Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 16, 2005
Connected

I'm watching Connected Coast to Coast, and the hosts are not well informed. They blame Lyle Alzado's death on steroids, but:

But in 1992, seven years after playing in his last regular-season game, Alzado died from brain lymphoma, a rare form of cancer. He was 43. Although there is no medical link between steroids and brain lymphoma, Alzado was certain the drugs were responsible for his cancer. He became a symbol of the dangers of steroid abuse.

This is really poor reporting.

Update: They didn't talk to Jay enough. They were more interested in Chris Shays. Shays wants players who test positive to give up the names of the people supplying them with the drugs.

One good Q & A with Shays:

Monica Crowley: Congressman, are you hearing from your constituents about this issue, is there a lot of public outrage about it?

Chris Shays: I wouldn't say there's a lot of public outrage, but what is interesting is I had a great hearing on Monday about how we're training Iraqi troops and the border police - the border patrol and police and I didn't have many people paying attention to that hearing, so I would say the press has been very interested in this issue.

The press has never liked the spike in offense that happened in the early 1990's. Remember how they kept talking about the ball being juiced 10 years ago? They never bothered to do scientific research, it just had to be true. When someone finally did look into it, they found that the balls were legal. Why don't they like the increase in offense?

It seems to happen all the time. The press didn't like Maris breaking Ruth's record. He's playing 162 games! Is it that the current crop of writers grew up with Aaron's push toward 714, and don't want to see that overcome? Smaller parks, bigger athletes, juiced balls, it's not fair to Hammering Hank! We'll just ignore that the records of the 60's and 70's were tainted by amphetamine use. Despite all their screaming, they haven't pulled a lot of fans along for the ride.


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Posted by David Pinto at 12:13 PM | Cheating | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Thanks for the insight. It is good to hear a more calm thought on the subject. Perspective never hurt anyone.

Posted by: Jesse at March 16, 2005 01:44 PM

David... While the balls were legal, didn't baseball acknowledge that they were at the highest point ever allowed?

Posted by: Repoz at March 16, 2005 01:46 PM

I think it's that there has always been some leeway in the ball specs, but that the last few years the quality of the balls is more uniform, at the upper end of the specs.

Posted by: RobertJ at March 16, 2005 02:29 PM

I'm not sure if its that the press has never liked spikes in offense, or if making claims that "more offense is bad" just creates more of the noise that sells newspapers . . . similar to the noise being made now over steroids and cheating.

I enjoy an intelligent look at the issue, with a rational perspective, but I suspect if that's what the mainstream media put in the papers and on TV, it wouldn't generate the $$$ that righteous outrage and circumstantial evidence do.

Posted by: spm at March 16, 2005 03:42 PM
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