Jamie Mottram donated $50 to the Baseball Musings pledge drive and gets to dedicate a post.

David Pinto is a blogfather to us all, and Baseball Musings is an inspiration for AOL's latest endeavor: MLB FanHouse. It's a group blog updated hourly with top-notch contributors from all over the web (The Dugout, We Are the Postmen, Surviving Grady, Foul Balls, Metstradamus, Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, Larry Brown Sports and Detroit Bad Boys). Please stop by and check it out as the new season begins, and if you'd help spread the word we'll be forever grateful.

And Pinto rules! Throw mo' money in the hat! The man's been at it for five years, he's done enough!

The most recent post at MLB Fanhouse involves a thesis by Stanford graduate and Mariners prospect Chris Minaker on the use of steroids at the school. While the FanHouse post covers the steroid aspect, these student athletes are encouraged to take many supplements:

Teammates exerted the strongest external pressure by far, he said, followed by coaches. A coach, he writes, "can attempt to use his power to pressure his players into using supplements that he thinks will improve their performance, even if this is against the will of the player." Minaker found that the pressure athletes felt to use supplements, both from within and from external forces, was so great that they'd take products they had no proof even worked.

Protein and creatine were high on the list of popular supplements taken by the athletes Minaker surveyed.

"Overall, about 42 percent of the athletes surveyed had used a creatine supplement in hopes of enhancing their performance," he writes.

Some athletes consume massive amounts of protein shakes, he adds, even though research shows "a mixed diet" can provide the sufficient amount needed.

"In this study, it seems that every athlete is or has been on something," Minaker writes. "The supplement culture has become completely intertwined with the culture of collegiate sports, just as it had before with professional sports. There has been a trickle-down effect from professional sports right on down to the ranks of all athletic levels."

And remember, this is at a school known for its academics where you would think the athletes might be people who think for themselves. (Students there call Harvard the Stanford of the east, but really Stanford is the Yale of the west.) Think what it might be like at real sports factories.

It would be great to get Minaker together with Mike Mussina to see if this has changed at the school over time, of if this pressuring to use supplements went on in the early 90's as well.