To Roid or Not to Roid

All is not as well as Phillie fans would hope for their team. Sure they have an awesome 4-man rotation but there are chinks in the armor as Placido Polanco, Chase Utley, and now close Brad Lidge are all suffering injuries.

Utley and Lidge might have serious problems. Lidge might have structural damage in his shoulder and Utley’s knee is apparently rubbing bone on bone. These are guys in their 30’s now and key players for this team’s success.

Oh, but wait. I almost forgot! They signed Luis Castillo who the Mets released (and spawned an incredible work of art here on this blog) so they’ll be ok.

The Philthies should still win the Eastern Division though. Had Bobby Cox not retired as manager of the Braves, I would pick them to win that division with the Phils grabbing the wildcard spot. Currently it’s the other way around, and not much of a stretch of a prediction.

Barry Bonds in the second week of his perjury trial for allegedly lying to some people about steroid use. I say if he lied, throw the book at him but I never had any problem with athletes using steroids for baseball.

The reason is fairly simple to me. There is no steroid out there that can help someone hit a 95 mph fastball or the subsequent 82 mpg curveball or changeup.
Can the steroid help someone hit a ball further? Sure. How much further though?

I have read estimates that the best case scenario was that a steroid user might get an extra ten feet of distance.

I saw a lot of those Bond’s homeruns, and Sosa and McGwire taters too. I just don’t buy that they made that much of a difference for those guys.

Brady Anderson, who hit 50 homeruns one year, was never questioned about that mysterious power surge that year. A whole bunch of other players had seasons that were aberrations and didn’t get that type of scrutiny.

Why Bonds? Was it because he wasn’t media savvy or friendly? Was it because he is black and was breaking two incredible homerun records of players that were well liked (Aaron and McGwire?) Was it because he wasn’t doing it for someone’s own team and not the San Francisco Giants? The Giants fans love him there. I can never recall much complaining from that city about Bonds.

Here is what I think happened with Bonds. I think his trainer gave him these gels and creams that Bonds is accused of using and he didn’t, at first, realize that these were potentially banned substances. I think he might have learned the truth about them later and then figured that he needed to cover his ass and then lied.

That is still a mistake in judgment in the scenario I just created. If that was the case, he is complicating matters by not saying that.

My issue is really more about the use of steroids. They do help spur the muscle growth and healing process. But so what?

The main argument is that not every player would like to inject these materials to keep pace with the others who would like to use them. That makes the playing field uneven and unnatural.

I always lean towards my assumption that we, as individuals, should be able to do what we want with our bodies. If I want to use steroids, then I should be able to, and I if I didn’t want to that should be fine also. I really have an issue with someone else telling me what I can or cannot do with my body. If I want to be a fat slob, I should be able to be one. If I want to have the body of a horse and take horsey growth pills, then let me do it.

However, MLB does have a right to make rules that they wish to have players follow also. They have a multi-billion dollar business and image to project and protect. So there needs to be some balance between the owners and players with these things. It’s what I have babbled about before with labor and management on here.

Always tricky stuff and it makes for good debate.

Soon I will start a discussion about the pros and cons of giant boobs.

I lean towards “pro” on that one.

Done.