever, but their batting averages improved over the same period their home run totals increased.
Add to this mix the increased recovery time from nagging injuries that put normal players in slumps or on the DL and there you have it.
Yes, you are correct. But the enhancements from steroid use are astronomical. It can make a good player a great player, and can catapult a great player into the stratosphere.
It can also lead to these improbable renaissances we've witnessed over the last few years, where players put up numbers that do not compare to their previous body of work at ages when a normal athlete would see declines in performance due to age.
As for Albert Pujols, we'll never know about him because the testing program in MLB is a joke. The hormone parameters are set too high and testing urine samples in this day and age is the modern equivalent of driving a car with your feet like Fred Flintstone while everyone else is flying around with a George Jetson jetpack.
He can spend the rest of his career doping and never get caught. So we can't even go by the testing protocols to prove innocence or guilt.
Remember, if Manny has tested for a 3:1 testosterone/epitestosterone level, he would not have been caught despite having three time the level of testosterone as a normal male. His was 4:1, which is what set off the alarms.
He is guilty of being an idiot, and if his doping regimen was administered by a professional he would of never have gotten caught.
Pujols has been playing for years with an elbow that requires Tommy John surgery. I'm not sure whether he's had it or not, but there is no way he can play at a high level with practically one arm. It is just not possible.
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Good post, I just wonder why Pujols' name has not been mentioned at all? No one raises an eyebrow with him. I mean he is a good, don't get me wrong, but his consistency and added elbow problems should sound alarms. Why is Pujols' potentially "getting away with it." Or is it possible that he is, in fact, as good as he is and is natural?
His numbers are monstrous. Rarely have we seen a player be THIS good, THIS long. It's sad actually. What happens if and when Pujols gets caught?
Mr. Lu
Good post, I just wonder why Pujols' name has not been mentioned at all? No one raises an eyebrow with him. I mean he is a good, don't get me wrong, but his consistency and added elbow problems should sound alarms. Why is Pujols' potentially "getting away with it." Or is it possible that he is, in fact, as good as he is and is natural?
His numbers are monstrous. Rarely have we seen a player be THIS good, THIS long. It's sad actually. What happens if and when Pujols gets caught?
Mr. Lu
This just makes the Babe and Aaron look all the more special.
As far as Pujols, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't dope, as he is after all a big guy and has a somewhat unique batting move which enables him to turn his right hip completely in on his swing (he slides/turns his left foot during the swing) - a sure recipe for being able to turn easily and apply immense power on the ball.
As far as Pujols, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't dope, as he is after all a big guy and has a somewhat unique batting move which enables him to turn his right hip completely in on his swing (he slides/turns his left foot during the swing) - a sure recipe for being able to turn easily and apply immense power on the ball.
Profile or not
It seems the vast majority of minor leaguers caught are Latino as well. Pure statistics with the Dominicans, there are so many more in the game now, and more to come.
Well well, I don't think we have to wait those four years after all. Set up a time and place and I'll be there.:cheeky:
The article by ESPN is an excellent expose about the whole roids issue. Out of the whole mess comes out a hero for me. His name is Steve Wilstein. The reading is long but its worth it.
ESPN.com - E-Ticket: Who Knew?
ESPN.com - E-Ticket: Who Knew?
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Dominicans care less about this. Sosa and the rest of their bums are still heroes. They've got cash and fame and went from being nobody to being somebody, quick. The Dominican way. A very Dominican story if you ask me. They will look to justify his drug use and the drug us of any other athlete. But what more can you expect from a county/culture/society where lying, thieving and corrupting is the norm, accepted and expected?
The story didn't make front page news, there is no backlash or an outcry and no one has even mentioned the negatives these revelations have on the new generation of ball players. It's a dirty culture of do what you can to get what you can, how you can, no matter who you hurt in the process. Indicative of many of the social problems in this country.
And by the way as for the American players who get caught like Clemens, Bonds, Caminiti etc. They aren't above reprimand, they are just as dirty and just as culpable. They're reasoning might be different and represents other dirty aspects of American culture/society, but this is about the DR so I will stay on that topic.
Mr. Lu
Dominicans care less about this. Sosa and the rest of their bums are still heroes. They've got cash and fame and went from being nobody to being somebody, quick. The Dominican way. A very Dominican story if you ask me. They will look to justify his drug use and the drug us of any other athlete. But what more can you expect from a county/culture/society where lying, thieving and corrupting is the norm, accepted and expected?
The story didn't make front page news, there is no backlash or an outcry and no one has even mentioned the negatives these revelations have on the new generation of ball players. It's a dirty culture of do what you can to get what you can, how you can, no matter who you hurt in the process. Indicative of many of the social problems in this country.
And by the way as for the American players who get caught like Clemens, Bonds, Caminiti etc. They aren't above reprimand, they are just as dirty and just as culpable. They're reasoning might be different and represents other dirty aspects of American culture/society, but this is about the DR so I will stay on that topic.
Mr. Lu
By that logic, so is Matt Holliday, David Wright, Jim Thome, Frank Thomas, Roy Halladay, Jake Peavy.
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It's an unfortunate reality for me. To me they are all tainted. The game isn't clean. And this era of players has to suffer the consequences. We can never know if they are clean or not, but the shadow hovers above them. That's just as bad.
Mr. Lu
It's an unfortunate reality for me. To me they are all tainted. The game isn't clean. And this era of players has to suffer the consequences. We can never know if they are clean or not, but the shadow hovers above them. That's just as bad.
Mr. Lu
Here are the factors that make Dominican ballplayers more susceptible to steroid use-
1) Availability-Anyone, and I mean anyone, can get steroids over the counter at a local pharmacy with no prescription. And the prices, though expensive by local standards, are still much cheaper than in the US/Canada, which are hampered by black market price increases and dubious quality.
With steroids in the US you have no idea where the stuff originates from and no way to tell unless the source has a legitimate prescription, or if they have a connection with a person who works in the pharmaceutical industry.
2) Ignorance-I can tell you first-hand accounts about how absolutely and willfully ignorant Latin athletes are about ingesting steroids. I am shocked that more of these athletes don't drop dead from the stupid things they do, from improper handling/storage of steroids to improper administration to outright overdosing. And they make these mistakes with a sense of stubborn pride that only a BRUTO can feel when they do something the wrong way despite being told differently.
3) Buscones/Street Agents-In a country where father figures are woefully absent from the lives of many impoverished children, the influence of these characters cannot be underestimated. We've all come across someone in the DR who is the loud talker, the arrogant alpha male who commands attention and respect because he has a bombastic personality with an ego totally out of proportion to his expertise and character.
And in many instances Dominicans gravitate to these people and never question their expertise. An uneducated kid from some campo is not going to question these guys and more than likely the families of these children have no idea what type of questions to ask.
4) The Money-A street agent's sole purpose and reason for being is to feed players to baseball academies. If the player gets signed by a team from "las grandes ligas" he gets paid by deducting a huge percentage of the player's signing bonus.
This is a business deal made way in advance when the players are recruited as children, a tacit understanding between all involved that the buscon is in line to take a huge percentage of the signing bonus for all the "work" he's put in to develop the player to get him to this point.
This has lead to corruption so ingrained in the system that even employees from major league teams were getting their hands in on the action.
5) Get it easy, get it fast, morality be damned-Mr. Lu stated this better than me, so I will quote him directly-
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I agree.
The game looked the other way after the 1994 strike year almost killed the game (I quit giving a crap about baseball then). Steroids came into the lockerroom, the ball got juiced, and the Big Hitters emerged.
The crowd went wild..."Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
But at what cost?
I lost friends I played college and pro ball with to steroids. Suicide, drop-dead heart attacks, enlarged hearts, liver cancer and brain cancer. That stuff is truly making a deal with the devil.
I took them, the old crude dianabol, for two months in 1973. I gained 25 pounds of muscle, gained 35 lbs. (they also retain water), my bench went up 100 lbs, I became hyper-aggressive, my face grew zits and my balls shrunk. Scared the crap out of me. But unlike many other players, I knew football was a means to an end, not my life. Others saw sports as their only hope and weren't so scared. I was lucky.
IMO, most all the MLB records after 1994 are tainted.
I don't know about this. Sammy the former shoeshine boy has lived a life that many can only dream of.
He got the adulation, he got paid, and will live the rest of his days as a rich man without a care in the world.
Now, the sportswriters of America want you to think they are going to right these wrongs by withholding induction into the Hall Of Fame, lording it over Sosas' head as if it meant entry into the pearly gates of Heaven.
Regardless of what Sosa says or doesn't say, he doesn't care. No one that profited on his side cares(friends, family, entourage) and the Dominican people don't care.
All these players cheated to get paid, and they will continue to do so as long as guys like Angel Presinal continue to hold godlike status in the DR in the eyes of young Dominican ballplayers.
Regardless of what we here think, they all want to be the next Sammy Sosa. And I'm sure they aren't too particular as to how they get there.