 |
| Listen to Mr Mackey children |
Josh Inglis
July 17th 2013
@B2BSJinglis
Lets face it, drugs are bad, mmmkay. Especially steroids. They make our eggs small, damage our little swimmers, give us acne, kill all the good professional wrestlers too soon and tarnish everything that the MLB has done in the past twenty years.
Did you know that between the years of 1961 and 1994 only five players in the entire MLB reached the 50 homerun mark (Mantle 54, Maris 61, Mays 52, Foster 52 and Fielder 51) compared to 24 players from 1995 to 2012 (Sosa and Mcguire four times, A-Rod thrice and Griffey twice to name a few).
 |
| A young Mcgwire |
In the current age of baseball, players with abnormal spikes in their power output are thought to be using PEDs immediately and if not found guilty, assumed to be better cheaters than their accused coworkers. Case in point Chris Davis of the Baltimore Orioles who almost had 40 homeruns and 100 RBIs before the All Star game yesterday. With the Biogenesis case floating over Bud Selig and his operation, the steroid talking heads in the media and on the Internet have chosen Davis as a whipping boy for abnormal power, ie steroid usage. Let's take a look at Chris Davis' power number throughout his career just to see if there is validity in their argument.
At four years in AAA Davis averaged a line of .337/.397/.609 over 2007 plate appearances. Those look like pretty good power indications to me. So maybe Chris Davis just learned to take a few more pitches this year and became a better contact hitter. But if you want to throw Davis under the bus, be my guest there are many others who will back that side of the story. A better bet for "body tinkering" would be Jose Bautista but as an Ontarian I can't do it to Joey Bats.
 |
| The new "target" |
*cough* didn't SLG over .420 in first 6 seasons in the show, then jumped to .617 in 2010.
*hack* In the previous nine years of his career (majors and minors) before his 54 HRs in 2010 he had hit only 124 HRs. So he matched 43% of his career homeruns in that one year alone. If Davis hits 54HRs this year it will only match 23% of his professional homeruns.
Sorry Jose. Still loves ya.
All this is besides the point however. I'm not that interested in a person, who in a league of cheaters, decides he needs to do what the majority of players are doing in order to stay competitive and keep those pay cheques coming in. Hell, Miguel Cabrera could have killed people during his 2011 DUI, but we just brushed that under the carpet and applauded him for his triple crown. I'm more interested in all banned substances and how they effect the user, their profession and others around them. Positively (if any) and negatively.
There seems to be a double standard here, where performance enhancing drugs are the worst thing possible to the sport, but reckless endangerment of oneself and of the people around them is less of an infraction. Is upholding the history of professional baseball records worth the witch hunt when other equally wrong doings receive a slap on the wrist?
Can we agree that there are equally or slightly more important issues than just PEDs alone?
Like who takes drugs that are detrimental to their athletic performance and how it effects their game. For example
Tim Lincecum
Ya maybe Tim has lost something. Maybe that delivery had something to do with it but one thing is for sure Tim smokes dope, probably the least enhancing of the banned substances. Tim overcame videogames and junk food* and managed to become a 4x All star, 3x NL strikeout leader, 2x World Champion, 2x NL Cy Young winner and has a no-hitter to his name. I feel good if I wash the dishes on the stuff so big ups to Timmy.
*Tim has admitted that his diet includes frequent stops at the In-N-Out Burger where he orders three double cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a milkshake
Dock Ellis
This man pitched a no-hitter on the same stuff that is known to cause hyperreflexia, tremors and The White Album.
other "good stories" Michael Phelps (dope) and Michael Irvin (coke) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (medicinal marijuana user)
So without further adieu
The Marijuana All Stars
- Ricky Williams running back Football
This man quit pro sports so he could smoke dope.
- Ross Rebagliati Olympian snowboarder
Canadians will know this name from the 1998 winter Olympics where Ross won the first gold medal in snowboarding Olympic history. He tested positive for THC and was stripped of his gold medal. In an amazing turn of events his medal was given back to him as the OIC said that THC was not a banned substance and definitely not a performance enhancer.
- Nate Newton O-lineman Football
Six time All star and three time world champion, Nate Newton was busted driving around with 213 pounds of marijuana. However his lesson was not learned because five weeks later, while on probation, he was caught again. This time transporting 175 pounds. He did 30 months in jail for his crimes.
- Bill Lee Pitcher Baseball
119 Game winner and a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame used to put dope on his pancakes before games. The reason was that it made him impervious to the bus fumes while he ran to the ball park.
Now athletes who dabble in these extra curriculars are bound to slip up now and then and when people who make a lot of money turn to drugs it can become ugly.
The coke and crack train has derailed many good careers such as Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Lawrence Taylor, Shawn "wrap it up" Kemp, Bob Probert and when three time All star and two time world champion Kevin Stevens was caught in a questionable hotel room with a lady of the evening and her pimp, the prostitute had this to say about Mr. Stevens " I'm a crackhead but he's a crack monster." She later complained she "couldn't get high, I was having to light his pipe so many times."
There are plenty of sad stories of addiction and the path that it leads to and there are some more uplifting stories of the battle to sobriety (Josh Hamilton). The stress that professionals athletes must endure is unimaginable to me. I do have sympathy for the PEDers, dope tokers and DUIers, do I condone their actions? Certainly not but it is all too often that we judge athletes as if they are just as average as us. Well they aren't. They make more money, have more powerful bosses, their customers are unforgiving and too passionate at times and every mistake they make is played over and over again and spread throughout the entire world. Just imagine if every move you made at the workplace
was recorded and analyzed as much as professional athletes. No thanks.
Josh Inglis is an award winning
writer bowler and appreciates it when his students don't point out the fact that he is losing his hair. He currently lives in Taiwan with his Fiance and Tupac.
At the beginning of the 2012 season, no one could have predicted that Adrian Peterson would be named MVP of the NFL. It isn’t because Peterson lacks talent, but no one figured he would be healthy or solid enough for a 16-game schedule one year after having his knee repaired. Now that he has set the bar for knee injury recoveries, can Robert Griffin III be trusted to make a full comeback as well?
