jose conseco on 60 minutes sunday

[yoMAMA]

anyone watching it?

we all know MLB ballers are major league juiced.

[mrazntre]

he laid it ALL out. It's funny how everyone is discrediting him now, and just plain talking shit.

[deez nuts]

i heard barry bond's wife also sold him out by saying that she seen him inject steroids.

and what's this big head syndrome barry suffered where his head grew twice in size one time that was attributed to his steroid use?

[mrazntre]

I guess steroid's create fat by product and in his unique case it just ended up in his head and neck.

[deez nuts]

I guess steroid's create fat by product and in his unique case it just ended up in his head and neck.

yeah i know the steroids causes edema in the head. but, ballooning up to twice it's normal size? that's insane.

[mrazntre]

Less brain mass = more fat space

[deez nuts]

all the batting records that they broke should be revoked.

[mrazntre]

better yet, give it a double **

[VV o n g B a]

better yet, allow controlled steroid use in professional sports. these are grown ass men who can make their own decisions about what they put in their bodies. if there is ever a form of steroid that is shown not to be extremely harmful to the body (less harmful than say a cigarette), then let the sports players use it. it's not like it's addictive. who wants to see weak ass players year after year? not i. who wants to see ppl who break records year after year? that's me.

but yeah, i agree w/ mrazntre about putting some ** by their name.

[lethal]

i heard barry bond's wife also sold him out by saying that she seen him inject steroids.

His mistress, not his wife. I'm not sure if that makes her claim more or less credible.

[yoMAMA]

man...all those baseball records by bonds, sosa and mcguire are pretty much tainted now.

[Faithless]

My question would be, "where in the record books do you start breaking-out the asterisks?"

Asterisks, anyone? Baseball's love affair with steroids leaves it with tainted records. (http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/02/27/27edit.htm)

...
It may be time to break out the asterisks.

Jose Canseco, who won a most valuable player award while using steroids, has given impetus to the asterisk issue with release of his book that provides a detailed account of steroids use in baseball. He names names, and some big ones at that.

Baseball owners, officials and many players have been quick to attack Canseco as someone whose credibility is shot (he did, after all, lie and cheat for years by using steroids) and as someone who is trying to make a buck at other people's (theirs) expense.

All that is true. But it is also true that Canseco is in a unique position to know whereof he speaks: He not only used steroids, but also freely admits it. He unfortunately goes even further in his book by saying that steroid use may be acceptable in some situations. This, despite the numerous documented health risks connected with steroid use and the message it gives to young athletes, that it is OK to cheat and abuse your body if it helps your performance.

That performance boost is at the heart of the asterisk issue. Steroids became popular in baseball right after the players' strike, which damaged the sport's reputation. To get fans back in the ballparks, baseball turned to offense. Pitching may win pennants, but home runs sell tickets.

So the fences were brought in, the balls were wrapped tighter and players were suddenly bigger. Then, in 1998, there was the epic assault on Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a season, with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both eclipsing it and McGwire hitting the 70 mark. It was great theater. The fans (and the owners) loved it.

Now, Canseco says he taught McGwire, a former teammate who has admitted to using a non-banned human growth hormone, how to inject steroids in his buttocks. McGwire denies this. Sosa, who also added muscle as his career progressed, was caught with a corked bat. It doesn't take much innuendo to fan those flames of suspicion and Canseco doesn't bother with innuendo.

Of course, Barry Bonds, who some say is the best player in the game today, stands as the prime suspect of undetected steroid use. He has apparently told a grand jury investigating the matter that he used a cream that turned out to be steroids thinking it was something else. Bonds, who bulked up considerably late in his career, asks fans to accept that an athlete so involved in maintaining a rigid health regimen would not know what he was rubbing on his body. Again, Canseco points a finger where there is already plenty of suspsicion.

Bonds has eclipsed McGwire's single- season home run record, has passed his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the all-time list and is poised to pass Babe Ruth this year. Only Hank Aaron will then remain between Bonds and baseball's title of all-time home run king.

For a couple of years, baseballs were flying out of the park routinely off the bats of players who previously had trouble reaching the fence. Batting and slugging averages ballooned. In the one year when baseball conducted random tests for steroids, some 80 players tested positive, even though they knew tests were possible. With no penalties (or names) attached, they figured it was worth it to juice their records.

Can baseball, with its unabashed homage to the past and its hall of legends, live with possibly juiced records? Is it fair to Ruth or Mays or Aaron or Maris and other old-time sluggers to have their accomplishments diminished by players who may have cheated? Maris got an asterisk next to his record just because his season was eight games longer than Ruth's, but no one ever accused Maris (or any of the others named above) of using banned substances.

Maris eventually lost his asterisk as baseball and its fans overcame the shock at the Babe being surpassed. It's time Selig cleared up the steroid mess and dug out asterisks to separate the juiced records from the natural ones.

Altering record book won't work (http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/sports/11185437.htm)

Posted on Sun, Mar. 20, 2005 * GARY PETERSON: TIMES COLUMNIST

About the last thing anyone would want in the wake of Thursday's harrumph-fest atop Capitol Hill is to portray Bud Selig as the voice of reason. On any subject.

In his appearance before the House Government Reform Committee, baseball's accidental commissioner cemented his reputation as a real-life Col. Henry Blake. "What am I signing, Radar? A steroids testing policy? And what's this? A $3 million loan from the Twins to the Brewers? Well, OK, I guess..."

Selig couldn't even remember to speak into the microphone. A primate can be trained to do as much.

But on one point, he was on target. Trying to rid baseball's record books of steroid-aided standards would be folly of the highest order.

The desire for such revisionist book-keeping is understandable. One of the many sickening side effects of the steroid scandal is the realization that we were all played for chumps. It's bad enough that we turned a blind eye to the game's pumped-up sluggers; we actually celebrated them. We practically deified Mark McGwire during the summer of '98. We glorified Barry Bonds three summers later.

Now? McGwire doesn't want to talk about the past, and Bonds' contempt for the fan on the street is a matter of public record. Anyone feel like cheering?

Of course not. What we feel like doing is grabbing a bucketful of asterisks and poring over the Baseball Encyclopedia with intent to discredit. That plays well as an emotion. It's the practical application that doesn't compute.

Jose Canseco, for example. Former Boston Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell, interviewed after the release of Canseco's book, made a pitch for the 1988 American League MVP award. It was voted to Canseco, after he became the first major league player to hit at least 40 home runs and steal at least 40 bases in the same season.

Greenwell batted .325 that year, with 119 RBI. He finished second in the voting to Canseco, who now admits he was on the juice at the time.

"Where's my MVP?" Greenwell told the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press. "I was clean. If they're going to start putting asterisks by things, let's put one by the MVP."

Two problems there. One, steroid possession and use wasn't illegal then. And two, it was fine by baseball until 2002. You can question Canseco's morality. Legally, you have nothing on him.

Or take McGwire. If you believe Canseco's book, and are persuaded by the New York Daily News story linking McGwire with Southern California steroid dealers circa the early 1990s, Big Mac was likely on something more potent than Androstenedione when he broke Roger Maris' record.

But striking his 70 home runs from the record, or at least embellishing them with a scarlet asterisk, isn't as simple a task as it was when Maris' mark was qualified in 1961. That action was quantifiable, for one thing. Maris hit 61 home runs in a 162-game season. Babe Ruth had hit 60 in a 154-game season.

But here again we find ourselves in murky waters. The use of illegal steroids was against federal law in 1998, but baseball still had no policy against it. Even if baseball had, there are no urine tests to document what was gurgling through McGwire's veins that summer.

And even if there were, where do you draw the line? Do you wipe all 70 homers off the books? That seems harsh, given that even in the absence of performance-enhancing agents, McGwire would have hit some home runs.

Do you expunge only those that probably wouldn't have happened unenhanced -- say, the record-breaker, which squeaked over the left field wall at Busch Stadium?

And what of McGwire's 147 RBI in both '98 and '99? What of his 27 doubles in 1997? What of his 11 sacrifice flies in 1989? He hit a career-high .312 in 1996. You fixin' to wipe that off the books, too, or only the numbers that matter?

It is even more complicated with Bonds, who won three MVPs and had a 40-40 season in the pre-steroid age. His career is ongoing. He is still making numbers. When he returns from his knee surgery, he will resume stalking the legends of Ruth (and his 714 career home runs) and Henry Aaron (and his 755).

You want to knock him down a statistical peg or two? Fine. Exactly how many of his 703 home runs would you like to red-line?

It's not a doable deal. There is no actuarial table to tell us what percentage of a man's numbers to subtract in the event of steroid use, or in the event of steroid precursors, or when steroids were legal, or when they weren't.

Nor does it address players who played in the whites-only era, players who played in the 4-F World War II years, players who took amphetamines, players who used recreational drugs, players who corked their bats, or pitchers who threw the spitter.

It's too much. It can't be done. Selig had it right. Make a note of that, Radar.