inda: I have pretty good sized veins, but the one time some “genius” at a Red Cross blood drive decided to take the tourniquet off before doing the stick (after marking my arm with a marker), is the one time they missed. Hurt like hell, too.

Rays: Yep. My dad’s a PICU nurse, and is pretty handy with a needle :p

Bless all ICU nurses, and especially NICU nurses. Most scared I ever was in a medical setting was having to do an EJ cut down on a 28-week preemie. Really, every time I have had to work on infants I paraphrase “Alan Shepard’s Prayer” (misquoted in “The Right Stuff” as “Dear Lord, don’t let me (foul) up.”

For my needle-phobic friends, I used to keep a spinal needle around just to watch their eyes when I would hold it up.

You cannot generalize among player patterns to explain inter-annual variation within players….well, you can…but your conclusions will be flawed.

Nah, that will never happen.

The average big-league career lasts under six years and the current penalty cuts out a third of a season. That’s 6% of the total games most players can realistically hope to play. That’s quite a bit, really. And then you’ve got the stigma, etc.

No player is doing it because they’re not scared of the penalties. They’re doing it (however many or few are doing it) because they don’t think they’ll get caught. That’s it.

Confession: I spend so much time with preterm infants, research, and in front of this laptop that most of what I “know” about adult care is very abstract. Hands on skill with starting an IV on a grown person is WAY in the past for me. I don’t think I’d know what to do with a cooperative patient, much less one that could talk to me. I live in terror of having to perform CPR on a grownup again: I’m used to chest compressions with 2 fingers and NRP guidelines. Know what? If I had to deal with an adult emergency, I bet I’d faint in terror.

Also, this is quite the epic reading fail: “But according to Craig, no one takes PEDs unless they admit to it. He probably thinks Barry and Lance are clean. Lance only admitted to blood doping and Barry denied everything. ”

Craig’s never said anything of he sort. In fact, not too many days ago you’ll find where he posted about Mike Schmidt living with his head in the sand because Schmidt has gone on to aver precisely what you accuse Craig of.

I realize it’s a nuanced view, but the reasonable position is that the current testing program HAS reduced drug use in baseball: an assessment of the evidence says this is so. Hence it works as well as any other deterrent policy works. Furthermore the players getting caught these days are minor league players for the most part with one or two high profile guys (Melky) in the mix as well. This costs them substantial playing time and, certainly in Melky’s case, a lot of money.

You appear to have no point.

Players will stop cheating only when their is no longer an incentive to do so. Technological/scientific advancements have made it easier to mask these agents. Policing won’t work.

I usually keep being a nurse from them a secret because I don’t want them to get nervous. I’ll only break out the nurse card if they’re doing something obviously wrong and they didn’t listen to me the first time I brought it up. I also don’t like telling docs when I’m the patient because I want them to give me the same patient teaching they give everyone else. I don’t like for them to assume I know something.

So lets figure this out, inject with PEDs and get new millions of dollars in new contracts is OK.

Inject needle and draw blood to lose millions of dollars by being suspended and/or losing new contracts, this is not OK.

But according to Craig, no one takes PEDs unless they admit to it. He probably thinks Barry and Lance are clean. Lance only admitted to blood doping and Barry denied everything. Innocent until proven guilty, right Craig.

May I add that having capital punishment in 33 states and eschewing gun control nationwide has improved our homicide rates to where we are first among advanced industrialized countries.

Frankly, the thing that amuses me the most is when I go to donate blood and the nurse freaks out when he/she learns that’s my job as well. They then get really nervous, like they think I’m going to say “you’re doing that wrong”. I’ve taken to telling them AFTER the blood starts flowing: saves watching someone’s hands shake as they try and slide the needle in. I got big veins, too. Its not like anyone could miss, so I don’t know what people get so nervous about.