TheAgitator.com
Off to NYC
Monday, January 14th, 2008I’ll be hopping a train tomorrow to New York City, where I’ll be debating George "Sports Machine" Michael, ex-Braves slugger Dale Murphy, and testing guru Dick Pound on the issue of sports and performance-enhancing drugs. I’ll be defending what you might call the "Steve Howe position."
I’m a last-minute replacement for ex-Olympic gold medalist Ben Johnson (no joke). I had to run a sub-10 100 to earn my train ticket (that’s a joke).
An abridged version of the event will be broadcast on your local NPR affiliate later this week. We’ll post audio and video here once it’s available.
Dick Pound is the Chancellor of my alma mater, McGill University. He is responsible for Canada and the IOC making marijuana a prohibited “social” drug. Because, it might…like….make you feel like you’re….flying…man. Sad that even when a person can win a medal at the Olympics, the Pound and other drug prohibitionists still can’t accept that maybe marijuana isn’t so bad after all. I guess they are just “thinking of the children”.
Dick Pound. It just doesn’t ever get less funny, no matter how many times I hear it.
No surprise a guy with that name has made taking weed away from other people a career choice, eh?
I love how everyone…me included…came in here to re-post the name Dick Pound.
For taking peoples “weed” away he should be called Dick Less.
If you have time while your in Manhattan stop by the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 with 3D IMAX. It’s awesome!
Sorry Radley but Dale Murphey was my childhood hero, so I think I’m taking his side, whatever it is.
Also, Dick Pound.
Damn it. Alex beat me to exactly the comment I wanted to make.
Seriously, Radley…be kind to Murph, even if he’s wrong.
Does Lasik eye surgery improve hitting skills?
CK,
Is that an honest question or are you using a rhetorical device to actual compare eye surgery to taking steroids? A tad dishonest, no?
I think all the “risking a person’s health” stuff is easy to argue around, since many athletes seem to willingly and knowingly trade health risks, body-aches or even death, earlier in life for the money and glory of pro-sports (look at NFL lineman!) But the biggest problem with steroids and performance enhancers is that it is unfair for competition - where eye surgery is not.
The question is: is there an understanding, either through explicit rule in the game or implicitly by, say the thing being illegal under the law, that people are not and should be doing something? If so, then doing that thing is pretty clearly cheating. So you’d have an argument if laser surgery were somehow illegal or banned, and players were nefariously sneaking off to South America to have surgeries done and then lying about it.
Tell Murph he should be in the Hall. IMO, he is the player who was most hurt by playing when he did and retiring when he did. The steroid era that followed his retirement skewed his numbers. Moreover, he might have lasted a little longer without the steroid era because his .255, 20 and 80 would have been harder to replace. Once Brady Anderson-esque guys hit it big, Murph had no chance.
Also, steroids should probably be legal (and may be beneficial when supervised by a physician), but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed in baseball. Still, don’t get me started on what I would have said to Congress if I were Bud Selig or Donald Fehr.
It is probably too late to dig it up, but I have heard Jim Palmer say if it weren’t for anti-inflammatory drugs he would never have made the majors let alone the HoF.
And LASIK isn’t the canrd you think. Eye-sight is the most important attribute a hitter has. Not ‘bat speed’, not hand/eye coordination, and certainly not strength. Ted Williams claimed that he could tell if a pitch was a fastball or an off speed pitch based on the color of the ball. A fastball rotated fast enough so it was white, while off speed pitches had a slower rotation so it was pink. Once he knew this, he knew where the ball was likely going based on what pitches a given pitcher had. When tested, his eyesight was on the order of 20/10 or 20/15(I forget which). He had this ability naturally. If other players use a medical procedure to acquire this ability, how is that not ‘cheating’ those that do have this natural ability? How does it not ‘taint’ the records of the by-gone eras where eye surgery was unheard of, and elective eye-surgery unimaginable?
And don’t forget to mention amphetamines when anyone starts on about the glory years of the 70s and 80s.
Nick T
Part of the problem is that many of these drugs weren’t against the law. When McGuire was on Andro you could get it at GNC. Andro was legal until 2005. With MLB having no policy and the drugs changing fast enough that legislation couldn’t, some would argue shouldn’t, keep up.
Also, most of these drugs are available with a prescription. They have valid uses in recovery. How is a player to know when a prescription is legit vs. a Dr. trying to curry favor?
The Steve Howe situation is entirely different. I’d have fired him as an employee since his drug habit did affect his work. That doesn’t mean he should have been banned from working for anyone. MLB is weird though, its a cartel. While the teams are autonomous at some level the idea that there could be a cartel wide decree that Howe shouldn’t be employed does make some sense. He was having an effect on the image of the game.
Dick Pound is indeed an awesome name. However, it is not nearly as awesome as Dick Armey.
Joe,
Ted Williams had 20/10 vision (which also made him a kick-ass fighter pilot). I think you’d get a good argument from a lot of great baseball men that bat-speed or hand-eye coordination are MORE important than eye-sight since many great players don’t have 20/<20 vision and some even wear contacts or glasses. (Tony Gwynn could deliberately hit a gorund ball to the spot vacated by a middle infielder on a steal withouth knowing which fielder would move until the pitcher was in his wind-up! That’s sounds like coordination to me, along with tremendous muscle dexterity.)
As for eye surgery, you make a fair point that this was not available years ago, but so weren’t a lot of things ike nutritionists and trainers and legal supplements and hours of video of every player. It seems silly to require that all players can’t do certain things to gain an advantage that doesn’t derive directly from natural ability. Julio Franco played until he was like 70 because all he ever ate was like raisins and yogurt and worked out like a fiend. That’s not natural ability per se, but it’s still meritous. Yes eye surgery is different but only in degree. Technology and science will always be around to assist athletes. We can’t ban it all or call everyone a cheater.
Again, the problem I have is not that steroids are inherently unfair, but that they were not really allowed by virtue of being an illegal controlled substance.
Nick T.:
It was both of course. If a surgery to enhance one’s eyesight is not a violation of either the spirit or the rules of a sport, then a surgery to enhance other sport-valuable attributes or decrease other sport-impinging attributes would be acceptable.
The international olympic committee just refused to allow the south african double amputee to run in the olympics because his prosthetic legs and feet are 1) more efficient than normal human ankles, 2) because of that improved efficiency he builds up less lactic acid in his muscles.
Better sporting through surgery is fine but better sporting through chemistry is not so fine in your view?
So, not even a tad dishonest in my view ( but then I would think that).
I personally find team sports to be boring and most individual sports to be just a hair less than boring so I really could not care less whether someone becomes a surgical bionic human or a chemical bionic human; the “unfairness” of the artifical competition construct is about as irrelevant as it comes.
“Better sporting through surgery is fine but better sporting through chemistry is not so fine in your view?”
As I said, the key thing is whether it is understood to be illegal in the sport, so I think either can be fine under the right circumstances. The example of the amputee you gave seems to make sense and the authorities within that sport made a sound ruling. I doubt the same ruling would make sense in, say, golf. Each sport has its own rules, and when you don’t follow them you are a cheater, even if you don’t gain an actual advantage.
I just disagree with the broad idea that anything that has not always been available to athletes is of questionable legality today.
“Does Lasik eye surgery improve hitting skills?”
I’d like to see someone try to *objectively quantify* the effects of steroids across the whole range of human subjects in exactly the same way that Lasik can be quantified.
Every time I’ve posed this challenge, the dopers go out like blown light bulbs.
The fact of the matter is that it cannot be done, and this is why this comparison is abject nonsense.
Steroid use by players is not cheating. Cheating at a game involves not playing by the rules of the game. Breaking the administrative rules of the league, the rules of Congress or the rule of states is not cheating. It may be unethical, but it’s not cheating.
Dick Pound.
The reason why certain performance-enhancing drugs, especially steroids, must be banned is not simply because they create a performance advantage for the user. The problem arises from the fact that in addition, they ALSO impose negative health consequences on the user.
When these two conditions both exist, the drug user is imposing harm on those who compete against him/her. These competitors are forced into an unacceptable choice between two forms of harm. One choice is to NOT use the drug. In this case, the competitor is harmed by NOT having an equal opportunity of winning, and obtaining the financial and other rewards from winning. The other choice is to use the drug, and take a significant risk of permanent damage to his/her health.
Liberty does not include the freedom to harm others. As shown above, the competitor who uses a performance-enhancing drug WHICH ALSO has negative health effects is specifically and directly harming his or her competitors. Therefore, using such drugs should and must be banned.
Steve
I think that Steve is probably right. The distinction between steroids and Lasik is only valid if it is based on safety, not on the advantage given. If we suppose that sport is meant to pit the natural abilities of athletes against each other then both steroids and Lasik give an artificial and unfair advantage to the competitor who uses them. Since many other things (corrective lenses, specialized clothing, equipment, etc.) give similar advantage to those who use them, this cheating aspect of drugs must be a bit of a canard. The legitimate question is whether some athletes using drugs forces others to do so too, to the detriment of their health and wellbeing. And I think most will agree that a world of sport where everyone needs steroids to compete is not desirable.
This still leaves the question of why Olympic athletes can’t smoke pot.