Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

The Game Room
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You folks are missing the big picture here.

They still haven’t developed a test to positively determine the existence and use of HGH. Also, low-level testosterone injections slide by. So, who the hell knows what is going on? A-Fraud was lying then and he’s lying now. He’s only admitting what he’s been caught doing. But that doesn’t mean jack shit if he’s been HGHing.

Bonds and Clemens were real HGH users. Bonds freakin’ head grew a full size, and his feet grew a couple of inches! What 32 year old man do you know has purchased a new pair of shoes because his feet began to grow again? I still have a few pair I wore in high school.

Clemens is just as rotten as Bonds, and I hope their records get written off the books. Baseball is really the only sport where the numbers matter, and I think it’s time to go back to Aaron’s career record and Ruth and Maris. We need to flush this era. The players made their money, so big deal if the hall of fame is beyond them.

Older players simply can’t recover from injuries as quickly as younger ones. Clemens wasn’t superhuman. He had HGH pumped into his system that allowed him to throw 95 mph fastballs into his 40’s.

Schilling is right. Now that one name is out, release them all. Everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent now. The issue of them being released at all is a very disturbing issue, and that person should go to jail. So should the union rep who gave the advanced notices.

What a clusterfuck this is. Who’s next? Pick a name. How about Randy Johnson? Griffey? Jeter? Hell, if Brady Anderson could beef up and hit 50 homeruns, why wouldn’t everyone else start sucking them down? CC Sabathia? The man has incredible arm strength and tremendous recovery ability. It could go on and on.

Nolan Ryan used to cheat… he used to put a hole in front of the pitching rubber and throw from it when he thought he could get away with it. And that one foot made a difference when the Ryan Express was on the mound. Gaylord was a hack, but he was a good cheater who mastered his craft of cheating. I can live with those two in the hall. But pumping your body up with unnatural products to become something you could never be? Don’t see it being right. And until they find a test for HGH, I’m sure that will continue to be popular.

I used to love baseball. I think it sucks now. And the steroid era is the reason for my dislike of it.

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How exactly are you defining the “steroid era”? Steroids and amphetamines were standard procedure in baseball for half a century.

This guy (a teammate of Hank Aaron) claims that more players were on steroids in the 70s than are now. That makes sense: The culture was more permissive of drug use, there were no rules against them, and the negative side effects were less well known.

I can understand wanting to pretend current players are somehow worse, but the only difference is that public opinion has turned against what baseball has been doing all along.

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And yet you think that A-Rod not hitting as well as he did in his “prime” is damning evidence… (Not that we need evidence for A-Rod.) You’re all over the place, MOIDALIZE.

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All good points but I thought Canseco indicated that he and Big Mac started on steroids as early as '89.

I would like to point out these two ideas contradict each other. As you pointed out, many players would have cheated with proscribed drugs and never got caught and some are probably still using proscribed drugs to cheat. Releasing all the names only shows us which 104 got caught, not which players are clean. I would like to see the list, but it won’t prove the other 800+ players tested were clean.

BTW: I don’t think a Union Rep that gave advance notice violated any laws. The drug testing was not a legal matter but a contractual one.

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Incidentally, was in the steroids that caused Alex Rodriguez’s skin to turn orange? What the hell is wrong with his face? He looks like a tangerine.

I’m starting to think the guy has mental problems. He appears to have no conception of how his behaviour will affect the opinions of other humans.

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That was my exact point. Longevity or injury history alone is not enough evidence - particularly if both durability and breakdowns are considered evidence of steroid use.

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When did I say that?

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I’ve seen two things do that to a person. One is the spray-on tan that the gals use.

The other is a diet that includes an appreciable, maybe almost an extreme, amount of carrots. My guess would be that he puts them in a… umm… juicer.

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Guys, we know that Griffey hasn’t been using steroids or HGH.

He’s been drinking that damn nerve and brain tonic.

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I see your point, and you are right. But if I were clean, and I had a legit shot of going to the hall, I’d take a drug test right now. To your point, though… the list released will not show who’s using HGH or other PED’s that we don’t even know about.

You may be right here, but for some reason I thought Congress pushed for the testing, and the union agreed. But I admit my memory is fuzzy on the sequence. In any event, if it wasn’t illegal, it certainly was outside the spirit of the testing. My biggest question on the supposed anonymous testing is why were names ever recorded in the first place? If it was just to get an idea of the level of the problem, then why not just go into each clubhouse, pass out the appropriate number of cups, have someone accompany the player into the bathroom to make sure no urine substitution was happening, and take it away without any name associated with it at all?

That’s strange to me.

This is a good question. I don’t know the answer to a day, but I can say that two things stand out in my mind that made me look at baseball differently. The first was Brady Anderson. I lived in Baltimore at the time, and this guy was a pee-wee one year, and the next he pounded out 50 home runs. At the time, very few people hit 50 home runs in baseball history, and it was a fairly big deal. Willie Stargell never hit 50 home runs in a season (I think). George Foster did it twice (again, from memory) and it was a huge deal. How many times did Hank Aaron do it? 50 home runs was the barometer for a monster year, and then it began to become routine.

The second thing was the bash brothers in Oakland. Take a look at Mark McGuire’s rookie card. He was a skinny kid with a big swing. Dave Kingman-like. Canseco shows up, clearly muscle bound, and McGuire grows into a monster. Sosa turned into a monster. I’ve seen friends at the gym on steroids, so I’m a bit familiar with the changes that can be achieved. I am not familiar with HGH, other than what I’ve read.

amphetamines for some reason don’t bother me as much as the 'roid/HGH use. I’ve never taken any of these things, but I did play baseball through college, and I always thought amphetamines were just “uppers”, like 6 cups of coffee. Clearly performance enhancing if you needed a pick me up, but would it cause the user to hit homers? I don’t know.

As far as ‘roid use through the 70’s, I am sure that happened, but to what extent we’ll never know. Could Hammerin’ Hank have used them? God I hope not. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Ricky Henderson used HGH or something. He was stealing bases in his late 30’s and cranking home runs too. The man was ripped. No evidence, though.

What would you propose? Just ignore the whole era and let the home run records stand?

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I still think a separate room in the Hall for the steroid era would be good. The problem is defining the beginning and end of the era. End assumes it has ended. I have doubts. HGH and newer stuff come out over and over. It is a quandary . No answer will satisfy everybody. But, you almost have to assume everybody was dirty.

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Nah that is easy. Just start it at about 1880 and end it when they stop playing baseball.

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And then you’d have to explain why the steroid era deserves a separate wing and the amphetamine era doesn’t. Maybe the real answer here is to drop our illusions about baseball.

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I’m sure the players’ union discourages this kind of thinking. A few players could step forward voluntarily for testing, which would make the others look bad; the more players willing to step forward, the more scrutiny on the rest. Also consider that even if this situation were to happen it would only prove you’re clean now (of any detectable substances) not that you were always clean.

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Has baseball adopted the urine sample storage yet so when a test becomes available they can go back and retest for HGH? I believe that biking and the Olympics do this already but I don’t know if MLB or NFL do yet.
Marley23, do you really put bennies in the same category as HGH and Steroids?

Fish, the union has already discouraged players stepping forward to be tested.

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Why shouldn’t they be? They’re against the rules for the same reasons, they’re used by players looking to gain an edge… what’s the difference?

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I think the whole notion of the personality qualification for the Hall of Fame is silly. There are all kinds of fame — if you can’t be famous, be infamous.

The Hall of Fame would sell about as many tickets to see Pete Rose there as they would lose from people not wanting to see Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe, etc. The Hall already has its share of racists, cheaters and assholes. The only reason to perpetuate this nonsense is to give owners an axe to hold over the heads of players to enforce good behavior as defined by the owners themselves. When was the last time you saw an owner get kicked out of the HoF?

Edit: I know, What Exit?. I said so in my post.

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The union hasn’t agreed to it. Given the treatment of their anonyomous testing results, I highly doubt that they would.

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I see a difference between them is why I asked. Instead of bennies a player could drink many cups of coffee or ‘energy’ drinks. This is possibly and even probably more dangerous then the bennies.

The bennies did not lead to an explosion of home runs and appears to have been common back to the 50s.

Hawkeyeop, the union may need to be forced to allow it if the sport has any hopes of cleaning up. It is the threat of retroactive testing that will keep most players off the stuff. Then mostly only marginal players will take a chance.

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And a player could load up on creatine and other legal supplements instead of steriods. They took bennies because they thought they worked better, just like people take steroids because they thought they would work better.

Um so?

If you want to make sure that all players are 100% clean than you need to have surveillance on them 24/7. Obviously the players wouldn’t and shouldn’t agree to that. They have a right to privacy. You need to find the line that balances the rights of players and the integrity of the game. This is why the union can’t allow players to go get tested on their own. It undermines the privacy of the rest of their members.

Now if I’m a player, regardless as to what my guilt, I’d be outraged if anon records leaked. I’d be extremely hesitant to trust these people in protecting my medical records. The desire for people to believe a sport clean, an impossible goal, is not worth trammeling on privacy rights. It isn’t like those extra home-runs were a danger to society.