OT?: Pete Rose Admits to Betting On His Own Team

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Knuckles_85

There are no similarities. I can buy the best dietician and trainer in the world but it doesn't guarantee me results. I still have to work for my results. I still have to eat right and drag my ass out of bed and go to the gym everyday. With steroids all I gotta do is inject and I get instant muscle mass. I can't believe you're equating a personal trainer with steroids.

I'm equating the advantage not the method. Certainly having a trainer gives you an advantage over one who doesn't have a trainer, right? Certainly having someone plan your meals give you an advantage over one who just eats what they feel like right? So by using them you gain an advantage. That's all I'm saying.
Steroids don't make you a better hitter or fielder. They don't give you better control. They make you bigger and stronger but if that is all it took then we would have the 350 pound lineman playing baseball instead of football to save the wear and tear on their bodies. If steroids always work so well, why are all these unknown's being named as users?

[robpost3]

.......

[Fredk]

Hahaha...well what I was trying to say is that steroids and baseball are a unique case because the statistics are so durable and important. But to be honest if they all want to go out there juiced up and coked out of their minds it doesn't really bother me - we had the dead ball era, now we'll have the juice ball era.

What I was getting at is that the gambling issue is a threat that could concievably destroy the sport in a way that steriods never will.

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Fredk

What I was getting at is that the gambling issue is a threat that could concievably destroy the sport in a way that steriods never will.

You are right about that.

Heck players have been using performance enhancing drugs for decades. Certainly some well known and well respected players used speed on a regular basis in the 50's and 60's. It didn't seem to be a big thing and was fairly well known, at least among the players.

[robpost3]

well what I was trying to say is that steroids and baseball are a unique case because the statistics are so durable and important.

...aahhh, but is that not the whole bone of contention....the numbers are fundamently corrupt...the system malfunctions, records broken because of the chemically enhanced vs. those not enhanced...the pre enhancement era, et. al., corpratism is driving the sports world to sell, sell, sell, wellll....look at the poor NBA next stop is WWF vs the NBA soap opera, circus psudeo-sport.
Now that hockey got the shaft because theres barely any controversy to whore it out like a cheap hooker they stick it somewhere on OLN after Mighty Joe Ebs duck decoy carving extravaganza, NHL knee jeck reaction er, um remove most of the Defense, shorten the goalies sticks, make em stay in the crease and play sissy puck so we can break Howe and Gretzkys record in one season, rah rah rah...
Stopped watching the NBA after they took hand checking away, (that and Clyde Drexler retired so nothing was left for me anyway)....
Dunno perhaps its instant gratfication we want sooo, any tie games after the 7th inning stretch should be promptly follwed by a home run derby as the tie breaker....sooo is betting bad; but its good for headlines, is anabolics bad; but its good for headlines...personally after the 90's nothing makes much sense....still wanna see Billy Clinton as first Laydee![:D] sorry I digress, but sports in general lost a lot of "soul"....IMOO....
I think the greatest threat to sports is rampant corporate greed and that seemed to start in and about the end of the 70's, start of the 80's, and has exponentially grew....

[Fredk]

Umm...it is a business, it didn't have a soul to begin with. I don't have any problem with whatever marketing schtick they want to try. If it is as bad as you say it won't go over and people will stop watching it. Look at the outcry when they tried to put those Spiderman adverts on the bases. re: the NBA, in case you haven't noticed the NBA is not doing very well in terms of viewer numbers because it is a crappy sport, for some of the reasons you mentioned.

To complain about the statistics is reactionary conservatism - baseball has been through a number of eras and will continue to evolve. I don't watch the games to see records broken - I watch them because they are an entertaining competition. It will never be like the WWE because unlike the WWE the results (hopefully) aren't fixed. That is why gambling is a problem because it leads to game fixing/point shaving and that will destroy the entertainment value of the game.

Drugs are used to gain a competitive advantage so they are fine with me - gambling destroys competition.

On a side note, what has everybody got against trying to make a buck?

[robpost3]

On a side note, what has everybody got against trying to make a buck?

not alljust lil ol me...

Umm...it is a business, it didn't have a soul to begin with.

Nope it was a community...a tribal custom...at least that is or was its birth...

Drugs are used to gain a competitive advantage so they are fine with me - gambling destroys competition.

I will quibble with the term: "Drugs" treat ailments...

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Fredk

Drugs are used to gain a competitive advantage so they are fine with me

I can understand this. The players certainly know or have some idea that some may be using performance enhancing drugs. Since the other players are also their competition, in a way, for records, salary, playing time, etc then it would seem to me that THEY would complain the loudest. They really don't though.

[Fredk]

Nope it was a community...a tribal custom...at least that is or was its birth...

Well, I'm sure they're still playing little league somewhere near you - hop on down to the local ball field.

[robpost3]

To complain about the statistics is reactionary conservatism

well what I was trying to say is that steroids and baseball are a unique case because the statistics are so durable and important.

not complaining at all...but based on that: stats are bunk as traditionally accounted for....

baseball has been through a number of eras and will continue to evolve.

yep

records broken because of the chemically enhanced vs. those not enhanced...the pre enhancement era, et. al.,

I don't have any problem with whatever marketing schtick they want to try. If it is as bad as you say it won't go over and people will stop watching it.

Marketing 101 "people will buy poopie if you package it right"[;)]

[Fredk]

not complaining at all...but based on that: stats are bunk as traditionally accounted for....

Have to get in on this love in: yep, agree w/ that 100%. [;)] I think baseball statistics are interesting across a season or a particular players career - but to say that there has never been another hitter as great as Ted Williams just because no one has hit .400 in the modern era is bunk.

yep
quote:

records broken because of the chemically enhanced vs. those not enhanced...the pre enhancement era, et. al.,

Quoting yourself is always interesting. [:)]

Marketing 101 "people will buy poopie if you package it right"

Normally I would agree with you, but I don't think this is always the case in sports. A good example can be found in the English Premier Leauge where average league wide attendance has dropped 5-10% in the last 4-5 years despite an increase in stadium capacity. Probably just Bolton dragging down the average though. [;)]

Anyway, this is the case because games are overpriced and the quality of the product in relatively low - despite all the marketing money poured into the league. TV may have something to do with it too though, I must concede.

[robpost3]

Quoting yourself is always interesting.

[:D]
where does it put one grammatically 4th or 5th person, there is a n infinity loop to get stuck in there
perhaps just your avg nutter[:'(]

Anyway, this is the case because games are overpriced and the quality of the product in relatively low - despite all the marketing money poured into the league. TV may have something to do with it too though, I must concede.

point taken and I agree...

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Knuckles_85

The fact that you can get it as a prescription shows it's legal. It's just a matter of convincing a doctor to go along.

No it is not. Doctors lose their licenses and go to jail for writing fake prescriptions because it's a controlled substance. If all you had to do was find a physician that will write a prescription then Todd Sauerbraun's physician wouldn't be in jail nor would the Steelers team doctor would be under indictment.

So in other words what you are saying is that the authorities have been looking the other way, quite possibly because many of them regarded it as a non-issue? Mike Golic estimated tha 80% of the players of the teams he played on were on steroids IIRC, so how does that happen unless it wasn't even partially legal as you seem to be looking at it? "If" any doctors were issuing those prescriptions directly to the athletes (more than likely selling it bulk to trainers) -and- they couldn't issue it legally, at -any- time, past or present, for the purposes of enhancing performance (which I doubt), then how do so many get doped up? For the pro athletes now, or at least the football players, do they get it off the street or does everybody pretty much look the other way? Golic didn't play for the Steelers by the way.

It just doesn't add up to me, that the law would be treating this as some hard drug and then so many athletes end up on them. It seems very few people, at least for a sizeable time, ignorance of the law or not, regarded this as something akin to some hard drug that the feds were staging sting operations for and such.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: James Ward

ORIGINAL: Knuckles_85

There are no similarities. I can buy the best dietician and trainer in the world but it doesn't guarantee me results. I still have to work for my results. I still have to eat right and drag my ass out of bed and go to the gym everyday. With steroids all I gotta do is inject and I get instant muscle mass. I can't believe you're equating a personal trainer with steroids.

I'm equating the advantage not the method. Certainly having a trainer gives you an advantage over one who doesn't have a trainer, right? Certainly having someone plan your meals give you an advantage over one who just eats what they feel like right? So by using them you gain an advantage. That's all I'm saying.
Steroids don't make you a better hitter or fielder. They don't give you better control. They make you bigger and stronger but if that is all it took then we would have the 350 pound lineman playing baseball instead of football to save the wear and tear on their bodies. If steroids always work so well, why are all these unknown's being named as users?

He had the ridiculous notion that a doped athlete had to just sit around to get muscles. Probably speaking in exaggeration on his part. It seems to me that the doped ones probably often did as much work if not more than the undoped, but that most everything they did to train just got higher results. If that is true, then to some degree the doper, if he were wanting to be equal or just barely better than the competition might be able to do less training than the undoped, but it seems a lot of the cases we hear about are more a case of them wanting to far exceed other people, so in those particular cases there sure wasn't a matter of sitting around and poof becoming superman.

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: James Ward

Heck players have been using performance enhancing drugs for decades. Certainly some well known and well respected players used speed on a regular basis in the 50's and 60's. It didn't seem to be a big thing and was fairly well known, at least among the players.

Including maybe even Pete Rose. At least based on the following from the book Ball Four.

To Paraphrase:

Pete Rose dives for a ball and just misses it. A player in the dugout quips: "A few more milligrams and he'd have had it."

[Fredk]

I got the impression it has been pretty widely acknowledged that the majority of players were popping "greenies" (apparently the slang for amphetamine pills) throughout the 60s and 70s up to the current day...am I wrong there?

[Twotribes]

The claim that someone buying and illegally using a substance and that because it can be legally prescribed it then is not a bad thing or the same as other crimes is simply silly.

Almost , if not all, illegal drugs are derived from , in another form , a prescription drug. I guess this argument then is like the following... " well hell alcohol is legal, so me buying it and giving it to a 12 year old isn't a bad thing".

[Fredk]

Twotribes, not sure if you are referecing my comments or someone elses, but I don't think it is, "okay" - I just don't care and it doesn't bother me.

[Twotribes]

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

ORIGINAL: Knuckles_85

ORIGINAL: Charles_22




I fail to see how it was illegal. There were no prohibitions in baseball to it when most of them started, then when Bobby Bonds starting going wild people started worrying about it and started to want to ban it. Then, of course, none of players wanted to admit it, so they just tried to wean themselves off of them or just kept trying to hide it. I suppose baseball couldn't have cared less unless it was apparent, such as in Bonds case, that their use might just boost performance more than just a little bit.

ok go down to Walgreens and pick up a couple bottles of anabolic steroids and let's see how legal it is without a perscription

The fact that you can get it as a prescription shows it's legal. It's just a matter of convincing a doctor to go along. It's just that getting it as a prescription makes it a little more difficult to obtain. A really illegal drug would not be available by prescription at all. Despite what the law might technically say about it, if I can get something from a doctor it isn't illegal, at least as long as I get it through him, or if I were a pro athlete that I got it from a trainer who got it from a doctor. If you are getting a drug from some punk on the corner, that a clue it's might be illegal, though such a punk selling steroids, if in fact they do, doesn't automatically discount the fact that said drug may be legal. There are a number of drugs purchased by such means simply because some people are trying to cheat the system and are trying to get higher dosages than the doctor allows.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that steroids aren't fully illegal, and since a good number of the dopers are said to get these through doctors themselves, prescription or not, people often think that they are not illegal at all. In my view they're only partially illegal, whereas I think it is inaccurate to call them either legal or illegal. They're partially legal, or partially illegal; take your pick.

This is what I am referring to. Just because one can get a legal prescription for something, doesnt then mean if you use it illegally it is ok cause, cause well IF you did have a prescription....

Illegally obtaining or illegally using drugs, whether they are legally obtainable is not "partially legal" Like I said does this mean this guy thinks its ok to buy alcohol ( which may be legal for him to do) and then give it to minors? Is that "partially" legal?

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Fredk

I got the impression it has been pretty widely acknowledged that the majority of players were popping "greenies" (apparently the slang for amphetamine pills) throughout the 60s and 70s up to the current day...am I wrong there?

I don't think you are wrong there.

My point is that if it was so well known among the players and they keep quite, maybe it's not as big a thing as we are making it out to be? After all it's their records that are being broken and their jobs that are being lost.