palmeiro busted for roids

god damn, just when i thought this shit had really blown over.

Yeah, I knew he proclaims himself "a good friend" of Dubya and hoes for Viagra.

Speaking of which, Bob Costas (on the way to an erectile joke) said on The Daily Show last week that he believed Palmeiro's steroid denials, and I snorted. (At the TV, not over a few lines.)

at sosh a couple guys were tossing around the 'psychopath' label re palmeiro; i'm of that bent myself honestly. not a psychopath, i mean, but

all this means to me is that if Raffy's on the juice, then the list of fellow juicers probably includes(ed) everyone this side of Craig Counsell.

And meanwhile, X players are taking HGH and there's no test. Round and round...

i dunno gear, i am (at certainly was) ready to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. and i don't think this should hinder that - dude cheated and got caught, and that's a good thing.

i don't think anyone's going to buy it morbs.

It's pretty easy to find out if the thing you're swallowing has steroids in it. All you have to do is take the list of banned substances and the supplement to a chemist and have the chemist run a check. But nobody in baseball does this because they just want to continue to cheat, and if they have to use the "WHOOPS" defense, they will.

I wish they would just ban Rafi for life.

If he didn’t take them intentionally, how did they get there?

If we accept Palmeiro’s statement that he did not intentionally take steroids, the most likely culprit would be that he took an over-the-counter supplement that contained a substance that metabolized into a substance that created the positive test. This is not unheard of, due to cross-contamination in some factories, lax testing procedures, and/or vague guidelines for what is and is not a banned substance.

Organizations like the IOC have bigass lists of disallowed medicines and supplements, some of which can be bought over the counter, precisely because of the reasons Carroll listed OR because they contain traces of banned substances. For instance, an amateur athlete who comes down with a cold or allergy attack right before a competition is generally screwed when it comes to medicinal relief because many over the counter medicines contain traces of various banned stimulents.

However, the IOC has their shit together in that every team coach and doctor has the bigass list so there is absolutely no excuse for giving your athlete something and using the "I didn't know they couldn't take that" excuse later on. OTOH, MLB still has their heads up their asses when it comes to this stuff. If this is what happened to Raffy, then it's still largely his fault (particularly in light of his advocacy for No Tolerance) but he's on a different level of guilt compared to somebody who juiced for years and bulked up huge (i.e. McGwire, IMO).

I've always thought his denials were bullshit - just because a guy doesn't look like McGwire doesn't mean he wasn't juicing.

Also, what Gear said -- the degree to which steroids improve performance (if at all) is presently unknown, we've argued about this before, etc. People have to figure this stuff out before attributing every post-1990 HOF'ers success to steroids.

Best OPS, RC27, and SECA in the AL. Just sayin'...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=2122193

he slugged below .425 once in his first few seasons and he hit a bunch of doubles w/ the cubbies in 1988, not to mention that the season BEFORE canseco arrived in tx, he hit 26 homers and 49 doubles.

i mean, maybe he was juicing all along, but it is not uncommon for players to start filling out as they move from their early twenties to mid-twenties just owing to regular mlb conditioning programs.

Heard one of the WFAN hosts -- the usually harmless joker Steve Somers (?) -- speculating last night that Giambi could be BACK ON the stuff! (ie, that he's had his 2 annual tests -- it's 2, right? -- and has a bye for the rest of the year.)

Has anyone besides Carroll addressed the mystery of the 'hearing' Palmeiro got?

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=cnnsi-halloffameorhal&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns

and i've never bought it when ppl say this (ok, maybe it would've been different if i'd had to suffer watching him cheat against my team or something. and yeah, because i was raised on the juiced ball-whoops-no-juiced hitter game i'm biased toward the pitcher. but it IS different than injecting steroids into yrself, come on.)

Wow! Really? That's terrible.

The test was taken some weeks after Palmeiro testified before Congress in March, meaning he is probably not at risk for perjury, the Times reported, citing a committee staff member who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity because official statements are supposed to come from members of Congress.

The Baltimore Sun reported on its Web site Tuesday night that Palmeiro tested positive in May and chased his 3,000th hit with the knowledge that he had failed a drug test. Palmeiro appealed the ruling in secret arbitration proceedings in June, a source told the Sun.

"The New York Times reported that Palmeiro tested positive for Winstrol. This is the same steroid that Jose Canseco said he used on Palmeiro in his book. There are few products that could cause a cross-indication of Winstrol in the system, putting more of a burden on Palmeiro's defense that he doesn't know how it got into his system. Sources tell me that further developments in the case should come public in the next 48 hours. For those of you that have jokingly asked me about the use of Viagra by bodybuilders, don't laugh. Viagra is a nitric oxide enhancer and some advanced researchers in the anabolics field have discussed the use of Viagra in muscle recovery. "

Now obviously, Palmeiro's case is trickier because what he might have done may have had a significant impact on his on-field accomplishments. The irony is that his name will probably end up on the ballot, while Jackson's and Roses's names won't. But here's where I'm sympathetic to the Stark column: I simply don't like the idea that a guy with 3,000 hits and 600 HRs won't make the HOF. (Unless, that is, your arguments against his induction have to do with the usual pre-Monday complaints about him never being a dominant player, etc.) I think you should be able to go to Cooperstown and know who the awesome players of each era were, not just the awesome players who didn't cheat.

?!?!?

Also, just because you aren't elected into the hall of fame doesn't mean you aren't represented in the hall of fame. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe are both well represented in the exhibits.

See now, okay, that's good. I haven't actually been to Cooperstown, so I didn't know. I mean put a whole host of asterisks around the plaque for all I care, I just want them to be in there.

they don't have a plaque. that would be the Hall of Fame, which is a hall of plaques, where each of the players (if they were still alive) would've stood up on the podium & thanked everyone for the honor and etc. there's a museum part too, and i'm sure jackson & rose get their fair share of it.

and yeah, part of the reason i'm taking you on here is becaucse i was getting quite worked up about that scandal just the other day! my comment about museums was directed at an implication that you wanted the hall to be some kind of amoral freak (in the j kearse sense) exhibit - it's not & it shouldn't be.

nobody thought this then, nobody thinks that now.

there's a diff between spiking someone or even using a corked bat now & then and DISGRACING THE GAME. i mean i'm not calling the former insignificant, tho if yr talking about 2 of the best to ever play the game it pretty much is. but as for the latter, you don't honor those people, for christ's sake. i mean do you guys have any kind of argument here, other than that a)they're talented and b)there are a couple dickheads in the hall? cuz it's not up for me to make one, really, cuz you guys are just being ridiculous.

You're over >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>here.

xpost

That's what loads of armchair historians would like to think.

ok when discussing people being barred from the HOF I will make no mention to things which the HOF considers when barring people from the HOF.

"Little by little...the story gets pieced together. Hanging over all ths research, however, were two severly limiting factors: first, the official documents relating to the scandal had disappeared; and second, most of the particpants had died without talkng, while those who survive continue to maintain silence.

"As for the records of the 1921 trial, with the co-operation of John Stamos, Assistant Illinois State's Attorney in 1960, a thorough search of the basement archives in the Criminal Courts Building was made. It revealed only a despairing recollection from an aging clerk that 'someone was hunting for them a dozen or so years ago,' but they were not to be found, then or now. Once again, this leaves newspaper accounts as the principal source."

"I was told by more than one ballplayer that it was safer to keep one's mouth shut about this whole affair." (Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out)

The thing is, if you really want to get to the bottom of this, you have to expand into the broader social history of the time. There's not much left but a lot of (extremely biased) newspaper accounts.

The possibility I haven't seen raised anywhere by a defender/non-lyncher: Raffy's old and had an off season, maybe he decided to juice this spring to finish his career on a high note.

And again, the CULTURE of 1990-2003 MLB permitted these guys to take whatever they did, just as it let Perry, Sutton, Whitey Ford et al scuff the ball (see the 'kick-ass' SABR records article)-- except there were actually baseball rules against foreign substances on the ball. Shall we just throw out the whole era, and delight F Robby & B Feller?

don't know if i told this story before, but i worked on a science-themed tv program several years ago, they tested out baseballs from the '88 season and '98 season and determined that the '98 ones would different in construction and traveled further on average, as well as being constructed slightly differently. whether our tester was a total quack or not, who knows.

"Before last week's Red Sox-Royals finale, a Royals player, who shall remain nameless, sat in the Kansas City dugout staring straight ahead squinting against the early afternoon sun. The topic was Rafael Palmeiro, whose 10-game suspension for violating the league's steroid policy expires tomorrow.

"Forget Palmeiro," the player said. "Be on the lookout for more. There are more names coming. Trust me."

The television executive whose network is a rights holder of Major League Baseball said last Friday that baseball had the names of as many as a dozen positive steroid tests that it was withholding from the public, unsure in the wake of the Palmeiro disaster exactly how to proceed.

Three days later, before Monday's 11-6 Sox win over Texas, a Red Sox pitcher heard the same thing, which reminded me of the words, "the rumors are always true," a classic line in Robert Altman's 1992 film "The Player."

"We're all hearing the same thing," the player said, noting that leading up to the Palmeiro announcement word had floated for days that "somebody big" was going down. "I heard they had 58 names they weren't releasing. I also heard that at least two were bigger than Palmeiro."

Later that afternoon, a former executive told me he had heard the talk recently, too, but the number is closer to 50 than 58.

Baseball executives say the rumors are not true, that the talk is cheap, more grist for the messy rumor mill. Baseball officials say there is no intrigue."

PHEW!

dude, how about that Giambi!!!

steroids is a nice buzzword right now that's going to make a lot of people who made a so-called "mistake" look a lot worse than they actually are. i'm not gonna call palmeiro a cheating scumbag even if he had been doing the stuff for a long time, what with him being in a climate that tolerated it/allowed it/discreetly encouraged it? for years and years.

When exactly did I say this? If you test positive for steroids, you should be punished according to the rules (and probably more than that). But sitting around pontificating about who's a cheater and who isn't is pretty crass, in my opinion. Feel free, though.

the game is not life, it's a game whose sanctity is probably an illusion, 'scumbag' should be reserved for Rick Santorum and Derek Lowe or something

in defense of idle spec'ing, i don't think we're damaging anyone's rep here.

xpost

all of which is to say that even if we allow these dudes into the hall and accept major league baseball and the player's union's absolute INEPTNESS as letting these guys off the hook, on a personal level none of them should get anything but a middle finger. i mean, even jose canseco, a man with the scrupples of a shoelace, clearly understood that what he was doing wasn't the right thing to do. and these guys who continue to juice are just living on borrowed time, like the poor guy who can't afford an hdtv so he puts it on his credit card. it's irresponsible, it's stupid and it leads to horrible shit like ken caminiti and lyle alzado and even giambi, who i still kinda like in a weird way even though he's a fucking douchebag.

all of which is to say that i have no sympathy for these guys. they are already getting paid shitloads of money to do something that we all dream of doing, and then they have to get greedy with it to break records, make more bank, etc. if i wanted to get all lewis lepham on you i'd say that this simply confirms baseball's status as the National Pastime.

O, a POSITIVE A-ROD would be joy

Maybe, but a TON of pro wrestlers have died from bizarre illnesses.

I would really love to see Babe Ruth try to hit against today's pitchers, though. I have a feeling that he would be sub-Matt Stairs to say the least.

hahaha xpost

i know the 1920s was a long time ago but we're not talking pygmies here! (speaking of which has anyone seen the footage of a shirtless gehrig taking practice swings in the sun? my god)

Kinda like ILE filmgoers fondness for Kevin Smith over Chaplin (analogy breaks down since KS would be a grip if Charlot were makin' movies now).

STRAWMAN ALERT

Dahlem loves the buff pre-ALS specimens!

I think you might oughta point to those people who've proclaimed Smith a 'greater' director or comedian than Chaplin. I'd bet money that you can't find a single one, Doc.

Yeah, but I didn't say that, I meant "What if Babe was magically transported to modern times, spent a wacky week adjusting to newfangled technology and social mores, and then had to face up against Alan Embree?" I gotta think Al wins that.

Obviously Babe would be better with modern blah and ARod would be worse without it. My post was intentionally pointless.

They also take a lot of (read: are addicted to) painkillers.

the idea of crazy legs hirsch squaring up against lavar arrington or ray lewis? laughable, maign.

What time will the caca hit the fan today, 3 or 4 ET?

imagine!

we could call him a-roid!

Derek in Iowa City: What's with the rumors about the two "superstars" that have tested positive for banned substances?

Rob Neyer: We're hearing the same rumors at ESPN, along with some actual names. But I don't have any interest in spreading rumors. We'll know when we know.

**************

Dan (Boston): Are you a Carpenter or Clemens man?

Rob Neyer: Clemens, although that could change soon.

All homerism aside, I'm doubtful it's Damon; Damon's comments in this article certainly don't sound like those of somebody in the throes of an appeal. But if it's true? Yowza.

clemens is such an ass, god i hope it's him.

I don't know what to make of this quote in today's Hartford Courant, though:

"I just think people want to start something with anybody," said Damon, who entered Thursday's game against the Angels hitting .331, best in the American League. "I'd be more than happy to take any test. There's no way. If I tested positive for something, it's going to be because someone threw something in a drink or did something like that."

(j/k...)

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore?gid=250818118

-- John, August 12th, 2005 2:33 PM. (later)

xpost

none of yr examples hold any water w/ me. using steroids in this environemnt on the chance that you'll recover from an injury quicker is stupid, like preposterously stupid, unless the benefits are way more than i'm imagining. and using them because you're old isn't an excuse, are you kidding? as for the 'didn't know' excuse, i suppose i'm willing to consider it in cases where it might make a bit of sense. as far as i'm concerned there hasn't been one yet.

ha!