Comments on: Must-click link: a career minor leaguer talks about the PED pressure felt by the non-superstars

By: BigBeachBall

BigBeachBall — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:22:32 +0000

Craigs credibility as a sports writer diminishing faster than arods nutsuck….

By: Cris E

Cris E — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:18:45 +0000

Hmmm, my clever tag thing didn’t appear because of the angle brackets. To be clear: that’s not how things work, and Babe and Mickey were hard on their bodies and missed time and wore out early and managed to be ridiculously great anyway. Enjoy their achievements for what they are.

By: Cris E

Cris E — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:14:28 +0000

You may as well add Mantle to that list. Oh, and go ahead and restore his knee while you’ve got the hood up.

By: badintent

badintent — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:37:19 +0000

Thank you for your great essay. Wish you write more on the game in the future. You confirm a lot of what a 1975 Detroit baseball player told me about his greenie use.I think Red Bull is the liquid greenie now for most folks.What do you think ?

By: jessethegreat

jessethegreat — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:47:48 +0000

Babe Ruth is still the home run king in my eyes if the title does not get to be held by Barry Bonds.

And to think of how much better The Great Bambino’s records would look over time compared to his peers if he hadn’t been so hard on his body or if he had the added benefit of amphetamines or steroids.

By: raysfan1

raysfan1 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:14:21 +0000

Erick,
Thank you for writing your article, and thank you more for your answers to some of the comments. Players like you stepping forward does much for bringing understanding of PEDs to fans. The more understanding, the more open discussion the better for putting the “steroid era” behind us–for putting a proper, not judgmental, not hysterical historical perspective on it.

By: cur68

cur68 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:50:13 +0000

Glad you liked my home town. Not many do. Hard to like frostbite.
I bet all that focus really did help, though. Tuning out distractions would be real important when pitching

By: ericknott74

ericknott74 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:43:28 +0000

You don’t know, that is for you to decide. I wouldn’t have written the piece if I did use them and felt is necessary to outline my greenie use so as not to come off as hypocritical to the my former teammates who actually read the piece.

By: ericknott74

ericknott74 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:40:36 +0000

I never said that they didn’t make you play better. The point I tried to make was it was acceptable to take them in baseball and no one in the game was trying to hide the fact that it was going on. If, coming up through the ranks their use had been more stigmatized, I might have not even taken one in the first place. I once had a coach say that he wouldn’t watch the Game of the Week from his couch without “beaning” up first. It was a joke but the point was that you would not be looked at as a cheat in the clubhouse if you were using them. Not saying that is the right viewpoint to have, just saying that was the way it was then.

By: ericknott74

ericknott74 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:33:32 +0000

My focus was incredibly better at times. I wouldn’t say my numbers were better, no way to tell. I loved playing in Edmonton as a Trapper and as a member of a visiting team. The Edmonton/Calgary roadtrip was always guaranteed to result in good times after the games were over. Opened the season on that trip one year and we were snowed out for 6 out 8 games. Great city.

By: raysfan1

raysfan1 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:03:40 +0000

Cur, as a physician, knows lots of people who could supply him “greenies” but knows there is a price to pay for that temporary boost in focus.

By: DelawarePhilliesFan

DelawarePhilliesFan — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:46:25 +0000

“we should care far more about what PEDs are doing down at the lower levels of baseball.”

I agree – and would take it a step further. The “lower levels” of baseball are still a very elite group of athletes in the grand scheme of things. So if players juice to get to that level, what does that say to your average High School kid who wants to get drafted? Which in turn puts pressure on anyone who just wants to make the High School team…..

There is a lot of pressure from above on a lot of players

By: clydeserra

clydeserra — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:45:36 +0000

youknow, cur, you don’t have to kill for that kind of focus. There is a way to get it. You just have to know a guy,

By: schlom

schlom — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:37:04 +0000

How do we know that he’s telling the truth about his non-use of steroids?

By: IdahoMariner

IdahoMariner — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:29:38 +0000

great read. thanks for this, craig.

By: stlouis1baseball

stlouis1baseball — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:18:29 +0000

Wow. I am surprised at how candid he is. Great read!

By: mj1818

mj1818 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:14:30 +0000

That’s just it. There is so much pressure on every player to do it because they guy who is starting in front of them is using, so they try to level out the curve to stay on par with everyone else.

By: cur68

cur68 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:07:32 +0000

I’d kill for that focus he describes. A person could actually finish editing a chapter in a couple hours if he weren’t constantly distracted with HB…stuff.

By: The Dangerous Mabry

The Dangerous Mabry — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:53:40 +0000

No, the focus on the superstars is because you can't get people to read an article about someone they've never heard of, but society just loves to tear someone down. Your point about the purity of motivations may be valid, but that's not why the media and society at large focus on Barry Bonds instead of Yamid Haad.

By: The Dangerous Mabry

The Dangerous Mabry — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:51:18 +0000

This is exactly what you’d expect, though, and is the same sort of thing that McGwire was called out for. A guy who’s taking something doesn’t want to believe that thing makes much of a difference. But of course the stuff everyone else is taking is hugely valuable. You see that here. “Greenies don’t make you play better. Steroids are a HUGE game changer.”

Find an article written by a guy who used steroids but not greenies and you have a good chance of finding something that reads exactly the opposite.

Note that I don’t think he’s being dishonest at all. In fact, the candor of this article is fantastic, and it’s a wonderful look inside the world of a guy living right on that edge. I appreciate what he’s written, and I’d recommend the article to anyone. Just take it all with a grain of salt.

By: nobody78

nobody78 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:44:53 +0000

I have much more sympathy for a marginal player who takes steroids because he can’t bear the thought of giving up his dream playing baseball than I do for someone who takes them to add more millions to his millions and break home run records. Isn’t that why we focus on the superstars – because their reason for juicing is so much less compelling?

By: cur68

cur68 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:37:21 +0000

What an incredibly frank account of a guy who could have had an MLB career. I’m amazed that he doesn’t recognize how much amphetamines did for him as a pitcher. His performance on greenies was noticeably better than without. Pretty good read. I bet I saw him pitch when he was in Edmonton, too. I went to a lot of Trappers games in those years.

By: Matthew Pouliot

Matthew Pouliot — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:32:17 +0000

I’ve already spent too much time trying to link up his steroid stories to former teammates. Pretty sure they’re all about Craig Counsell.

By: Chris Fiorentino

Chris Fiorentino — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:09:17 +0000

Great piece. Reminds me of the piece by Doug Glanville, where he was coming to the end of his career and had to decide between trying PEDs and retiring and he chose not to use PEDs. Anyone who is average or lower is pressured when others are using PEDs and that is where the most unfairness lies.