How many outs are there?
Baseball has made a big deal about rooting out use of steroids and stimulants by its players, but where there's a will, there's a way, and Major League Baseball is helping its players get around the crackdown. Last year, more than 100 players were given exemptions to use medication to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That’s right, nearly one in every 12 major league players is using drugs we typically think of being given to schoolchildren who can’t keep their minds on their studies. What, do players lose their train of thought during that half-second that it takes for the ball to come from the pitcher’s hand to home plate? Are first basemen forgetting to cover the bag on ground balls to short. Are third basemen getting drilled by line drives because they’re thinking about puppies and kittens? Or maybe, just maybe, ballplayers who can no longer get away with taking uppers are trying to find a way to keep stimulants in their systems. Do ya think? I don’t imagine it’s too hard for a pro baseball player to find some jock-sniffing doctor to diagnose them with ADHD. Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations, said the incidence of ADHD among baseball players can’t be compared with that of the general population. Said Manfred, “We are all male. We are far younger than the general population, and we have far better access to medical care than the general population. The response by Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the panel that puts together the banned-substances list for the World Anti-Doping Agency, was basically to laugh at Manfred. “This is incredible. This is quite spectacular. There seems to be an epidemic of ADD in major league baseball,” said Wadler. “I’ve been in private practice for a lot of years. I can count on one hand the number of individuals (I've seen) that have ADD. To say that (8 percent) of major league baseball players have attention deficit disorder is crying out for an explanation.” I’ll offer this explanation. It’s just the typical, head-in-the-sand, don’t-confront-the-players-union approach of Major League Baseball. But who knows? Maybe if the Pirates put together a roster made up totally of players on Adderall, they could avoid a 17th straight losing season. You’re right. That’s crazy. Because the Pirates’ ownership would just hire the worst (read cheapest) ADHD players they could find.
Labels: Sports
posted by Brant at
11:39 AM
5 Comments:
Honestly, who cares about the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports. I was a D&A counselor and had to worry about helping people that had drugs destroy their lives. These individuals are choosing to enhance their ability to perform their occupation.
Don't use the crap that it hurts THEIR bodies. Coal miners risk their lives, fireman and police risk their lives. Why? In most cases to support their families. The amount of money doesn't change that.
It is the most non issue in the country.
This story is going to come around again in about a decade or so, when all those players who swallowed all those drugs, some of them used for horses, start developing cancers, dropping dead of heart attacks or developing animal diseases.
... or when the winner of the 2015 Kentucky Derby is Roger Clemens... and the jocky is one of those little 6 year old chinese gymnasts
Zing!
You have to hand it to baseball, though. They tell lies just as good as anyone else. When 5-8, 160-pound outfielders were hitting 50 home runs in a season, baseball said the pitching was diluted and smaller ballparks were being built.
Right.
These players were sucking down anything they could get their hands on to make themselves stronger because that meant a huge payday at some point in their careers. And the union, like the owners, turned their back to it.
It should be interesting to see when some of them grow a third eye in the middle of their foreheads or their wives give birth to mutants. But then, who really cared about that, right?
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