Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojkt1996 – Boston Red Sox Roger Clemens strikes out 20 batters for the second time in his career. Subsequent allegations of steroid use will place forever make Clemens’ many achievements suspect. I’m ashamed he became a Yankee.
1975 – Patty Hearst, 19-year old daughter and heiress of newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst, is finally captured in a San Francisco apartment after a months long manhunt for her. Over 7 months earlier, Hearst had been kidnapped by a leftist (!) terrorist group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Front (SLF). Initially the SLF had demanded that Randolph Hearst hand out $70 worth of food to every needy person in California in exchange for her return, but after her father had donated more than $6 million worth of food to the Bay area’s poor, an audiotape was released in which Hearst herself announced that she had willingly joined the SLF and had changed her name to Tania. Two weeks after her announcement, Hearst is captured on a surveillance camera wielding an M1 carbine while robbing a San Francisco branch of the Hibernia Bank. A warrant is issued for her arrest, resulting in her capture in September. Despite claiming that she was a victim of brainwashing, Hearst will go on to be convicted and sentenced to 7 years in prison, although her sentence will be commuted by President Jimmy Carter and Hearst will join Marc Rich as a beneficiary of President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon program executed on his last day in office, January 20 2001.
1862 – Following the battle of Antietam, Union General George McCLellan misses a chance to end the Civil War by allowing the retreating Confederate army to escape across the Potomac. Although the Union army had superior numbers and fresh troops following the original inconclusive battle, and might well have been able to destroy General Robert E. Lee’s battered rebels, McClellan allowed Lee’s army to cross the Potomac unmolested and refused to give chase for nearly the next 2 months, despite the urging of both the War Department and President Lincoln himself that he do so. Lincoln eventually dismisses McClellan from his command. The war will carry on for nearly another 3 years.
Filed under: This Day in History |
All Things in Moderation 
I’ve always been a huge baseball fan but have lost interest in the last several years expressly because of steroid use. It doesn’t help that the Angels need to retire Mike Scioscia either. I enjoy watching individual players still from various teams but now you never know if they’re cheating or not.
My kids were all athletes in high school and our son played baseball in college, even turned down a big scholarship to play at another school, but I don’t remember any talk of steroid use at that level then. It’s too bad that it’s placed such a pall over America’s pastime.
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lms:
I enjoy watching individual players still from various teams but now you never know if they’re cheating or not.
Totally agree. It’s really unfortunate that virtually all achievements now are immediately suspect. Baseball really screwed up by not recognizing and dealing with the problem much sooner. The owners, the players union, the commisioners office…they are all complicit.
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The wave of Dominican stars with big biceps has added to the McGwyre-Sosa-Bonds-Clemens axis of evil.
But I thought Rocket started using soon after he got to Boston. At 21, pitching for the ‘Horns, he weighed about 205. At 23 in Boston he weighed about 235 and he tried to throw [or maybe did throw] a ball out of Fenway. Easiest way to blow your entire career on one throw imaginable.
When that happened I thought he was on steroids.
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Mark:
But I thought Rocket started using soon after he got to Boston.
Could be. I’ve always wondered how much of his career was assisted.
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“Subsequent allegations of steroid use will place forever make Clemens’ many achievements suspect. ”
Unlike everyone else who of course is completely clean.
The libertarian in me views attempting to regulate performance enhancing drug use in sports as an exercise in folly and hypocrisy.
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jnc:
Unlike everyone else who of course is completely clean.
Regrettably, exactly like, if not everyone else, at least a huge numbers of others.
The libertarian in me views attempting to regulate performance enhancing drug use in sports as an exercise in folly and hypocrisy.
I’ve got no particular problem with allowing steroid use, but it should be explicitly allowed, not just winked at or tolerated behind closed doors, and I totally understand the desire to keep them out of sports. I think it would be an interesting experiment to have two distinct leagues, the steroid league and the clean league, and see which league ends up with a bigger fan base and more TV exposure. I would like to think that the clean league would win out, but I am doubtful it would.
It’s a little like the debate about paying college athletes, and all of the routine cheating that goes on in order to attract the best athletes. Conceptually it might be attractive to a lot of people to imagine college sports as being strictly amateur involving traditional “student-athletes”, but such a world is in fact available (eg D-III football and basketball) and still the fans flock to watch the D-I cheaters, even those who claim to abhor the cheating.
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at least a huge numbers of others.
Exactly. Which is why I’ve pretty much given up on not only baseball but football as well. If there were two leagues, I’d watch the one without the drugs but I grew up in a time when girls only played sports for the fun and discipline of it. Winning was secondary and there was almost never any money in it. I played softball, field hockey and was a swimmer in high school. We used to have trouble finding other schools to go up against us………………..lol. And we couldn’t even earn a Letterman’s jacket or just the lousy letter for our efforts. I think it creates more life long athletes that way though.
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College athletics is even worse. There everyone gets huge salaries, except for the players.
If they want to maintain it as amateur, they have to ban all televised broadcasts of the games.
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This NYT article on DNA is really mind blowing.
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Yes, George, that is truly amazing. Thanks!
For JNC:
http://www.volokh.com/2013/09/17/thoughts-august-2013-fisc-opinion-section-215/
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