[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-April-08, 11:30, said:

My understanding is that, for a nontrivial period, this was not actually prohibited by MLB, and that for at least some substances used by some players, not against the law either.

And, no way I am buying the fraudulent salary negotiation argument. Ownership and management knew perfectly well what was going on, and quietly approved.

Since when did anyone suggest that ownership and management were being defrauded?

As for not actually prohibited, that may well have been true a long time ago, but hasn't been true for many years now, and players like Rodriguez knew damn well that they were cheating.

Btw, there was a time when cocaine was not only legal, but sold in a certain popular soda drink. Try arguing that defence if caught now with cocaine in your possession.

If your point is that it is hypocritical of the sports organizations to claim that they have always done their best to keep their sports 'pure', then I agree with you. Professional sports organizations are about money and ego, and little (if any) else. And some amateur organizations are as bad or worse. Does anyone really believe that 18-20 year old men can weigh 340 lbs or more and run fast enough that they'd be winning sprinting medals in the Olympics in the not-so-distant past, without the assistance of hgf or something similar? High school and college football in the US is a travesty to an even greater degree than the NFL. At least a NFL player is getting paid to damage his health and shorten his lifespan.

[mgoetze]

mikeh, on 2015-April-08, 14:22, said:

As for not actually prohibited, that may well have been true a long time ago, but hasn't been true for many years now, and players like Rodriguez knew damn well that they were cheating.

Not a long enough time for it to not be quite pertinent to your comments on Barry Bonds, though.

[billw55]

mikeh, on 2015-April-08, 14:22, said:

Since when did anyone suggest that ownership and management were being defrauded?

Perhaps I read too much into this bit:

Quote

but when it came to signing a new contract, or an endorsement, he took full advantage of being the best home run hitter in the game, which was due to the drugs he was taking....drugs he knew to be illegal

...

Quote

As for not actually prohibited, that may well have been true a long time ago, but hasn't been true for many years now, and players like Rodriguez knew damn well that they were cheating.

Yes. Now they are getting suspended, when caught. An improvement, I think.

Quote

And some amateur organizations are as bad or worse. Does anyone really believe that 18-20 year old men can weigh 340 lbs or more and run fast enough that they'd be winning sprinting medals in the Olympics in the not-so-distant past, without the assistance of hgf or something similar?

Agree to an extent. It is hard to know where to stop this logic though. I remember in the Beijing olympics, world records in swimming were falling right and left. PEDs? Or just great athletes? What about people like (say) Katie Ledecky, who has really broken the curve on record lowering .. just destroying everything that went before in her particular specialty, and at a young age too. Do you assume drugs? How about Usain Bolt?

Quote

High school and college football in the US is a travesty to an even greater degree than the NFL. At least a NFL player is getting paid to damage his health and shorten his lifespan.

Yeah, football is a whole problem unto itself.

[blackshoe]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-08, 13:56, said:

There is also a difference between telling a convicted child molester "I will let you make a living" and "you can go back to your life as a pediatrician".

Yes, let's pick these folks. After all, they're all demons, right? Evil, unrepentant, and impossible to rehabilitate. Maybe we should just shoot them all.

It seems to me a better solution for these folks and for society as a whole to treat them as needing psychiatric help, and to make sure that they get it.

[ArtK78]

What's the problem with PEDs? Just watch this clip from Saturday Night Live reporting on the all-drug olympics:

http://www.nbc.com/s...-olympics/n9691

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2015-April-08, 15:14, said:

Perhaps I read too much into this bit:


...

You did...you read in entire ideas that weren't even close to what I was thinking....but I suspect we all do that from time to time, and I know I certainly do. I think it accounts for a good deal of the acrimony that often arises on the internet, not that I think there was or is acrimony here

I was referring to the reality that one reason that owners and management were paying the Bonds and Rodriguez's of the world so much money was that they were demonstrably the best players in their roles on the team. Why were they the best players? Because they cheated. Management didn't give a damn. Heck, I would be willing to bet that the only reactions felt by any owner or manager to the outing of their cheating athletes was anger that they got caught.

Cheating was a win-win for the athletes and the owners/managers. The athletes got fame and money, and the owners/managers got ego gratification and money.

Even the fans of the cheaters and the teams they played on were winners, in that their teams were more successful than they should have been, and so the fans got more ego reward.

The people who suffered the worst, at least directly, would be the honest athlete, who wasn't quite good enough to make the big leagues, or who made the big leagues but was never more than a fringe player, all because he or she (and pro sports makes it almost always 'he') wouldn't cheat.

In the longer run, it is arguable that it is the whole of society that loses, and future generations, because the main lessons to be learned are that cheating leads to fame and fortune, so long as one can hide it, and that so long as you are doing the right sort of cheating, it really doesn't matter much if you do get caught eventually. it's sort of like the long-term consequences of the war on drugs....when so many people are flouting the law, and often making a lot of money doing it, it calls the law into disrespect...not just the specific law but the overall system of laws that are essential to a civilized society (notwithstanding the delusions harboured by libertarians and anarchists).

No athlete in any NA pro sport has ever, to my knowledge, suffered the loss of the financial rewards obtained from past cheating. I suspect that even Lance Armstrong might have got away with a lot of his winnings had he been even a little less of a disgusting human being.

[blackshoe]

Libertarians (small l if it wasn't the first word in the sentence) are not, IME, generally delusional. No one I know truly believes that a completely lawless society is viable. I certainly don't.

[hrothgar]

In baseball, the laws of the land are much less significant than the legacy of Mountain Landis

[mike777]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-07, 14:24, said:

On the same day that Alex Rodriquez started once again for the New York Yankees, Dave Bliss was hired as a college basketball coach.

Ain't 4th and 5th chances great?

Having a coach was once considered illegal and unethical, in other words cheating.

IN time safer, more effective PED's use will be commonplace and accepted as coaching is today.

Most drugs or surgery even today are used to enhance performance, often better than before.

btw many of these illegal, cheating ped drugs are used to speed recovery of the body

BAseball players starting during WW11 would have bowls full of greenies in the clubhouse. Players in the 50-60's would shoot up all sorts of hotshots from people as famous as "Dr. Feelgood"

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Max_Jacobson


Marvin MIller, union chief, famously fought against making this stuff illegal in collective bargaining.
http://en.wikipedia....ers_Association

[Winstonm]

mike777, on 2015-April-08, 18:21, said:

Having a coach was once considered illegal and unethical, in other words cheating.

IN time safer, more effective PED's use will be commonplace and accepted as coaching is today.

Most drugs or surgery even today are used to enhance performance, often better than before.

btw many of these illegal, cheating ped drugs are used to speed recovery of the body

BAseball players starting during WW11 would have bowls full of greenies in the clubhouse. Players in the 50-60's would shoot up all sorts of hotshots from people as famous as "Dr. Feelgood"

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Max_Jacobson


Marvin MIller, union chief, famously fought against making this stuff illegal in collective bargaining.
http://en.wikipedia....ers_Association

What about Dave Bliss? Will his actions at Baylor someday be condoned as normal?

[helene_t]

It's not so difficult to find arguments why America is not great. Then again, maybe America is great after all, see for example http://www.thedailyb...s-straight.html
Hirsi Ali is one of my biggest idols and she says that America is the best place to be black, the best place to be a woman etc.

I visited America a few times. I found the SF bay area to have great science museums and Seattle to have a great fish market and NC to have a great lemur park but overall I was not so impressed. But I know people who spent longer time over there generally have more positive views.

I dunno. But one thing I do know is that the return of a previously doped baseball player won't settle the issue. Sorry Winston but this time your choice of thread title sucked.

[cherdano]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-08, 22:11, said:

What about Dave Bliss? Will his actions at Baylor someday be condoned as normal?

Sorry, but I don't get overly excited about someone violating highly immoral rules set up by a cartel creating billions.
The NCAA itself, now that would make for a reasonable case answering the question in the title of the thread, but that's probably another thread.

[billw55]

mikeh, on 2015-April-08, 16:11, said:

Cheating was a win-win for the athletes and the owners/managers. The athletes got fame and money, and the owners/managers got ego gratification and money.

Even the fans of the cheaters and the teams they played on were winners, in that their teams were more successful than they should have been, and so the fans got more ego reward.

My point is this: given all that, and referring to the time when certain PEDs were not prohibited by MLB, then in what sense was it cheating? Probably in some cases, laws were broken, but is that the same as cheating? Some people advocate that anything not expressly prohibited is by default acceptable.

Sure, it was unethical in other ways: the truth was hidden from a public that MLB knew would not approve; the culture leaked down to lower levels, harming amateur athletes; etc. I am glad they are working on it.

Curiously, I never hear about doping scandals in European football leagues. Are the controls that good, or am I just not looking hard enough?

[billw55]

cherdano, on 2015-April-09, 05:33, said:

Sorry, but I don't get overly excited about someone violating highly immoral rules set up by a cartel creating billions.

Agree, and the more so because it happens at every sizable program. Most coach hires have done stuff, the only difference is that with Bliss and a few others we know about it. It is another system of unspoken approval, much like the MLB steroid era.

[Winstonm]

cherdano, on 2015-April-09, 05:33, said:

Sorry, but I don't get overly excited about someone violating highly immoral rules set up by a cartel creating billions.
The NCAA itself, now that would make for a reasonable case answering the question in the title of the thread, but that's probably another thread.

Slightly more than NCAA violations. Patrick Dennehy was murdered, and Bliss tried to get his players to lie to the police in order to hide his own rule-breaking:

O

Quote

n August 16, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Bliss told players to lie to investigators by indicating that Patrick Dennehy had paid for his tuition by dealing drugs. These conversations were taped on microcassette by assistant coach Abar Rouse from July 30 to August 1. On the tapes, Bliss was heard instructing players to fabricate the story of Dennehy being a drug dealer to the University's investigative committee and also said that talking to the McLennan County, Texas Sheriff's Department would give him the opportunity to "practice" his story. The tapes also showed that Bliss and his staff knew that Dennehy had been threatened by two of their teammates when they publicly denied such knowledge.

Rouse taped the conversations after Bliss threatened to fire him if he did not go along with the scheme.[8]

The revelations shocked the school and the college basketball community. However, despite the potential allegations of extortion, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, no criminal charges were filed against Bliss.

[Winstonm]

blackshoe, on 2015-April-08, 15:16, said:

Yes, let's pick these folks. After all, they're all demons, right? Evil, unrepentant, and impossible to rehabilitate. Maybe we should just shoot them all.

It seems to me a better solution for these folks and for society as a whole to treat them as needing psychiatric help, and to make sure that they get it.

You can't be suggesting that the government force psychiatry on individuals and also pay for it?

[billw55]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-09, 08:01, said:

You can't be suggesting that the government force psychiatry on individuals and also pay for it?

Why can't he? I gather that in some circumstances, it is not rare to stipulate mental health treatment as a condition of sentencing; or to assign a defendant to a mental health facility rather than a prison.

[mgoetze]

billw55, on 2015-April-09, 09:20, said:

Why can't he?

Because blackshoe is not generally in favor of the government paying for very much at all?

[Winstonm]

billw55, on 2015-April-09, 09:20, said:

Why can't he? I gather that in some circumstances, it is not rare to stipulate mental health treatment as a condition of sentencing; or to assign a defendant to a mental health facility rather than a prison.

Let me re-phrase: Would Ayn Rand support government intervention is this manner?

[Winstonm]

blackshoe, on 2015-April-08, 15:16, said:

Yes, let's pick these folks. After all, they're all demons, right? Evil, unrepentant, and impossible to rehabilitate. Maybe we should just shoot them all.

It seems to me a better solution for these folks and for society as a whole to treat them as needing psychiatric help, and to make sure that they get it.

Wow. You sound quite extreme - not my thinking at all about this subject. My suggestion is simply to ban repeat and especially egregious offenders. If a pediatrician who was convicted of child molestation wants to go back to school and become a radiologist instead, that would be OK. I do not think it is OK to re-license him as a pediatrician.