First off let me apologize that we have not been writing all that much. I have a good excuse though, school takes up a majority of my time. Today alone I got up at 6 am, worked out, studied for six hours, played two hours of basketball, watched the denver game (aside: dude, how awesome is Chris “the birdman” Andersen?), and now I am writing this article and will probably do a little more studying while watching the Cavs game. By the way, today is what I like to call a light day. So get off of my back! On to the article!
Other than quirky, and what I find witty, title to the article I can honestly say I don’t care about Man-Ram. For those of you who have been under a rock for the last couple of days Manny Ramirez has received a 50 game suspension for violating the leagues banned substance policy. Basically, he was caught taking hCG through some paperwork. In addition, they found that he had an elevated amount of testosterone in his urine some of which they could prove was from an artificial source. hCG is mainly used as a fertility drug for women, but has off label use as a drug that restarts natural testosterone production after a cycle of steroid use. Technically, in pregnancy, hCG has some growth hormone like action but outside of a pregnant woman and her fetus it does very little affect human growth. Man-Ram claims that he went to a doctor for a personal issue and was prescribed the medication, but he did not ask for a medical exemption from the league. Basically, Ramirez is claiming ignorance in this situation and is taking the suspension for violating the rules.
Let’s be perfectly honest here; Manny Ramirez is probably on steroids. Let’s be more honest, pretty much every player in the MLB is on ‘roids. If nothing else, I think all of these steroid “stories” have proven to us, the average fans, that if you can get away with something you’ll probably do it. I don’t care anymore, we know these players are taking every advantage they can get and there is nothing we can do about. Baseball has always been a sport plagued with substance abuse. Locker rooms in the MLB are filled with booze, many players are known to throw back 10 or 15 drinks on flights . In the 80′s the MLB struggled with a severe amphetamine problem, players used to take whatever “upper” they could find to get them through the 162 game season. We are not even talking about the number of players from the good ol’ days that died of cirrotic livers or alcoholic pancreatitis.
At the end of the day all of these performance enhancing drugs have little affect on the game. If I were to start taking ‘roids today I would probably still bat a .015 in the MLB, the people I play softball with will probably still drop the easy fly balls or miss the perfect textbook throw to first or still try to make the play at first instead of making the easy flip to second. I hate the argument but baseball does require skill. I know some performance enhancing drugs can make you recover faster so you play better more often but they take their toll, players aren’t going to be as durable.
The sad part of all of this is that I am still against using steroids. I have just lost all hope in the sport of baseball, there is no purity left, I have just come to accept that everyone is taking every advantage regardless of the rules.
