July 23, 2013

  • What Am I,
    Turning Into a Softie
    In My Old Age?

    Listen, I hate baseball and all the players in it.  I've hated the game ever since that year (was it 1994?) that they canceled the World Series because the players were on strike because they were making an average of only 3 million dollars a year instead of 9 million dollars a year, or whatever the hell the numbers were.

    But this Ryan Braun thing has me thoroughly confused, because I want to defend him against what all the writers are saying.  He's been suspended for the remainder of the baseball season, admitting that he's "made some mistakes" and is "willing to take the punishment" without a fight, and the writers are jumping on this as hard as they can.

    But MY thing is, there's a whole lot of ambiguity in the whole performance-enhancing-drug issue, because, what the hell, as honorable as I want everyone to be, it's still regrettably close to the truth that "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin."  I say CLOSE to the truth because yeah, I hate cheating.  But I don't hate trying.

    Ryan Braun could easily be a scumbag.  He probably IS a scumbag.  BUT ...

    But what he's saying, and I think he's been saying ever since he was accused last year, is completely consistent with honesty and above-boardness.

    Hell, I'VE taken steroids.  Prescribed to me by a dermatologist for relief of a persistent itch.  It was expensive stuff, and my wife teased me about it, but I've applied creams such as that, and put pills into my body that I didn't know what the hell they were except they were prescribed by a licensed physician I had no reason to distrust.

    Not being a professional athlete, and only having spent a moderate amount of time in gyms working out, I don't have the experience of having been mentored by a professional trainer except maybe at the very beginning of a gym membership.

    But I can see why an athlete would put their trust in doctors and trainers.  I can also see why an athlete would knowingly cheat.

    Is there some reason Braun isn't being given the benefit of the doubt?  I said earlier that he probably IS a scumbag because accepting a punishment rather than appealing it does suggest guilt.

    Here's a USA Today story, but it doesn't answer very many of my questions.

    (More, much more, later)

    OK, it's later, and I still don't know nuthin'.  Here's an article by ESPN's Jayson Stark, written a good while back, and the word "steroids" appears nowhere in the piece.

    I've been to www.bio-genesis.com, and they act like all they sell is nutritional health products.  Pictures of doctors, and stuff like that.  No info on the ingredients.

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

    I think back to the day when I saw stuff for sale in candy stores that said "Quick energy" and, just like I said up above, referencing pills prescribed by chiropractors, MDs, gym trainers, etc., I don't know what the hell they put in that stuff.

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

    Morality is very murky here.  You're an athlete, you want to be at your physical best.  An expert says, "do this."  And you can have the purest motives in the world, but hell.  If you're not a chemist, how the hell do you KNOW?

    How the hell do you know?

    And why are they acting as if Ryan Braun is the devil incarnate?

    I'm done for now.

    Maybe tomorrow I'll have some answers.

    OK, one two more edit(s):  An ESPN baseball reporter weighs in.

    And Greg Cote, of the Miami Herald.

    Like all of the other writers, Greg leaves out what's most important, in my opinion.  Did Braun ever say, "I've never dealt with Bio-Genesis."  Or, "I don't know any Anthony Bosch."  Or anything like that.  If he did, fine, excoriate him.  But every quote I've ever seen attributed to Braun is consistent with innocence.  I'm not saying that his statements prove or even suggest innocence.  Just that they're consistent with innocence.

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

    Late afternoon edit:

    I'm not saying Ryan Braun didn't do steroids.  I'm saying, there's a miniscule possibility that he took drugs from someone (Anthony Bosch) who he believed was legit, that the drugs weren't illegal, blah blah blah.  Miniscule, I said.

    But my point is, nobody as far as I know asked him the hard questions (do you know Bosch? did you think the treatment was legal? etc etc) and if they did, did he just say he didn't want to comment -- which is CLOSE to confessing guilt but not quite -- and until I get answers to what I'm asking, I'm still annoyed with the unanimity of excessive criticism that is going in Braun's direction.

    I hate defending the guy, but I wish somebody would straighten me out.

    I just listened to "Around the Horn" and four more voices chimed in.

Comments (12)

  • At the risk of sounding strange, I sided with the athletes in strikes. I figure it's less of a matter of demanding 9 million dollars, and more of a matter of demanding 9 million from an industry that's bringing in a billion dollars because of the players.

  • I heard he was suspended for the rest of the playing season, but never caught why, and I don't read the news paper all that much, only a couple of times a week.....Was it for steroids?

  • @Lakakalo - Though I don't agree with it, I have some sympathy for your viewpoint.  When the Black Sox scandal unfolded nearly 100 years ago, it was an era were ballplayers were taken advantage of by greedy owners.  But since free agency, athletes are so richly compensated that I just hit a mental wall when it comes to this subject.As I type this, I'm still trying to understand the Braun thing.

  • @ellie1945 - Some company called "Biogenesis" is involved.  So far, "performance-enhancing drugs" is all I've seen in print.  Not quite synonymous with steroids, but I haven't had time yet to google "Biogenesis" to get more info.  I'm writing this on the fly, from work.

  • I just did some checking....And Biogensis is a now defunct anti-aging clinic in Miami...Ryan Braun is now suspended....Alex Rodriguez is facing suspension (They say it's a sure bet he'll be suspended)and it could be for even longer than Braun, and there are 20 other players who are under investigation....They all have been connected to Biogensis and it's former Director Anthony Bosch... Bosch kept documents of those who were connected....Not steroids, but just as bad....Drugs to make you feel younger, and enhance your stamina...And, like steroids, it could also be mind altering.....

  • It's a complicated issue. I don't understand all the stuff about it. There is some uneasiness here re: Nelson Cruz, who is under the microphone as to whether he is involved. Seems as though "it's always something" as Gilda Radner's SNL character used to say. ~~Cheers

  • I was watching that on news this evening. I don't know what to think. I wonder if ALL the athletes take enhancing drugs prescribed to them by a licensed professional. And like you said, the athletes don't know didly... most of them are hardly high school graduates, to question and know the side effects etc. Like I said, I don't know what to think.

  • @ZSA_MD - It's a sad world we're living in.  To compete on a level playing field -- AND have everyone play by the rules -- seems like a pipedream imagining that to be possible.(A cheating scandal just erupted at the National Scrabble Championships that concludes today in Las Vegas.  And it was a good friend of mine who is the accused.  I don't even want to think about it.)As for Ryan Braun -- even though I still don't have the answers I want -- chiefly, has he ever denied doing business with that phoney-baloney "doctor" Anthony Bosch? -- I understand better now why ALL the reporters are pounding his ass into the ground.  Reporters don't like being lied to, and the odds are AT LEAST a million to one that Braun lied.  He failed a drug test last year, appealed the result on the technicality that the chain of custody of his urine had been compromised, and failed again THIS year with no such technicality to lean on, and his apology was so lame ("I've made mistakes") and I was so ignorant that I thought he deserved at least the benefit of the doubt.But.After all that's been said about steroids and unscrupulous trainers and doctors, Braun could not have been ignorant about the fact that Bosch was a suspicious character at the very least.  And, being responsible for what goes into his body, well, as I say, there's virtually no chance that Braun is guiltless.

  • I suspect your prowess in Scrabble is due to dabbling with ginko biloba and other brain-enhancing substances. Come clean, Twoberry.

  • @Roadkill_Spatula - :)  Well, without any memory aids, I remembered you can spell it gingko or ginkgo, but not ginko :) :) But I CAN share this with you (courtesy of Google):In memory enhancement[edit]Ginkgo is believed to have nootropic properties, and is mainly used as memory[43] and concentration enhancer, and antivertigo agent. However, studies differ about its efficacy. The largest and longest independent clinical trial to assess Ginkgo biloba published the finding in 2008 that the supplement does not reduce incidence of all-cause dementia or Alzheimer's disease in adults 75 years or older who had normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment when given a twice-daily dose of 120 mg extract of G. biloba.[44][45] However, a similar trial published in 2010 concluded the same extract formulation of G. biloba (EGb 761), when given as a single 240-mg daily dose, "was found significantly superior to placebo in the treatment of patients with dementia with neuropsychiatric symptoms."[46]According to some studies, ginkgo can significantly improve attention in healthy individuals.[47][48] In one such study, the effect was almost immediate and reaches its peak 2.5 hours after the intake.[49]One study suggests ginkgo's effect on cognition may be attributable to its inhibitory effect on norepinephrine reuptake.[38]Nonetheless, a meta-analysis in 2012[50] reported zero effect sizes for the impact of Ginkgo biloba on memory, attention and problem-solving in healthy individuals

  • I am sorry to hear about the scandal in LV with the Scrabble tournament. Just too bad.

  • Obviously, I haven't followed the Braun saga closely enough, but I've recently become aware that -- more than just getting off on a legal technicality two years ago -- he impugned the integrity of the person who collected his urine sample.  And, I think, got the guy fired.  Knowing all the time that he was guilty.  Assuming that's true, yeah, scumbag is a good name for him.

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