All OPINIONS aside, nobody here has been put in the situation these guys are put in.
Nobody can know what they would do when families, charities, academies, personal money, ego, compitition and the internal drive to win all come into play. Without being in these guys shoes it's easy to point a finger and make them into "bad guys". Plus, as has been pointed out, none of them are Reds so nobody has had their homerism tested yet either.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of the MLB. Use these guys to bolster popularity during a downtime and then use the same guys for a witch hunt when they get called for it? Pretty lame. If left unchecked the MLB would have never started an internal investigation on PEDs.
For me, I really don't care. If someone wants to possibly trade their health for my entertainment, I say "go for it". I love the 40-40 club. I love the 500 ft homerun.
Two things. One, there might be more to hitting HRs than strength, power and aerobic activity. Two, this was Dr Ho's quote from that same study:
"In our study, we used doses of growth hormone on the low end of what is believed to be abuse in sports," said Dr. Ho. "And for that reason, we think that the real effects of growth hormone could be far greater than what's reported in our study. Equally, the side effects could be much more serious, as well."
Sorry, but as an individual that undergoes so many testosterone checks that at times my arms hurt from the blood being drawn, I think there is a whole lot of misunderstanding in the Braun scenario.
My belief, and is certainly just a belief, is that Braun got very, very unlucky and was tested at absolutely the right time. From the brief amount of information that was available, the arbiter dismissed the results because protocols were not followed. IF the sample had been tampered with it would have been evident. Period. You may not realize how doubly-tamper resistant these things are till you see them for yourself. If the test had been opened, it would have been severely damaged as it is impossible to delicately open them. If a needle had been injected, it too would have been clearly visible. The test was delayed in shipping, and that alone was enough to spring Braun per the collective bargaining agreement.
Consider this, I was checked on a Monday morning, the day after my last evening's injection of 1 ml of testosterone. My level was 1280, the highest level the lab had ever seen. Three days later, my level was at 220 and deemed low in testosterone. The Doctors are still trying to figure out how my body processes testosterone so rapidly, but I can tell you from a first-hand experience, it does happen.
Want to bet how fast the union would cry if baseball announced they were holding blood samples for 10 years to check against future agents, currently banned, but masked by other currently unknown drugs?
Last edited by RedsfaninMT; 02-06-2013 at 06:53 PM.
Ho was forced to sum the literature which includes his group's study: "In summary, there appears to be no evidence that GH enhances muscle strength, power, or aerobic capacity in trained adult athletes".
But what of the wingate test (i.e. cranking motion performed at maximum ability against a constant force) that they used as a proxy for athletic performance? Even Ho admits that the athletic significance of the observation is uncertain. In other words, they saw an affect in HGH in fatigued muscles but it's not possible to conclude that such an affect would translate into an impact on athletic performance.
But lets assume that it would. How the heck would a slight ability to perform under anaerobic conditions help Braun hit more HR's?
Again, give HGH to a cheetah and it might go hungry a little less. Carl Lewis? Ya, I could see that it might help if there was a direct relationship between the wingate test and true sprint speed (though again no one argues that such a relationship is valid and Ho's study only saw a 4% difference in wingate results). There just aren't many baseball movements that would be impacted by such as effect in real game situations.
Last edited by jojo; 02-06-2013 at 06:33 PM.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
I would agree that lit suggests that hGH does not have the robust effects that are attributed to steroids. But the articles I read also describe hGH as part of a "cocktail" taken to enhance performance. Is hGH an essential piece to this regimen? I have no idea. I would guess that would be an untestable hypothesis due to ethical constraints. So yes hGH might be a dud by itself as far as strength production, but quite effective in combination with other enhancers. Let's get a NIH grant and find out.
No one just takes HGH (but that's kinda the point).
The sledgehammer is a variation of testosterone. The hammer is insulin. GH is used to repartition energy/nutrients from fat to muscle (GH antagonizes the anabolic action of insulin in adipose tissue). In other words, it modulates the impact of insulin and really is the least important component.
The game with steroids is making an analog that clears quickly to beat a test. hGH is used because until recently, it wasn't tested for. Insulin is pretty much the freebie but it's also by far the most dangerous.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
Huge business opportunity being missed. Sell sugar pills to MLB players, claim they are HGH. One year's worth for $50k. Guarantee, under contract, that they will never fail a test because of them. If they fail because of them, you pay the player a fee of one bajillion dollars. Cash money. On the spot. Only claim you make is that this new HGH is no less effective than other types of HGH, but without any side effects.
Who's with me?
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
I feel like I am reading the New England medical journal for dummies.
Attended 1976 World Series in my Mother's Womb. Attended 1990 World Series Game 2 as a 13 year old. Want to take my son to a a World Series Game in Cincinnati in my lifetime.
Exactly, I was appalled that Will Carroll, who I like a lot, went on Clubhouse Confidential today and said that Braun's explanation is plausible.
If you're paying $500/hour attorneys to handle your appeal, you don't hire a drug dealer to work as your retained expert/consultant. You hire a freaking M.D.
Stick to your guns.
There is a big piece missing with HGH use. Most players are not just using HGH. There is of course a debate in the medical community of it's effectiveness with people in their 20's and 30's (the vast majority of baseball players). We can fight all day about that and there will be no answer until there is some sort of consensus from the medical community.
Yet there is one thing we will never know, and that is how HGH is used in conjunction with anabolic steroids. Within the performance enhancing community, it is pretty much agreed upon steroids used with HGH maximizes the benefit of steroids. Much of this is the theory that steroids make your muscles grow too fast for your body to adjust to it, and HGH lets the rest of your body grow to accomodate the larger muscles.
The reason we will never know is anabolic steroids are an illegal drug that cannot be tested legally. So there are no scientific studies that can confirm or deny the effectiveness of HGH when used with steroids. Yet for people who are into performance enhancing, it's something they all will do and swear by it. So while you can say HGH is not much of a benefit, the vast majority of the time it's used in combination with steroids. I think we all can agree steroids helps baseball performance, and if you don't think steroids helps a person get stronger and therefore hit the ball harder or throw it harder, along with reducing recovery time, well, I can't help you there. Testosterone is also used in cycling of steroids to make up for the hormone imbalances.
So while testosterone and HGH might not have proven benefits and even the studies saying they improve lean muscle mass claim it minimal, they are often huge red flags for steroid use. On top of that, it's well known they are illegal and agreed upon with the union to be performance enhancers that are not to be taken by the players.
As for contaminating someone's food, I am not sure you can just put testosterone into someone's food and it will go up. I am sure the tablets used must get past the stomach (the stomach will destroy it), and you can do that with enteric pills. Yet you would know you swallowed a pill. The other ways are creams, gels, sublingual pills, and of course injections. Injections are a no brainer (you will know), and creams and gels would take some serious covert stuff to get someone to take the continual doses necessary. Sublingual pills, once again, would be really tough to fool someone into taking. This really comes down to the player realizing how these things get into their system and making sure to do their due diligence. Yet even then it would be really tough to fool anyone into taking the doses needed.
As for false positives, you have to realize this testing has been agreed upon by the players union. They know full well the accuracy of these tests (which are extremely expensive and have a very high accuracy). On top of that, they take b samples in case of a positive test. If a person tests positive, they then test the b sample. The possibility of 2 false positives in these tests are astronomical. The problem with Braun is both samples were of course not sent in right away per protocol. Yet the possibility of 2 samples both increasing testosterone is simply not plausible (especially since he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, which just doesn't happen naturally). The reason it was overturned is the possibility of tampering with the samples since protocol used to prevent that was not followed. So it's up to you to believe if the tester tampered with the samples.
Anyway, that is my more than 2 cents on some of the stuff talked about here. HGH and testosterone are not simply nothing, mostly used in combination with steroids, and in the end are still against the rules of baseball. It's also highly unlikely to have 2 false positives and to have someone spike your food to cause a false positive. All of these things have been gone over for years, and have been dealt with for decades to eliminate these possibilities. Nothing is 100%, but it's really close. In the case of Ryan Braun, he had synthetic testosterone in both of his samples. That does not happen naturally no matter how long the samples sit. The decision was based on the fact the samples could be tampered with. It's up to you to decide if that was possible, or should I say probable.
Last edited by scott91575; 02-07-2013 at 05:06 AM.
mdccclxix (02-07-2013)
Eh...poke fun if you like. I thought they didn't play Hockey anymore? Didn't they quit again? NFL Football has changed for the better in my opinion and their financial structure, while probably impossible for baseball to use, is the best structure in sports. You are right, everything changes, but baseball...it's too bad they aren't taking PEDS and Financial Disparity seriously...just unfortunate.
Did you know that professional bowlers make the same amount today for winning a tournament as they did in 1986 and maybe prior. Just a random tidbit. 2nd random thought: professional bowlers and professional golfers made similar amounts of money for winning tournaments back then. How time has changed things. Damn blue collar sports!
JoJo - You can buy the BS about the sample deteriorating over the weekend. It's just not factual. I find the burying of one's head in the sand and buying into these excuses just another reason that baseball doesn't take PEDS seriously.
Bum
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