Sources: Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003

uolj

uolj

Starter
no surprise.

I feel like such an old fart, but I LOVED baseball back when 30 home runs in a season was a lot.... I mean for first basemen and left fielders, not shortstops and second basemen. I get really depressed over the big strike and subsequent 'roid era - it is actually heartbreaking to me.

nothing means nothing in baseball since all the juicing started. sad.
 
im not surprised either, just a little disappointed. I like A rod but that just sucks, and the fact that he lied about it is sad too.
 
I knew he was to good to be true, but i gave him the benifit of the doubt and chose to ignore it...I sure hope basketball never has this kind of problem.
 
I'm still holding out hope with Griffey. Maybe I'm just naive or in denial, but I still think maybe he never doped and will continue to have a good career.


One minor quibble with the Rodriguez story is that the 2003 tests were supposed to be anonymous. They were stupid to do and it's the players' faults for cheating, but if something is supposed to be anonymous it should be anonymous. Oh well, just a minor quibble.
 
Francisco d'Anconia said:
no surprise.

I feel like such an old fart, but I LOVED baseball back when 30 home runs in a season was a lot.... I mean for first basemen and left fielders, not shortstops and second basemen. I get really depressed over the big strike and subsequent 'roid era - it is actually heartbreaking to me.

nothing means nothing in baseball since all the juicing started. sad.
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Word. Maybe they could just scrub a couple of decades from the books...
 
ahh baseball.

This is bar-none my favorite sport,,,I love the stats, I love the matchups, and I love the rivalries.

But it's so jaded in so many peoples eyes now...


My whole stand is..

Stuff F'n happens...
Everywhere...Every sport...Every place...
Yes, you have the A-Rods and Clemens and Bonds' (who Im a shameless supporter of) who took advantage of the game...I just think it is a shame to have that certain amount of people/stars ruin the experience of the game.

These certain people can't overtake the stats... The matchups...The rivalries... The chess-match that is almost every baseball game...

Yes, there is/was this 'steriod era'
It happened.
It may suck. It may have tainted the record books.
But for people to have a 15 year period ruin a great great sport for them?
...I simply say good riddance.

Ill be enjoying ATT Park in the steriod-rehab era while you ignore baseball because ''Barrioid Bonds killed the sport'' for you, Thank You Very Much,,,

It was a crap era.
Get over it.
Baseball is a great F'n sport.
 
No, baseball WAS a great sport before it became all about overblown egos, free agency, STEROIDS, and fans who are willing to overlook pretty much anything if their hero can hit home runs.

I'm glad you still love the sport but there are a lot of us who ceased to feel that way a long time ago because what we saw happening poisoned something we cared deeply about.

It's not just about Barry Bonds. But there's no way for you to understand. You can no more experience the baseball some of us grew up watching and loving than you can imagine a world without the Internet.

You could try and understand what we've been saying. Instead, you try and insult or demean the feelings we've tried to express. Hey, no problem. Good riddance? Whatever...

I'm not going to get over it. Quite honestly I feel sorry for you. You're worshipping flawed figures who have bloated stats because they cheated. I remember the days of Sandy Koufax coming into Candlestick Park to pitch against the Giants when Willie Mays and Willie McCovery were doing their best to ruin his visit. THAT was baseball. The Dodgers-Giants rivalry was as intense as the Kings-Lakers in the WCF. THAT was baseball.

Get over it? Oh dude, I'll never get over it because I know what IT was before. And I'll mourn the loss of that game forever...
 
I'm with you Slab, its not my favorite sport, but nothing compares to Sox-Yankees to me, and Giants-Dodgers is not too far down the list either. I happen to think baseball is one of many sports where the performance enhancing use is far more widespread than anyone could ever imagine and also dates back further than people suspect, and I just accept that as how it is. I mean who didn't love the Sosa-McGwire chase, and c'mon, you really thought those guys were clean at the time??? And there's plenty of documented evidence that people were taking things far more lethal than steroids from the post war era on, yet those guys are revered as playing the game how it was meant to be played. Its just another side effect of the 24 hour news world to me.

eta: since VF brought it up, free agency combined with no salary cap has been the real killer of baseball.
 
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I personally HATED the Sosa-McGwire "chase" because it was pretty freaking obvious something nefarious was going on. And the whole "people were taking things far more lethal than steroids" argument is a straw man, and I think you know it.

Make all the excuses you like. That's fine. Agree with SLAB and love the sport. That's fine. But to deny the impact and effect the whole steroid debacle has had on baseball is just silly.

The Giants-Dodgers rivalry was one for the ages. I was lucky enough to attend games and actually see Mays, McCovey, Koufax, Drysdale and the rest. THAT was baseball...and it was truly what SLAB sees now, but without players feeling the need to cheat without any kind of quilt or remorse. They may not have been perfect but they were paragons of virtue compared to what goes on now.
 
VF21 said:
I personally HATED the Sosa-McGwire "chase" because it was pretty freaking obvious something nefarious was going on. And the whole "people were taking things far more lethal than steroids" argument is a straw man, and I think you know it.
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The history of amphetamines in baseball is well documented, I fail to see why mentioning it is a straw man.

Make all the excuses you like. That's fine. Agree with SLAB and love the sport. That's fine. But to deny the impact and effect the whole steroid debacle has had on baseball is just silly.
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Of course its had an effect because baseball has had to endure a very public spectacle and everyone somehow believes other sports are clean. Football is now our most popular sport and yet what most people consider to be the golden age of the sport was a complete mess of steroids and drug use, but with the exception of a few players it has largely been swept under the rug.
 
pdxKingsFan said:
The history of amphetamines in baseball is well documented, I fail to see why mentioning it is a straw man.
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Two wrongs never make a right. Are you actually trying to excuse steroids because of speed usage? First, it's changing the subject and second, if you can show me evidence of how many records may have been impacted by speed you might have a topic for another tangential discussion.

Of course its had an effect because baseball has had to endure a very public spectacle and everyone somehow believes other sports are clean. Football is now our most popular sport and yet what most people consider to be the golden age of the sport was a complete mess of steroids and drug use, but with the exception of a few players it has largely been swept under the rug.
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NO ONE to my knowledge has said other sports are clean. That, too, is an attempt to defer discussion of baseball with the old "but everybody is doing it" argument.

One of my favorite all-time players is currently in the news for steroid usage that's just now coming to light. I loved Dana Stubblefield and am very disappointed that he apparently used juice. But that's neither here nor there. It doesn't change the horrific impact steroids have had on baseball for 15 YEARS (as was mentioned by SLAB above).

There are few individual records in football that could have been obtained by steroids use. In baseball, however, it appears very likely the most honored records of all, home runs, are currently held by cheaters...and pretty much everyone knows they were obtained by cheaters and yet people continue to make excuses for those cheaters??? Sorry, but we apparently have deep and fundamental differences of opinion about steroids and cheating and people who CHOOSE to take advantage of the miracles of chemistry to enhance their abilities to get an edge over fellow athletes.

No one forced McGwire or Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriquez or Jason Giambi or any of the others to use those substances. They did so knowing full well it was illegal or at least something they should hide from the public. They spit on every kid who ever loved baseball. Their personal glory was more important to them than the integrity of the game they played.

That's contemptible IMHO.
 
VF21 said:
Two wrongs never make a right. Are you actually trying to excuse steroids because of speed usage? First, it's changing the subject and second, if you can show me evidence of how many records may have been impacted by speed you might have a topic for another tangential discussion.
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VF - all I'm saying is that its very likely there never was a "clean" era in baseball. I'm not saying what's wrong or right, just that saying that singling out this era of baseball for contempt is the product of media hyposcrisy.

You seem to think that I believe cheating and whatever it takes to win is ok, I don't. What I think is that it is far more rampant than anyone suspects and that we don't even know what some of these banned substances do, if anything at all. Compared to what we have now, I'd much rather have it transparent and out in the open, even allowing for supervised use for injury recovery if a player has sustained a season or potential career ending injury.

That is all.
 
pdxKingsFan said:
...Compared to what we have now, I'd much rather have it transparent and out in the open, even allowing for supervised use for injury recovery if a player has sustained a season or potential career ending injury...
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And on that point, I think I can actually agree with you.

Sorry if I came off a bit rabidly. My dad LOVED baseball and some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting with him, listening to the Giants game on the radio. I lost my dad nearly 25 years ago and I guess I'm way too emotional about what's become of the game he treasured, which is a big reason why I quit watching.

Peace...

:)
 
I appreciate where you're coming from and have never had an issue with your take on this subject. And I admire that you want to see the best in everyone. If you look at where I come from - born in the mid-70s - there's very little of what I know that hasn't been tainted. I've literally watched what may be the equivalent of hundreds of years of human evolution take place over the last three decades and thats all I know. It would be impossible not to be a bit cynical.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend you check out the movie Bigger Stronger Faster*. I'm not sure you'd like it because it may come off a bit too pro-steroids at times, but I do believe it was an honest attempt to explore the issue from both sides of the coin, something that hasn't really been done with this issue. I found it rather eye opening even if I didn't buy into everything.
 
If steroids didn't give a competitive advantage, why did they take them?
 
pdxKingsFan said:
If you haven't seen it, I recommend you check out the movie Bigger Stronger Faster*. I'm not sure you'd like it because it may come off a bit too pro-steroids at times, but I do believe it was an honest attempt to explore the issue from both sides of the coin, something that hasn't really been done with this issue. I found it rather eye opening even if I didn't buy into everything.
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I'll take your advice and see if our local video store has it.

Thanks, pdx...
 
pdxKingsFan said:
I appreciate where you're coming from and have never had an issue with your take on this subject. And I admire that you want to see the best in everyone. If you look at where I come from - born in the mid-70s - there's very little of what I know that hasn't been tainted. I've literally watched what may be the equivalent of hundreds of years of human evolution take place over the last three decades and thats all I know. It would be impossible not to be a bit cynical.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend you check out the movie Bigger Stronger Faster*. I'm not sure you'd like it because it may come off a bit too pro-steroids at times, but I do believe it was an honest attempt to explore the issue from both sides of the coin, something that hasn't really been done with this issue. I found it rather eye opening even if I didn't buy into everything.
Click to expand...

Saw it, great little documentary.
 
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