Baseball's newest PED?

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jan 14, 2009 9:26 PM EST

Very interesting article from Slate.com's "Human Nature" columnist William Saletan. Whatever you may think of ADHD and the effectiveness of something like Ritalin, it's strangely comforting to take solace in MLB's predictable "let's bury our heads in the sand" incompetence and general lack of foresight (and logic)

Rob Manfred, MLB's executive vice president, spins the latest increase in therapeutic use exemptions as a crackdown on ADHD. "We made progress this year; we granted fewer new T.U.E.'s than the prior year," he says. That's pretty funny. The number of exemptions increased, and it's now three to eight times the rate in the adult population. But because the increase is smaller than it was in the previous year, with fewer "new" approvals, we're supposed to applaud the league's vigilance.

It would be really interesting to see which players have been subjected to the ADHD "epidemic." That would never happen (pesky little laws like HIPPA and such), but I could think of more than a few Royals' starters who could use a little more help maintaining focus and attention at the plate. Any doctors on here who might be a little loosey-goosey with an ADHD diagnosis for Messrs. Guillen, Jacobs, and Olivo (at least)?

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Ritalin, Prozac, Vicadin, Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Wine, Cocaine, OxyContin, Sniffing Paint, Viagra,

whatever… anything for an edge.

by Royal from Queens on Jan 14, 2009 9:44 PM EST reply actions

I'm so sick of the PED thing

Steroids are bad mmmkay? But greenies are ok, mmmkay. Just as long as you don’t bash 5,000,000 foot homers on drugs the general public doesn’t care.

by AxDxMx on Jan 14, 2009 9:51 PM EST reply actions

Yeah...

but what if some mad scientist created a superdrug called “Gritosterone”? If the old-school baseball establishment ever found out that there was something that could artificially inflate a player’s willingness to increase his HBP’s, headfirst dives for no reason, full sprints into the outfield wall and/or stands for foul balls, etc., then there would be hell to pay. I think we’d have immediate Congressional investigations again.

"I am sick and tired of [unintelligible] up with every [BLEEP]ing thing. No [BLEEP] from you guys, no [BLEEP] from you [BLEEP]ing players. And they can do any [BLEEP]ing thing they want to do. I’m sick and tired of all this bull[BLEEP]. Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it."

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jan 15, 2009 11:40 AM EST up reply actions