Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 25, 2005
And in this Corner...

A bit of fun from the NY Times on Canseco's proposed polygraph test.

I continue to be amazed that anyone bothers with lie detectors anymore. As far as I can tell, the polygraph experts read whatever they want into the results. You don't need a machine, you need an expert in micro-expressions.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:42 AM | Cheating | TrackBack (0)
Comments

re: conseco polygraph test

(1) reliability of polygraph tests

during the 15 years I practiced law, we used polygraph tests pretty often, and I was acquainted with the studies related and pertaining to them. They actually have a high degree of reliability. A prosecutor will normally drop a case if your client, an accused defendant, passes a polygraph test on the queston of the ultimate issue of criminal liability. So both defense and prosecution agree. Also, employers use them widely, and so do most federal security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies use polygraph tests.

(2) The federal gov't is sponsoring research into the use of PET and MRI exams as lie detector tests. This research is going on at several universities and is not especially secret. Penn has several such studies, and so do other top universities. It is estimated that a reliable lie detector test using PET or MRI scans starting with a baseline PET or MRI scan of the blood flow of the brain based on neutral questions followed by baseline honest responses followed by the test questions evoking dishonest responses will be available within no more than 5-10 years.

(3) They're also working on retina type tests along the same lines.

(4) By about 2015, it will be a condition of most employement agreements that you subject yourself to a polygraph test of one of the more modern types, either MRI, PET or retinal scan.

--AJK

Posted by: art kyriazis at February 25, 2005 10:10 AM

re: Conseco & other Steroid Cheaters
Excuse me, but Don't Pitchers Cheat Too???

I sent an email to our distinguished webmaster about this issue, but isn't it true that Gaylord Perry, Don Drysdale, LaMar Hoyt, Kevin Gross, Lew Burdette and a host of other modern and other pitchers since the alleged ban of the spitball in 1920 have been guilty AND ADMITTED throwing the spitball, vaseline ball, scuff ball, emery ball, or what Lamar Hoyt call his "natural spitball"? Kevin Gross, formerly of the Phils, got caught with his emery stick filing the baseball, and was suspended, but he laughed it off.

The point being, PITCHERS CHEAT TOO!!! At least two modern Hall of Fame Pitchers, Drysdale and Perry, were spitballers (Drysdale was notorious for throwing vaseline balls in the pinch, which made his vitalis ads hysterical in the 1960s). This is so well known that there was even a character in Major League, an older pitcher, who "loaded up" the ball with every kind of grease and vaseline known to man, and kept stuff all over his shirt, his cap etc.

Perry wrote a book no less inflammatory than Canseco's, called "Me and the Spitter" in which he claimed a lot of other pitchers threw spitballs and doctored balls.

So my question is, if a lot of pitchers cheat, and Hall of Fame pitchers cheat, what's the difference between a pitchers doctoring the ball to gain an unfair advantage, even to gain the Hall of Fame and 300 victories and World Series victories, as with Drysdale and Burdette, and a batter getting juiced on steroids to do the same thing?

Morally, it seems to me or ethically, no distinction can really be drawn.

If we were to ban Bonds or Conseco, then Gaylord Perry has to go, and Don Drysdale, and Ed Walsh, and all of the spitballers and suspected spitballers.

It's a difficult conclusion, but the only logical one.

--AJK

Posted by: art kyriazis at February 25, 2005 10:20 AM

I'm being a broken record here, but the primary effect of steroids is to combat inflammation and reduce recovery time... which are the primary problems facing pitchers. To think that batters take steroids to hit home runs but pitchers get no help from them is silly...

Can anybody here think of a pitcher who was so severely abused in his youth as to be reduced to one big sore arm with a small man attached, disappeared for a while and spent time in the minors before returning to be a star throwing at a way lower velocity but great consistency till well past forty-- but collapsed completely in the first year of testing? I don't know if that guy took steroids or not (and don't start thinking you do either :-) ) but I do know that to attribute Pudge's weight loss to testing and not consider Mr Namelesspitcher's balooning ERA in the same question is blindness... then again I can think of two recently traded star pitchers from the Bay Area whose strikeout rates droppped a bit in the first year of testing, too-- could it be that their alert GM decided to let their new teams find out what he didn't really want to? I doubt it; but the question belongs in the same witch hunt if we really must have one.

Posted by: john swinney at February 25, 2005 01:56 PM

Jose Canseco will most likely face congress, lets see if he challenges anybody to a polygraph test.
Lets see which ducks get the "Canseco Challenge"

Posted by: Beisbol at February 27, 2005 02:16 PM
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