{"id":723,"date":"2005-11-16T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T03:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=723"},"modified":"2007-01-20T16:55:35","modified_gmt":"2007-01-20T21:55:35","slug":"size-and-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/size-and-speed","title":{"rendered":"Size and Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s nice to see that baseball’s trying to get some<\/em> illegal substances banned, with the new steroid penalties<\/a>. Sure, it was fun to see mega-juiced players belt cartoon-level home runs for the past decade or so, and older players show unprecedented power, endurance and recovery time, but the carnival had to come to an end at some point.<\/p>\n

(Of course, maybe that point should’ve been after Brady Anderson socked 50 home runs one season, and then tore the muscles off his rib cage the next year. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind performance-enhancing products. After all, I’m kicking back with a Tanq-10 & tonic right now. But it’s legal, and it makes me virtually invulnerable to criticism.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyway, what’s good about the new penalties is that it whomped the MLB Players Association square in its testosterone-shrunken nuts. Reading over ESPN’s recent “expose” about steroids in baseball, it seems pretty clear that the players’ union was the main obstacle to any sort of testing for steroids.<\/p>\n

Sure, the owners were happy that home run numbers were up, because it brought in more fans and got more TV revenue, but that added money was likely offset by the increased number of players getting injured, spending more time on the disabled list than ever.<\/p>\n

What is<\/em> amazing about the new policy is that it also involves testing for amphetamines. What the heck were they thinking, adding speed to the banned substance list? Are they planning to cut the season down to 100 games and give them July and August off?<\/p>\n

I don’t care how much these guys are being paid; it’s boring to play 162 games of baseball<\/strong>. Cal Ripken, who couldn’t find anything else to do for more than 16 seasons, has to be the dullest man in existence. Or he had to be totally hopped up on goofballs.<\/p>\n

Trying to get players off of speed would be like trying to get me to quit drinking during trade shows; it’d be tough to implement, and the final result wouldn’t make anyone happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s nice to see that baseball’s trying to get some illegal substances banned, with the new steroid penalties. Sure, it was fun to see mega-juiced players belt cartoon-level home runs for the past decade or so, and older players show unprecedented power, endurance and recovery time, but the carnival had to come to an end … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Size and Speed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-bF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":290,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/independence-day","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":0},"title":"Independence Day","author":"Gil","date":"July 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been an NBA mark for years. I'd watched the league as a kid, but I became a fan when the Knicks took Patrick Ewing with the #1 pick in the 1985 draft. For 11 seasons, I was a devoted Knicks fan. I cheered when Ewing made his first all-star\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1097,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/housing-ka-boom","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":1},"title":"Housing ka-boom","author":"Gil","date":"September 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"LONG article about how a popular type of mortgage, the option ARM, does not actually provide money for free, and is about to annihilate a lot of homeowners' finances: After prolonging the boom, [option ARM] mortgages could worsen the bust. They also betray such a lack of due diligence on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1408,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/college-whoops","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":2},"title":"College whoops","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've learned a ton from reading Charley Rosen's basketball columns, particularly his single-game analyses. He's got a mailbag up this week, and it includes a vituperative response to the \"NCAA or NBA\" question: Although I do not always agree with your opinions, I respect them because you seem to know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1703,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/springboks-supreme","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":3},"title":"Springboks Supreme","author":"Gil","date":"October 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I watched the finals of the Rugby World Cup this afternoon, and was disappointed to see South Africa's Springboks knock off England 15-6, esp. after a British try that got overturned by the blind video-judge. Considering South Africa blanked England 36-0 earlier in the tournament, I guess this loss could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Football"","block_context":{"text":"Football","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/football"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":589,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/or-theres-this","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":4},"title":"Or there’s this","author":"Gil","date":"July 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"If you're not interested in reading about the genocide in Darfur, perhaps I can bore you with sports.In the past week, Fox Sports' NBA writer Charley Rosen has been ranking the all-time best players at each position. Charley may have a giant axe to grind against some players, coaches and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":604,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/clutch-shooter","url_meta":{"origin":723,"position":5},"title":"Clutch Shooter","author":"Gil","date":"July 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I always figured NBA players were packing, but this is ridiculous.","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}