The Denver Post’s David Harsanyi forgives Mark McGwire so you don’t have to:
Tucked in among the compelling news items focusing on Tigers Woods’ prodigious appetite for female companionship was a nugget relaying how the greatest golfer of all time had visited a Canadian doctor now under investigation for providing performance-enhancing drugs to his clients.
Tiger wasn’t alone. Noted Olympic swimmer Dara Torres and other prominent athletes also felt an uncanny urge to venture northward to partake in the vaunted Canadian health care system — all of them, naturally, innocent until proven otherwise.
Then, of course, there was predictable news that one-time Major League slugger Mark McGwire had admitted using steroids when breaking baseball’s single-season home run record in 1998. He has asked for forgiveness.
As this latest news unfolded, I, a sports fan, was neither distressed nor offended. I watched cable news talkers — thought-provoking policy analysts on a number of other days — deconstruct this moment of national shame. Nothing. I listened to the moral preening of athletes turned ESPN analysts. Nothing.
I suspect I was not alone.
It occurred to me that the question I truly wanted posed was this: Why are performance-enhancing drugs considered so appalling to begin with?
Professional leagues are free to ban any substance they choose in an effort to create competitive parity. Yet there is nothing inherently corrupt or immoral about utilizing technology that allows us to build stamina, strength and quickness — or, perhaps even more beneficially, helps an athlete bounce back from injuries sooner.
Why is our default position that of aversion? If a professional pitcher is permitted to undergo a ligament transplant that can improve his arm strength and extend his career after an injury, why can’t he schedule injections to improve his strength beforehand?
Do enhancers make sports unfair? Yes. But since when have professional sports ever been fair? In baseball, one team can outspend the other tenfold. Is that fair? However much we romanticize the enterprise, Major League Baseball is stocked with entertainers, not Seventh-day Adventists.
Without question, McGwire lied and cheated. This fact would have held more impact had the entire sports world not been cheering this abnormally hulking figure as he hit an implausible 70 homers in 1998.
All of this, in fact, might have been a credible scandal had Major League Baseball not allowed every player to cheat. (Baseball did not begin testing until 2002.) Fans knew. Sportswriters knew. Causal onlookers knew. Something was unnatural.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Nature is overrated.
[…]
What fans need is a little more muscle, if you get my drift, and a little less of this “moving the runner over” nonsense. As it turns out, golden ages in baseball happen to coincide with lots of homers, the most exquisite and dramatic event in sports.
Now, we’re not above turning a blind eye to suspect behavior when it’s entertaining and then engaging in over-the-top Puritanism once the high has dissipated. But before the Senate has its next round of useless hearings on the matter, and before some political opportunist presses charges, and before we react perfunctorily, let’s remember what we’re talking about here, people:
Home runs. Glorious, stunning, patriotic home runs.
For Chrissakes, people. Listen to this man.
Because frankly, the constant televised sanctimony has me watching nothing but Blu Ray discs and “Paranormal State” exclusively these days.
I am upset that Dead Snow is not available on DVD until February 23. I am going snowmobiling the weekend before and it would have been perfect for watching back in camp.
…and if you want to watch sports that represent an ideal of clean living and fair play, well there’s always….I mean, you can always…uh…hang on, I’m getting a tweet from my T-Ball fantasy league.
Jeff, you and Andrew Sullivan are on the same page on this issue.
In baseball there is always the historical statistical analysis (which is obsessive in that particular sport). MLB has an Amish like fixation in locking in equipment and rules to a particular era to maintain the statistical history.
There is a good argument the other way too. I mean, can you ever compare Bobby Jones play with Tiger Woods (or even Nicklaus) given the greatly improved state of golf clubs and balls? If you can improve equipment, why not use a little juice too?
But problem is steriods inflict a terrible price over time. You will play better in the short term–until your nuts fall off and you get all the other side effects of messing with your hormones.
Maybe human sports need classes like race cars… the stock cars in one race, the formula whatevers in another?
that’s very right. And it was Meghan’s useless daddy what did more than anyone to exploit steroids and such for political gain. He that guy the pansy state of Arizona keeps sending to Congress.
Stupid Arizona homos.
oh. *He’s* I mean… Useless as the day is long.
I think steroids should be legal in sports. Their use does not bother me in the slightest.
The only problem I have with the concept is that if it becomes acceptable, the practice will inevitably trickle down to the professional athlete wannabe.
I’d hate to see the practice work it’s way down the food chain to the point where little league players are juicing up to have a chance of realizing their dream (or Dad’s dream) to be a major league player.
I’m pretty sure that would be the result of normalizing steroid use in the interest of entertainment.
Who would have ever thought Jose Conseco would be proven a trustworthy source of information?
Conseco is saying McGwire isn’t telling the whole truth.
And I have to go with Conseco on this.
LBascom, I hate to use “for the children argument” but that is probably the biggest reason for no steriods in sports. A Mark McQuire can make the choice. But when you have high school kids doing it to get scholarships in a variety of sports, then college players doing it to hope for professional gigs–the potential disaster is enormous. Taking hormones really fuck you up.
Just say no.
Major League Baseball is stocked with entertainers
No argument here. Same for all the money making ventures, just consider the NCCAA FB head coach merry go round.
In one sense then, all this drama is merely another aspect of the overall entertainment experience. So just consider it a bonus.
Alternately, taken to a logical conclusion pro wrestling then becomes the most honest form of ‘sports’ entertainment. Which any pro wrestling fan already knows.
The Elizabethan’s were right, the players are scum.
I feel strongly both ways. But how open are you willing to make it?
Dara Torres is pretty buff, but she’s not HUGE like Kornelia Ender was.
Although Jenny Thompson was somewhat of a brute. Makes you think.
Ender doesn’t look exceptionally buff in that photo – just amazingly broad shouldered (but that’s bone structure, not muscle mass.) Freakish, but not necessarily a sign of juicing.
What is most interesting in those photos is that Ender still has a modicum of body fat, as opposed to the other women, who are clearly near the single digit range of % bodyfat – a decidedly unnatural (and long term harmful) state.
Joe, colleges should license their logos so the pros can run farm teams, and then get the fuck out of the sports business. Seriously. Why shouldn’t a college age adult be able to make money early. You can get a degree from a wheelchair; destroying your body for Whassamatta U. for free instead of getting paid is wrong.
lee, if it’s driven underground by homopublican pansies then it becomes much more dangerous, not less. And the cowardly John McCain didn’t outlaw them for the kids, he did it cause he thought it would help him politically. In the media. That’s how he rolls.
Ohm and then there’s Inge.
I have my doubts. We’re talking designer stuff, HGH. Very expensive, from what I hear, but it ain’t like the old shit that made East German women look like bleached horses.
Check out this excellent documentary if you haven’t already: Bigger Stronger Faster*
#14 is a neat idea.
Those shoulder-thingies hanging doen past her hips? Those are arms.
That’s very true, the technology of juicing has become much more sophisticated. Not just to avoid detection, but also to limit the negative effects.
Recombinant human growth hormone has a very limit range of approved indications for use, chiefly pituitary dwarfism. The number of people who qualify for one of these indications is relatively small. Yet the stuff is cranked out by the vatload and there is a cottage industry on the coasts that sells the stuff as a fountain of youth.
Used in this manner the doses are very small, but the effects are very real.
Getting steroids out of MLB was one of Bush’s major accomplishments. It’d be a shame to take that away.
who has also has abnormally large arms is that Steven Crowder. He’s like Xander like that.
I am sure it is possible that if you have lots of money you might be able to juice relatively safely. But even Barry Bonds, who presumably falls in that catagory, managed to have his head expanded like a giant melon. The average high school kid is not going to be using HGH at $20,000 a year, they are going to go the East German mailorder route.
Slart, are e looking at the same photo? The one I see of Ender, her arms are flexed up to her chin.
“Damn! We forgot about Canseco!”
I was trying to be funny. Fail, I guess.
Of course I remember those fitness commericals that said, if you could buy fitness in a bottle you would (wasn’t it Cher who did that?). I suppose if it becomes truly available many of us would do it.
And like Glenn Reynolds promotes, if there was truly a substance to extend life as opposed to merely temporary palative effects (and we are getting closer to that) we would be spending whatever it took to get it. Is juicing that much different?
Well, that’s the argument for legalizing all drugs, and I’m not sure if it’s true.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what all politicians do anything for, to help themselves politically. Is why we call them politicians. Always has been, always will be. Theoretically, in a representative form of government, doing something that helps them politically means they are doing what their constituents want, which is as it should be.
Having said that, yeah, McCain is a media whore with an unhealthy need for media praise. I voted for him last election, but only because improbable as it was, the other choice was worse (the great achilles heel of contemporary American politics BTW, too often we aren’t choosing who represents us, we are rejecting the worst of two evils).
With that, I’m done talking about John McCain, it’s become very boring.
I’m with the guy in one regard: Let’s quit acting astonished that the horse got out of the barn, when everybody with half a brain and even a casual interest in the sport (I’ve just described myself) knew damned good and well that MLB was deliberately leaving the barn door wideassed open at that time. The NFL moved to stop steroid use after they started gettig a bit of a black eye from Lyle Alzado dying of liver disease or whatever. MLB could’ve done the same thing but didn’t.
His putting home runs in a category somewhere north of multiple orgasms seems a litle over the top though.
McCain is the story when you’re talking about banning PEDs, lee. He kind of owns this issue.
Oh man, a subject near and dear to my heart. If I’m not careful I could end up sounding like that Kevin Trudeau asshole.
I have no problem with steroids at all in pro sports. Period.
I have no problem with supplements, HRT, HGH and T precursors for men in general. I think most of the anti-steroid media nonsense is bullshit that is doing more harm than good. There is no reason that I could go to the doc and get boner pills if I want them, but I won’t be able to use them because my heart and liver are covered in fat thanks to the dietary nonsense that has been forced on us for years and years.
I do think that schoolboy and college athletes should not be on the sauce.
See?
This is a perfect example of why I stick with politics instead of sports, for the honesty.
Him and his friend Henry Waxman.
Wow, LMC, someone actually forced you to eat a certain way? You should sue. In my case, I got fat all on my own, and if I get unfat, that will be all on my own as well.
cranky,
Nope, but they told me for years that I’d die if I didn’t eat the way they said, so I did. And they was wrong.
Like super, duper wrong.
Took me years of research to fix me.
Which is why, now, I spend four hours per day in a Tweeter hangup, eat only wild game and drink a quart of my own urine per day.
Can’t seem to come up with a clip or pics of the East German women’s swim team from the movie Top Secret, dangit.
LMC, you are perhaps referring to high-fructose corn syrup? If so, I can see your point.
Regarding purity in sports, I think that’s mainly driven by a desire to return to A Simpler Time™, one that I happen to share. Which is why it’s disappointing to discover that the people on whom we rely to take us to this Simpler Time aren’t in it for the love of the game, but are in it to make a buck. Because it’s disappointing when we are forced to accept that reality and fantasy don’t match up. People feel the disappointment emotion deal with it in a variety of ways: abandoning the fantasy, trying to make reality (or fantasy) align more closely with fantasy (or reality) to make the match acceptable, or denying the reality and retreating further into the fantasy.
Bah, LMC, ignore the first sentence in my previous.
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Nope, it’s really my own urine. Nectar of the Gods. I can ship if you want some. I charge a little extra for asparagus, and my coffee maker broke today so that flavor’s a bit dear, but your basic multi-vitamin LMC pee is in stock now. Available in pickle jar or gatorade bottle sizes.
“Getting steroids out of MLB was “concernconcernconcernconcernconcernconcern
BoooshBoooooooooosh!!
concernconcernconcernconcernconcernconcern!!
As an aside for the frequent flyers here, did you know 10 and a half three ounce travel size mouthwash bottles will fit in a quart sized ziplock baggie?
I’m guessing you went the eating-the-way-they-said route rather than the dying route.
The strike cured me of any desire to care about baseball, permanently.
Boy was that Ripken guy a dumbass.
booorrrringgg…
Incidentally, my forearms are completely drug free and natural.
A little inside info. For those Ace readers who like to comment on my spectacular guns over at his place.
So, you’re leaving the other dangley bits for the Ace-ians to speculate over? I dunno man, I’d go ahead and cover all your bases.
It’s actually very exciting, Lee. McCain wanted the federal government to test athletes with tax monies.
Yup. That’s John McCain for you. Head of the homopublican party. He’s a fiscal conservative, don’t you know.
link
Something I think warrants mention is the fact that t levels decline in men over age. If I had to guess, as we’re all going to get prostate cancer regardless, it will become fairly normal to treat that as a quality of life issue.
In related news, your high school football coach was right: severe anaerobic exercise, like windsprints and squats, boost t levels naturally. l
At one of my previous jobs, our secretary was an ex-body builder who, like everyone else, used steroids. Looking at the picture of herself that she showed me, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so naive to think that these women weren’t using steroids.
I had a few interesting conversations with her about it. First, she said she quit after a moment of clarity, when she looked around her and thought to herself “Damn, these women are ugly.” That, apparently, was it for her.
Second, she said that testosterone really changed the way she thought. She tended to be much more single task oriented, less focused on the nuances of social interactions. She told me once, too, she was sitting around with her girlfriends who were complaining about their husbands or boyfriends. As they bemoaned the fact that their men were doing/thinking this, that or the other thing, she found herself thinking “You know, I totally understand that!”
Jarmila Kratochvílová has to be one of the biggest adverts against juicing up on steroids. Really.
I have spectacular guns too…in 45 acp and .308. My little Taurus snubby in .357 is sort of a hand cannon rather than a gun.
At .775, my 10 bore says you got little bitty guns, Blake.
Ah yes SW, the ordinate growth of the clitoris into it’s rightful role as pseudo-phallus. Quoth the hyena matriarch, baring her teeth, “You will comply.”
She isn’t your actual oil painting, is she? Maybe pastels softened her up a bit off track.
Slart,
Both. Nobody “forced” me to eat that way, I thought I was a health nut.
Like I said, I could end up looking like that weird dude with the pencil mustache who does the infomercials on the size of your shit.
Eating the way “they” (the government, men’s health, runner’s world, good housekeeping, tv news, etc…) said led to problems managing insulin, high triglycerides and cholesterol that was through the roof. This was while avoiding almost all fat and exercising like a sonofabitch. I spent years following a “heart healthy” diet promoted by everyone from Slim Goodbody to my cousin the family cardiologist. When I found out about my “issues” I went to the doctor and he gave me medicine to take every day for the rest of my life plus a special diet to control my cholesterol and triglycerides and it was the same goddamn diet I’d been following since college. Took me a bit, but I found out that doctors aren’t nutritionists and a lot of nutritionists are really just cooks. Even the ones in my own family. And don’t get me wrong, if I’m broken, I’ll listen to the doctor. If I’m hungry? Not so much.
it ain’t like the old shit that made East German women look like bleached horses.
I’m still creeped out over that. Several of them became men afterward because it altered their brains that much.
On the other hand, Congress has no business investigating steroid use any more than it should be looking into the BCS. But does that stop them?
There were some ‘roid using Marines at Bagram Airfield when I was there in 2004-2005. They managed to make me see why one would want to stay away from that stuff forever. Well, that and my MD Dad telling me how messed up that stuff was before that even…but nothing like a living illustration of the problem to come unglued before your eyes.
If the pros do it, every @$$hole coach in college, High School and below will be making appointments with the local source for his or her players… Youth sports, in general, repulses me.
LTC John, I played rugby with a couple of embassy Marines and other expats westerners and Fijians. One of the Marines was taking roids and he would completely go off without warning. It worked well enough on the rugby pitch, he was great in the scrum, but eventually he got disciplined for some incident at the embassy and sent home.
Here we can compare and contrast. Petra Schneider, the hideous moose pumped up on the evil juice, winner of the gold at the Moscow Olympics. Boo, hiss.
And here we have the angelic Sharron Davies, untainted by chemicals, pipped to the post by the drug cheat. Sigh.
A point:
A mechanical alteration to the body, such as the ligament example, doesn’t affect the brain. Injected chemicals do. Hence the creepy factor.
We’d probably have much more intelligent discourse in this country if we could somehow force Reps to smoke dope and Dems to take ‘roids.
Taking advice from the likes of you on the question of intelligent discourse Charles, wouldn’t really be intelligent by definition, would it? Or are you suggesting that you’re somehow under the influence of mind altering agents at this moment and therefore more intelligent than you would be otherwise?
Charles sounds like Barrett Brown’s life partner
That is a name I have no use for. Total douchenozzle.
How do you think I got my guns?
As if the Socialists, er, Democrats aren’t bitter, angry, and prone to violent outbursts of anger enough already. As if the Republicans weren’t passive enough already. Right. That’ll work.
The kind of thinking from you that we’ve come to expect. Would it kill you to step up your game just a notch? I mean, you don’t have to get all mind-roided out or anything, but man. Do something. It’s killing us here. You’re booring.
*walks away grumbling*
Juice baby, lots and lots of juice.
Someone in the family has to have it. Might as well be me.
Kresh hits the nail on the head. The dems I know (all around me!!11!!1) already act as if they’ve been juicing for their entire lifetimes, minus the big muscles. The repubs I personally know (all 3 of them) act as if they eat hash brownies morning, noon and night. Maybe, it’s just from living in a blue area and they’ve, at some level, just capitulated.
Juiced athletes breaking the records of non-juiced athletes should not be accepted.
We want to know what human people are capable of not just prissy all-natural ones. If human people were all-natural we’d just be fucking monkeys.
half of us would be iceberged just for our vision, really…
nope. We can rebuild us. We have the technology. We can make us better than we were before.
Better, stronger, faster.
Separate classes. Men’s, women’s, and ‘roided (both sexes). You could be onto something there.
I dunno. Malcolm Reynolds had something to say about that.
Can you blame this on a lack of juice? How about a lack of cognitive ability?
Martha Coakley exclaims that Curt Schilling is a fan of the New York Yankees?
Curt Schilling!!!?
Dennis Leary, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are going to be voting for Scott Brown now.
From The Department of Better Late Than Never.
#26
Sorry dude, It was morning and I was way too caffeinated to recognize humor. My bad.
I’m still waiting for forward-thinking doctors to attach kangaroo legs to a high hurdler, or an orangutang arm to a pitcher. That would be so cool.
I might’ve overlooked McGuire’s use of steroids, given we have an ample supply of asterisks for the record books, if the sumbitch just hadn’t lied about it (for what, 10 years running?). Now, I’d like to see him wear an asterisk as a forehead tattoo, and run about the nation on a tour begging our youth to never, ever, ever lie about anything of importance.
If he can drag his prematurely collapsing body about the country, that is.