Tell-tale sign of roid use. Veins on forehead and forearms bigger than most peoples muscles…

December 13, 2007 Press Briefing

Q: Jose Canseco, who played for the President’s team from ‘92 to ‘94, has said he cannot comprehend why Mr. Bush didn’t know that steroid use was going on, on the team. Does the President regret that?

MS. PERINO: Well, the President said — I would point you to the ESPN interview from earlier this year in which he said that he did not recall steroids being used or discussed in that period in 1993 or before.

******
Bush was Managing General Partner of the Texas Rangers until December 1994. Parsing words much?

He was always a complete dick.

Clemens, I mean.

Well, come to that, both of them, actually…

I like to think of myself as an intellectually honest person.

This becomes problematic when the subject has anything to do with
the San Francisco Giants.

A fan since 1964, I became a Giants season ticket holder in 1992,
right before Barry Bonds signed.

I saw #500, #71, #72, #73, #600, #661, and about a half-dozen
of his #700s. Saw dozens of other HRs before and in-between.

Hell, I even saw Barry’s dad, Bobby Bonds, play his first game in
the majors back in June of 1968. I was 13. Bobby hit a grand slam
to help rout the Dodgers. Big thrill.

Back before the BALCO scandal broke, I used to defend Barry against
steroid accusations on the basis of his calm demeanor at the plate.
“How could be be juicing when he never argues a call?”

Back of my mind, it felt intellectually dishonest.

Speaking of which — how is it that Barry is the only guy getting an asterisk?

To those who took the Growth hormones and steroids, they did what was necessary to win. Then, there are the fans who want them to win at all costs.

So I guess that the 24% that still support Bush, will be suporting this…

The complete wrongness of that bat-throwing incident has never been better explained.

‘how is it that Barry is the only guy getting an asterisk?’

Seriously. Think about it.

Hmmm…Clemens reminds me of someone here…

I’ve completely reversed my position about the use of “steroids” (a rather generic name for a dizzying array of chemical compounds) or the use of “performance-enhancing substances.”

These men (and women) use their bodies as their tools, sports medicine, sports training and the medical profession in general have made huge leaps over the past 30 years. (Hell, when I was in basic training in Georgia in 1983 they were still handing out salt tablets.)

If we have developed hormones, or “steroids” that are used in recovery for medical procedures, why not use them for athletes? Everything a superior athlete does to his or her body is with the aim of enhancing their performance, from what they eat, when they sleep and what exercises they do.

Why can’t the advances of science become part of that as well? If tomorrow, a study came out saluting the benefits of drinking spruce beer and how it helps improve coordination, or eyesight or you name it, athletes would be on TV the next day as spokesmen for the product.

Today’s top athletes barely resemble those of my youth, and that has a lot more to do with better nutrition, medicine, training and advances in medical technology.

I say let’em use whatever the hell they want, just make it available to all, and we’ll hear no more of this silliness “level playing field.”

No important Buccos on the list.

If there had been, well, those would have been some seriously wasted anabolic hormones.

The one good thing about being a Pirates fan these days…

humboldtblue–

I kind of agree, but the physical consequences of using these kinds of performance enhancers are catastrophic.

Not to mention the waste of health and life by all those who use and never even make it to the top level.

I just think back to Lyle Alzado, Mike Webster, Ken Caminiti, etc. and wonder if they’d still be alive if there had been a system in place to save them from their own stupidity.

Can anyone find a transcript of the ESPN interview that Perino referred to? I have been trying and can’t find a peep.

Steroids have been against the rules of baseball since 1991. Those ballplayers who’ve used them any time since then have cheated. It’s really pretty simple.

We can have philosophical or medical discussions about whether they should be against the rules or not. But for the last sixteen years they have been. Those who broke the rules, and those in baseball’s front offices who turned a blind eye to this cheating, deserve to be seriously punished. Sports are essentially rule-bound activities. You simply cannot let people get away with violating the rules if you have any interest in maintaining the integrity of a sport.

Well Com (and does your name refer to a line spoken by Frank Burns on M*A*S*H?)

Lyle Alzado died of brain cancer. The urban legend has it that somehow steroids were the cause of his death, but even his Doctor has had to repeatedly debunk that notion.

Now, what was taken in the 70’s, 80’s and even the early 90’s is not what is taken today. When the word steroids is used, we tend to think of what East German doctors did to their athletes throughout the 50’s 60’s and 70’s.

And yet, it was Dan Le Batard (columnist for the Miami Herald) who helped shape my current view, when he appeared on “Outside the Lines” and told the tale of his steroids research.

What he found regarding the harmful effects of using these substances was … nothing. Nada. Zilch. He could not find one reputable (or even a disreputable one) medical study that detailed the supposedly horrible side effects of taking steroids.

My feelings remain the same. We have made incredible strides in nutrition, training and medicine that has given rise to compounds that help repair torn muscles, help the body heal faster and allow athletes (and regular folks) to get back on their feet quicker.

I also believe that the stories of Webster (tragic, tragic downfall of a man who helped shape my sporting youth) and Caminiti probably had a lot more to do with other medical problems that cannot be laid entirely at the feet of steroids.

I say let’em use whatever the hell they want, just make it available to all, and we’ll hear no more of this silliness “level playing field.”

Education is not valued by these kids. They get involved with these drugs, not cognisant of the long term adverse effects of these products. And they are certainly not thinking of the future, only of the win.

The pharmacists will find ways to mask these substances, the athletes will go on making the playing field more interesting for them.

A bunch of sociopaths waiting to learn about it…

In twenty years, you’ll see football players from the nineties drop like flies, a bunch of them going on abusive spins before ending their lives…

Why is it that Barry’s the only guy getting an asterisk? (You mean even as Mark McGwire’s transgressions have been forgiven?)

Hmmmm. The sports writers say it’s because Barry’s a jerk, but they cover for white jerks all the time. (And they largely looked the other way for years, right up to the Balco scandal — which implicated more guys than Barry.)

I suspected that Clemens was juicing when he went from being washed up in Boston back to Superman in Toronto and New York:

Check out the Rocket’s final three seasons in Boston: 29 wins, 25 losses and endless crying. Compare that with his next two seasons in Toronto: 41 wins, 13 losses and two Cy Young Awards.

eh, I’m not so sure I want science! to determine athletic achievement. It seems just too Asimov-ian somehow. What benefit is there to allowing one’s body to be altered so a bunch of franchise owners can grow fat-rich off of it? If there were everyday benefits, like the ability to regenerate tissues damaged by disease or accident that also provided unbelievable athletic ability, then i might be more welcoming. But just for the sake of spectacle and profit? I’ll pass….

“If there were everyday benefits, like the ability to regenerate tissues damaged by disease or accident that also provided unbelievable athletic ability, then i might be more welcoming.”

“Steroids” are routinely prescribed by Doctors. Think Pregnozone. Human Growth Hormone grew out of medical research into tissue regeneration, and in the search for a cure to gigantism and the study of the pituitary system.

humboldtblue–

http://www.steroid.com/side.php

This is a good summary of the known effects of steroid use and abuse that is largely in agreement with your position that the effects are overblown but acknowledges that harm can and does result from steroid abuse.

It seems that steroid response varies tremendously from individual to individual.

As an optometrist, I often prescribe ocular steroids for a variety of inflammatory conditions. Most patients experience no side effects, but some experience a rapid rise in intraocular pressure that can result in damage to the optic nerve.

The fact is that steroids, HGH, etc. are powerful anabolic hormones whose use should be monitored by a physician at all times.

I agree that the government and media have zealously overhyped the threat of steroid abuse (guilty of that in my earlier post, I admit), as they do with all drugs, but I remain convinced that unsupervised long-term non-therapeutic steroid use is a risky proposition.

humboldtblue–

And no, my pseudonym is not taken from M*A*S*H.

I just liked the way “comsymp” and “pinko” dovetailed at the “p.”

“but I remain convinced that unsupervised long-term non-therapeutic steroid use is a risky proposition.”

I, on the other hand, am not a doctor, although I do play one in homemade porn videos.

You hit the nail right there Com, the hype and the hysteria have once again out-ridden reason, and therefore, we need serious people to develop programs that do monitor the use of these compounds.

The inexorable march began long ago, and either professional sports will catch up to modern science, or we’ll just re-live this debate in another 10 years regarding yet another substance that appears on the scene.

The chemists have no off-season, and it’s obvious that millions of us benefit from the compounds used in medicine.

humboldtblue–

I also think you meant “prednisone,” not “pregnozone.”

I believe the pregnozone is where expectant mothers are when they want a peanut butter and anchovy sandwich:)

Prednisone is one of the the most commonly prescribed ocular and systemic steroids. Not a week goes by that I don’t prescribe it and monitor patients taking it and it is perfectly safe to use under a physician’s supervision.

I actually perused the report and I think Mitchell did an extremely comprehensive job given the obstacles placed in his way by the players and the union. Back in the mid 80’s, Tbogg and I used to work with a guy who was a body builder. He regularly went down to Mexico to get steroids and even then, we knew that steroids were scary. No matter the advances to the technology, any use of these drugs outside of legitimate medical needs is cheating. I am not naive…I know there is a)no way to stop people from doing dumb things to themselves and b)serious problems with trying to monitor “legitimate” when there are millions of dollars to be made, but professional sports have a responsibility to all the men and women who are playing by the rules to punish those who are not. This whole thing makes me really sad…..

Thank you Com, I knew I had screwed that one up.

See Boggs? It pays to have a Doctor on staff.

About the asterisk with Bonds. My understanding of the reason it’s being talked about for Bonds is that they can’t give it to the other guy who has the career home run record, because there isn’t another guy.

For whoever mentioned McGwire, what records of McGwire’s deserve asterisks? He doesn’t hold any records that I know of.

“any use of these drugs outside of legitimate medical needs is cheating.”

Agreed, and that leads to another point. If there are men and women who need constant medical treatment it’s high-end athletes. That’s why these substances came into being in the first place (along with medical research), and if all of the other things that go into making a body better — training techniques, nutrition, etc — have advanced with science, why shouldn’t these substances be prescribed to help get a body healthy enough to play again?

We also tend to get awfully upset about baseball players, but generally shrug our shoulders when a football player tests positive for banned substances.

There are a lot of reasons for that (and working with three die-hard baseball junkies, one of whom even pitched in the Red Sox system for six years before his arm fell off), but generally, the biggest complaint is with comparing eras.

That’s because the landmarks that dot a successful baseball career, the stats that lead to the halls at Cooperstown have changed very little, if at all, in the past 120 years.

.300 is still the benchmark for a great hitter over the course of a career; 300 wins is still the mark for a great pitcher, etc, etc.

And now we have fellas playing into their mid to late 40’s (does this call into question Nolan Ryan? My nephew is named after him) and that means they are extending their careers and are now smashing these records to pieces.

If we have developed compounds that help keep us healthier, and those compounds are now being used by athletes, I think the problem lies with our continual need to view sports and our sports heroes with a gilded eye, in some form of nostalgic haze that takes us back to when it was all pure (’cept for the Black Sox, the speed, the coke, the mysterious ointments) and idyllic.

Personally, I think it’s time we take a hard medical look at HGH and the whole class of steroids and discover WHY an athlete would take the stuff. I’ll bet we find that the compounds work, and without the monstrosities inflicted on East German athletes.

There was a news report on the radio last night that featured an interview with a woman whose son, seeking a career in major league baseball but being told he needed to put on muscle, turned to steroids, still didn’t make it into the majors, and finally committed suicide. She was saying how she wished she had talked to him about steroids, and that she hopes the Mitchell report will prevent such things from happening in the future.

Unfortunately for this woman, I think she has misidentified the root cause of the problem, and is therefore unlikely to be on to a solution. The problem was that this kid was so obsessed with a dream that is, to put is politely, statistically unlikely to ever be achieved by the majority of people it touches. She should have been talking to him about keeping a level head, not putting his entire life into that basket at the expense of any reasonable shot at being happy. Yes, dreams should be encouraged, but not the the point that they consume and destroy the dreamer.

As for steroids as “cheating” – don’t make me laugh. Is it cheating to hire a nutritionist who hits upon a dietary secret that enhances athletic performance? Chemicals are chemicals, whether they’re carbohydrates or corticosteroids. No, we don’t want people destroying themselves with this stuff, or encouraging impressionable people of any age to follow them into destruction. But cheating? Nope.

“There was a news report on the radio last night that featured an interview with a woman whose son, seeking a career in major league baseball but being told he needed to put on muscle, turned to steroids, still didn’t make it into the majors, and finally committed suicide.”

That story sure sounds like one a writer on my staff once used for a column. He played ball with a kid who committed suicide and everyone decided to blame the steroids — including the writer.

During edits, he and I argued (heatedly) over his assertion that the young man committed his act due solely to steroids (of which he could not name) and quickly degraded from there.

Needless to say, his column got lots of sympathetic praise from people who believe that steroids will turn you into a killing machine, and yet, no one can point us to the supposed dangers — or, for that matter, to the supposed benefits.

Did Bonds hit homers because he was stronger due to steroids? Did it help his eyes see the ball better? Was his swing faster and more powerful? Or, did the compounds just allow his aging body to recover more quickly so that he could take the field more often?

I too read the report.

First, as an employer, I insist that my employees take all drugs that help them do their jobs better.

Second, the authors had no intention of finding out who used performance enhancers, otherwise they would have not relied on an assistant trainer, illegally obtained grand jury testimony, an unidentified player, and a batboy for “evidence”. If they wanted to find out what was really going on they would have interviewed the owners and GMs (how cool would that be, Moores, Angelos, Loria, Reinsdorf, McCourt, Hicks, Bush, Steinbrenner, a few beer magnates, Polhad, Selig fils etc.) What a litany of craven nincompoops, bandits and creeps. All they had to do was ask “Mr. Creep, were you ever in a meeting between 1991 and today in which a player’s use of illegal drugs was discussed? Who was the player? When did that conversation take place? Who was present?” And if they didn’t respond (and upon advice of counsel they wouldn’t have) the authors could have said “Neither the union nor the owners would not talk to our investigators. We cannot do this job.”

Baseball has so much money that they could pay $20 million dollars for an investigation that a brand new assistant district attorney would be fired for. Unless the point was to end the whole investigation without any real damage. In which case the $20 million would be worth it.

They all look like the Hulkster!

As the proud parent of a collegiate athlete (I know you all know that, but I still LOVE to say it), I cannot fathom a parent with a child looking to be a professional athlete who could be so blind. From the time we started working with private coaches and trainers, every move that the L&T Casey made was closely supervised. I understand that the temptation to go the pharmaceutical route is SIGNIFICANTLY less for female athletes than it is for males, but as a parent, I agree that the root of the problem in that case wasn’t the drugs.
Casey dealt with a multitude of injuries, each with it’s own special brand of rehab hell. If a doctor had suggested HGH as a way to speed up healing and get Casey back on the field, I would have been fine with that. Just as I was with all the other physical rehab (torture) that that PT’s put her through. There are, as our staff physician stated above, legitimate medical uses for these drugs. But what is sad to me, is that we will never know if the athletes taking these chemicals outside the confines of medical need would have acheived the level of performance that they did if they had not had the chemical enhancements. The playing field is never, and never has been, level. But steroids were against the rules….using them was therefore, cheating.

I hope not but that stuff is some scary shit.Imagine going from a 101/2
shoe,to a size 13~

Sure he does.

Most home runs (season) by a right handed batter.

His #70 is in Cooperstown.

Brand that ball* or Free Barry…

My favorite baseball drug story involves a Pittsburgh Pirate.

http://www.sirbacon.org/4membersonly/docellis.htm

Seriously awesome.

“I cannot fathom a parent with a child looking to be a professional athlete who could be so blind.”

Oh, I think if you and Mr. Bogg and the LT&C sat down and traded some memories you could come up with a few hundred examples of parents making horrible decisions regarding their child and athletics.

As much as I love prep sports for what they can teach and instill, I have just as much loathing for Moms and Dads who think Junior is the next Johnny U and then proceed to fuck the kid up for life.

MrsTBogg–

Wow.

Just…wow.

TBogg Staff Physician (I really believe the title deserves capitalization).

So designated by the bootylicious Bogg herself.

Golly! (which, as we all know, is honky for sheeeyit)

I feel my heart and pride swell to proportions approaching the Alex Rawls comment thread.

Cliff105–

Dock Ellis twirling the no-no while tripping balls.

That IS a good Pirate drug story.

What is really interesting is that all baseball banned all prescription drugs without a proper script in 1971.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/…..id=3153509

That little tidbit is buried about 3/4 of the way down in this article.

All the rigamarole since then has been about negotiating what substances MLB was allowed to test for and how they were allowed to test for them.

In the 70’s it was greenies, and no one wanted that to come out.

In the 80’s it was coke, and no one wanted that to come out.

In the 90’s it was steroids, and no one wanted that to come out.

Now, it’s HGH and other “designer” PEDs, and no one wanted that to come out.

They could have solved this problem long ago but neither labor nor management wanted to air the dirty laundry.

Now the bill is coming due, and it’s gonna be a whopper.

Not to be one-upping, but here’s a longer story about Dock Ellis, in general, & his acid tripping no-hitter.

Credit goes to Righteous Bubba of the S,N! commentariat.

Oh yes we saw some horrendous things….club soccer parents are the WORST. When Casey was 12 she played with a girl we shall call Mary, by far the most talented player on the team. In a pre-season workout with her personal coach she took a hard tackle to the lower leg and broke both bones. Out for the season. Casey and Mary both left that team at the end of the year and we didn’t see her again until she transfered to Casey’s high school her sophmore year. Casey was still rehabbing from the ACL surgery and she and Mary got to talking about their respective injuries. Mary told Casey that her father would not talk to her for months after she broke her leg. Psychological torture at it’s best.

Ironically, the best sports parents we ever played with were the ones on her Freshman Football team. Really supportive, loved her ponytail hanging out of the bottom of the helmet and sent up a huge cheer every time she went out to kick a PAT. And I thought that was going to be a nightmare.

I should have been more specific as to what I felt she was blind to. It would have been the literal transformation in his size and strength in a very short period of time. And knowing that he was told specifically to “get bigger”, she had to be a complete ignoramus to dismiss the idea that he could have taken the chemical route. And it’s even worse if she had any doubts and did nothing about it. I do agree however, that the “death of the dream” was probably just as devastating to his head as the chemicals were to his body.

“But what is sad to me, is that we will never know if the athletes taking these chemicals outside the confines of medical need would have acheived the level of performance that they did if they had not had the chemical enhancements.”

Everytime I encounter this sentiment I think of Gayle Sayers.

Not because I knew him, or because my Pop Warner career mirrored his accomplishments, but because … “we will never know just how many yards the most beautiful athlete (running style) to play the game would have had if he hadn’t gone down with a devastating knee injury two-thirds into the 1968 season.”

And why not? Because the knee injury he suffered while Tom Brokaw and the DFH friends of the Boggs were humping like rabbits and flippin’ the bird to the man — was a career-ender.

Nowadays, athletes suffer anterior cruciate ligament tears, posterior ligament ‘damage’ and other assorted injuries that would keep most of us pussies moaning like a woman sentenced to sex with Conferderate Yankee … and then four weeks later, BAM! Jimmy Jam Jones is back on the turf beating the Horned Frogs in the annual big game.

My long-winded point is — Science has given us wonderful tools.

The idea that chemical compounds, because they are just that — chemical — are in some way more vile or unworthy of our respect like say, weightlifting, because they aren’t “natural” becomes silliness when I watch Donovan McNabb, for three consecutive years, recover and rebound from, injuries that in 1965, or 1975, would have been career-enders.

Again….under a doctor’s care and for specific injuries. It’s not bad tchnology, it just needs to be harnessed. Much like the swelling “comment thread” of Alex Rawls (nod to our Staff Physician)

oops, technology.

Gotcha, and I have no argument with your salient point — that if the substances are banned, using them is cheating.

(toldja having a Staff Physician would pay off.)

I think we’ll keep him.

humboldtblue–

Sorry about the Blue Hens.

Many of my friends went to Delaware and I was really hoping they would pull it off.

It think it was the similarity of their helmets to Michigan’s that gave App the edge.

Glad to be of service.

Hank Aaron had his best season at 37, had two more good years and then declined. Barry Bonds had his best year at 37, had two more good years and then declined. Steroids did nothing to lengthen Bonds’ career. Pete Rose certainly never did steroids and played until he was 44. Warren Spahn won over 20 games at 40 without steroids and blows Nolan Ryan away if you want to talk about a GREAT pitcher with longevity. What’s all the hubbub, Bub?