Because of the recent rash of ex-players’ accusing current players of steroids use, Barry Bonds has been asked about the possibility of his own steroid use. Barry’s responses are less than reassuring:

“Baseball is hand-eye coordination. I don’t care how big you get, it’s not going to guarantee that you hit a home run. You can be 150 pounds and still hit the ball 330 feet.

It doesn’t guarantee a home run, sure, but could it make the difference between a fly ball in the warning track and a home run? I think if there was a drug that improved reaction time or hand-eye coordination, a lot of athletes would take that, too.

“Anyone in San Francisco knows I train five days a week. If anyone goes to Stanford at 7 a.m., they will see me on that track. And in December and January, you will see me at Pac Bell every day at 8:30 a.m. five days a week. I’ve been doing this for 12 years.”

No one is accusing you of being lazy, pal. Steroids only help if they are combined with exercise.

In a later interview Bonds continues:

“Doctors ought to quit worrying about what ballplayers are taking,” Bonds told The Associated Press last week. ”What players take doesn’t matter. It’s nobody else’s business.”

Perhaps he meant lab techs; I’ve never seen a doctor at a drug test. And perhaps the doctors are concerned about preventing cancer. It’s just one of the many side effects of anabolic steroids.

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I’m not sure if Eric Olsen is being sarcastic here. The first thing I thought when I read this article was, “Oh, please.” Even when the tobacco companies run ads that are clearly anti-smoking, that go against their very reason for being and encourage people not to buy their products, it isn’t good enough for some people.

Then I remembered that this was a plot point in an extremely funny Christopher Buckley book, Thank You for Smoking. In the book a tobacco company consultant, before being kidnapped by clean lung activists, requests that an advertising agency make an anti-smoking ad less convincing. The agency runs with the request, and the final draft is deviously anti-anti-smoking while seeming just anti. First time as farce, second time as, err… Lileks would have thought up something funny to put here, dammit.

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Wow, Barry sure was pissed that the Avs asked to measure Hasik’s stick, wasn’t he? Maybe that was a smart tactical move, Barry, and perhaps this is why your mullety ass ain’t coaching anymore. It didn’t work, but it also didn’t hurt, since the Wings didn’t score again (barely).

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The best goalie of all time just made a stupid rookie mistake and pushed the puck into his own goal. All he had to do was lay there on it. Sounds of anguished keening across Colorado…

Update: 2-0, Goddamit.

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Acronyms are your friend, a. beam. tee bot cot dub. Now how hard was that?

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My little (well, she ain’t that little) sister’s boyfriend is in a band called The Catch. I told her that it won’t make much difference, since I get like five visits a day, but I’d link to them anyway. But this isn’t just familial hit pimping, they’re pretty cool. Especially All That You Wanted. Hopefully, I can get a blurb on the VH1 special in twenty years out of this.

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And I just can’t hide it! I want to call my Mom and say, “Mom, I’m famous! I’ve been interviewed by Dawn Olsen at Up Yours!” But then she might actually read the interview, and that would be awkward.

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Eric Olsen of Tres Producers (and I’ve been meaning to ask, what happened to uno and dos producers? Was there some sort of Stalinesque putsch?) comments smartly on the admission of steroid use by Ken Caminiti. At the end Olsen calls for the feds to step in:

Maybe we need a good long work stoppage AND CONGRESSIONAL ACTION for baseball to finally get its manure compressed. It’s just sick right now on about five different levels.

I’m torn on this question. I’m for the legalization of drugs, sure, but that doesn’t mean that I want all my athletic heroes juiced. A competition based on physical skills and acuity is fun to watch, but watching doctors compete to build the largest domestic abuser would be as boring as Lucasian dialogue.

But are steroids really as helpful as people think? Rolling Stone (no archives, no link) published an article on legal supplements like androstenedione in February that I think applies here. Steroids won’t turn a couch potato into an athlete. They allow athletes to work out harder and longer than they could otherwise. Weight-lifting is necessary to get the process started, anabolic steroids allow muscle tissue to grow and repair itself faster than normal. So it’s not as if pharmathletes are cutting corners or being lazy, they are just trying to improve at their sport by any means necessary. Well, those on ‘roids anyway. EPO, blood doping, diuretics: these are signs of slovenliness and bad breeding.

On the other hand, I don’t think the core market for steroids quite comprehends the consequences of steroid use. Most male teenagers and early tweenagers can’t even comtemplate being twenty-five, much less connect their steroid use with the possibility of some chronic, debilitating condition ten years down the road. Oh Jebus, I sound like a creep saying this, but that is a problem that parents should address.

Back to the original question. I agree that Congress should take action against baseball, but not to force baseball to ban steroids. Let the marketplace (and the sight of crippled former baseball players coming to a retirement community near you) take care of that. Congress needs to cancel baseball’s antitrust exemption and then get out of the way.

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Well, the Hurricanes have done their part to create my own personal Stanley Cup finals. Now if the Avs can pull off a win tonight (I think they’ll lose. The Avs seem to want to make every series a nail-biter) or Friday, it’ll be old home town versus new home town. Unfortunately, I think that the final series will be very anti-climatic, whether it’s the Avs or the Wings against the Canes, the Canes are gonna get killed. But they’ve proven me wrong before…

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Well, my interview with Dawn Olsen is finally done. The first day ended up getting corrupted somehow, so we redid the whole thing with a Playboy/Playmate flavor. Should be somewhat, ah, stimulating, so get over to Up Yours and hit refresh until it appears!

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