seems like they really just choked in the last minute+ of the game

Was pretty quick to point these things out on SportsCenter right after they played the Watergate tapes, err I mean the interview w/ A-Rod, and rightfully so.

He basically said it is the biggest hole in the ‘steroids’ era is that we don’t have sufficient data of date ranges of who was on what when to do any sort of statistical study into how ‘roids truly helped numbers, and there are experts that run the gamut of thinking it helps anywhere between 0 – 100%. Couldn’t agree more

Here’s your chance to freak out and pile on like this is Mischief Night and Mardi Gras and Australian League Football all rolled into one, and your response is to seek perspective? Wake up and smell the Primobolan — you’re letting life pass you by. Put your references aside, climb up out of that basement, and get into the fray.

Seriously, minuscule, as opposed to majuscule. Literastic people are known to frequent this site.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED……………….well, not that shocked.

I feel like Kelly, the Onion’s political cartoonist. ESPN needs to include a crying Lady Liberty in their graphics on this coverage.

One benefit steroids seems to provide (as in McGwire’s case) is that injury-prone players become less prone to injuries, though in A-Rod’s case I don’t remember him being hurt very often. So yeah, was there much benefit? Psychological maybe? Maybe the state of Texas is at fault…too close to Clemens and his KKK bunch.

but to take Alex’ word that he only used PEDs from ‘01-03 is giving a liar a little too much credit. He is a great player and he probably would’ve been a great player regardless of using them but I’m not gonna draw conclusions of how much they helped him based on his word. For all we know he switched up from steroids to HGH.

The drug policy is the joke and Alex taking the victim role on ESPN is an even bigger joke than that. I wish for once someone would get caught and speak the truth.

Yes I took steroids why wouldn’t I, I am real good and this made me great and in turn inflated my contract a few millions. Unfortunately these guys won’t ever do that because there is too many endorsement dollars tied in.

I also find it funny how they continue to debunk Canseco when pretty much everything he has said has been proven to be true.

I was really relieved yesterday when you hadn’t posted on this, because I was awaiting this column with dread. And it’s not because I even really disagree with your overall stance as expressed in your monthly “everyone in the media except maybe Joe Sheehan is a hysterical moron/racist/dumbass” essay. I assume that your problem with steroids isn’t that they are OK, but the (correct) one about the media overreaction.

Given how you feel about A-Rod anyway, I knew this was potentially explosive situation.

Fast forward to this morning: “national innocence…” etc. Sigh. I guess what bothers me is not so much what you write, or even the fact that you write about this every time, but the thought expressed in this phrase:

my personal opinions on the subject seem to be so different than the vast majority of people who talk about baseball in some capacity

Really? Rob Neyer wrote a defense of A-Rod the day of the revelations. Everyone in the THT panel discussing this agreed that the situation is overblown. Joe Sheehan wrote his usual, predictable, and increasingly annoying screed about this (although at least it prevents him from writing another Olney-level transaction/roster analysis). Szymborski wrote about it with a “blame the fans, not A-Rod” essay that, well, a lot like yours, seems to mirror the moral hysteria it condemns.

Yes, there is some hysteria out there, the usually-OK Jayson Stark’s “Destruction of the history of baseball” being probably about the worst, and Bill Madden did his usual thing (I think he was the genius who said the Yanks should release A-Rod). And I know that you could cite a many, many articles from around the web, New York papers, and so on, but the truth is I don’t really care about those people or read them to begin with, and judging for the state of the newspaper industry, no one lese really does, either.

And it’s not as if the mainstream outlets are monolithic on the subject. It’s not just blogs/web stuff who have a more nuanced view. Mainstream guys like Rosenthal and Gammons (who, honestly, made Katie Couric look like 1970s-era Mike Wallace during his soft-focus “grilling” of A-Rod) may not have reached the Archimedean perspective that you and Sheehan have, but they’re hardly demonizing A-Rod (unless finding any problem with steroids/A-Rod now constitutes an unacceptable level of moral hysteria in your point of view). The Boston Globe‘s Tony Massarotti came out with a "ok, we’re sick of it, stop talking about it, thinking the Red Sox were clean, and stop singling people out" column already on Saturday. Even Buster Freaking Olney is making the point that the union and mlb officials screwed up, and that it’s unfair that only a select group of guys who go caught are targeted and shredded.

I write from first-person experience when I say that I realize it’s no fun to realize that one is not the rebel fighting against “The Man” (or is it “The System?” I can’t keep them straight) anymore, and it does explain why you seem so bitter when someone else mentioned that Kurkijan pointed out the issue about the splits on TV already. Wait, a guy on ESPN, on TV, making a rational point? There goes my “vibe!”

Let there be no mistake: my problem with this column has nothing to do with steroids, but simply your tone. You aren’t a voice crying in the wilderness. Yes, there are a lot of idiots out there writing hysterical rants about steroids. But it is simply not the case that your “personal opinions on the subject seem to be so different than the vast majority of people who talk about baseball in some capacity.” Read around. Or better yet, don’t watch ESPN getting worked up for material in a way that resembles Ignatius Reilly watching American Bandstand in order to get a grip on the decadence of pop culture. As I said before, you tone in essays like these has increasingly approached self-serving moralism and, yes, hysteria of the “mainstream media” you mock so viciously (and sometimes appropriately).

I really do mean this as a friendly communication (and maybe it would have been better as an email, I don’t know). I’m sorry if my tone comes off more harshly than I intend. I wouldn’t care if I didn’t admire your work so much to begin with. And it’s typical of me to get into the biggest disagreements while splitting hairs with someone with whom a generally agree. Sometimes I let that go too far, and I hope that isn’t the case here.

In the wake of all this hysteria, it’s nice to find someone who has the same opinion on this that I do. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

People seem to forget that McGuire’s numbers came against juiced pitchers. But our nation loves to publicly flog and chastise the impure. We are a forgetful land of hypocrites. – TL

For lying to Congress about other players PED usage, not his own. I’m guessing more names are going to come out very soon.

An hiatus on ARod articles, fanposts and fanshots. I’m ARod-ed out.

just to watch him die…

All I want for Black History Month is for Curt Schilling to be caught using steroid, it will be hilarious. You’ll laugh upstairs too.

Thank you

Sincerely

Playingwithfire

Joe Posnanski also had a reaction that he says is “out of step”. Good reading today, and if you go there be sure to read the several comments that provide background on Selena Roberts’ reporting immediately below Joe’s entry.

To those of you who say Bill James has lost his analytical fastball, I say he still has his touch with an epigram. Joe quotes James’ summary of PEDs use and the current backlash:

1) Baseball allowed a situation to develop in which it was in the self-interest of players to use steroids.
 
2) Now we are very angry with people because they did what the system rewarded them for doing.

A-Rod was already “hated” in 2001-2003. Where, outside of Seattle?

I hate how the mainstream media blows everything out of proportion.