Ron Washington smoked pot as a player. I don’t really care about that, but he used amphetamines also. So Ron didn’t mind enhancing his performance.
I think we know how Washington will manage a tough game now:
Ron Washington smoked pot as a player. I don’t really care about that, but he used amphetamines also. So Ron didn’t mind enhancing his performance.
I think we know how Washington will manage a tough game now:
As a Literature Major, I can tell you for a FACT that both marijuana and amphetamines, in my case, were incredible helps for my performance. You trying analyzing Yeats or Coleridge sober!
Amphetamine use was so rampant then and now, that players who did not use were a small minority. They enhanced performance only indirectly by reducing fatigue, and marijuana likely relaxes players after the game to help them sleep. I used caffeine in university and on the job, and alcohol to help me sleep. What’s the difference except my choices were legal w/o a prescription, and the others are not.
The Babe tried an extract of sheep testicles in a crude attempt to boost his testosterone and performance (and he seemed to have a naturally elevated testosterone level, so call him DNA enhanced). It made him sick as a dog and was reported in the papers. I don’t doubt that over 50% of players in the juiced era used steroids at one time or another, even those singles hitters, and that steroids may have been prevalent even in the late 70’s, especially among pitchers (who used not to build muscles in the gym but to remain strong and free of injury).
For that reason everyone in the juiced era, which might have started earlier than we think, should have an asterisk next to his name, even if he was lucky enough not to get caught, or was rich enough to afford the designer drugs that escape detection. For that reason, those who got caught, unlucky or dumb, should go to the HOF if their on field performance dictates it.
Ron Washingtons problem was his cocaine use as a manager, not what he did as a player, and his claim he used coke only 1 time smacks of being on the wild side of the truth.
Remember when ephedera was banned after a few school atheletes died and it was found in their system? You knew the 99 percent of people who used it as a performance-enhancing drug? Truck drivers and students with term papers. Period. What were the health risks for them, where was the outcry? Maybe there was an article here or there but I don’t remember, I read a lot about athletes and ephedra.
Let’s not mention the coke problem at Wall Street, or the open secret of stimulant abuse among doctors. Or rock musicians and writers on acid.
PEDs are everywhere.