Manny and Big Papi tested positive for steroids in 03

[ChiSox_Sonix]

And the list is now at 4...

 

Doesn't surprise me. Somewhat disappointing just cuz now I have to deal with all of my Yankee$ friends talking about this non-stop for the next month and upping their obnoxious levels by a few notches.

[chw42]

I think we as White Sox fans have to face the realistic possability that within a year a major name on the 05 team will be strongly tied to steroids. I'm not actually thinking of anybody in particular, but the way the numbers are shaking out, I'm just trying to be logical

 

Only guy I can really think of is Freddy Garcia.

 

A lot of lost velocity after that season. But then again, other things might have to do with that.

 

Carl Everett maybe? Since he was with Texas and Boston.

 

I don't see anybody else on it.

[Steve9347]

OOPS!!

 

Ortiz has strong words over Steroid Use...

It's the same story over and over and over.

 

Idiots to speak out if they did it.

[Steve9347]

They need to release the rest of the list. This is a joke.

[StrangeSox]

OOPS!!

 

Ortiz has strong words over Steroid Use...

 

 

Why it Pays for Cheaters to Punish Other Cheaters

A new theory for why we put up with adulterers, steroid-using athletes and the mafia

 

It's the altruism paradox: If everyone in a group helps fellow members, everyone is better off yet as more work selflessly for the common good, cheating becomes tempting, because individuals can enjoy more personal gain if they do not chip in. But as freeloaders exploit the do-gooders, everybody's payoff from altruism shrinks.

 

All kinds of social creatures, from humans down to insects and germs, must cope with this problem; if they do not, cheaters take over and leech the group to death. So how does altruism flourish? Two answers have predominated over the years: kin selection, which explains altruism toward genetic relatives and reciprocity the tendency to help those who have helped us. Adding to these solutions, evolutionary biologist Omar Tonsi Eldakar came up with a clever new one: cheaters help to sustain altruism by punishing other cheaters, a strategy called selfish punishment.

 

"All the theories addressed how altruists keep the selfish guys out," explains Eldakar, who described his model with his Ph.D. thesis adviser David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University in May 2008. Because selfishness undermines altruism, altruists certainly have an incentive to punish cheaters a widespread behavior pattern known as altruistic punishment. But cheaters, Eldakar realized, also have reason to punish cheaters, only for motives of their own: a group with too many cheaters does not have enough altruists to exploit. As Eldakar puts it, "If you're a single selfish individual in a group of altruists, the best thing you can do evolutionarily is to make sure nobody else becomes selfish make sure you're the only one." That is why, he points out, some of the harshest critics of sports doping, for example, turn out to be guilty of steroid use themselves: cheating gives athletes an edge only if their competitors aren't doing it, too.

 

Although it is hypocritical for cheaters to punish other cheaters, members of the group do not balk as long as they benefit. And when selfish punishment works well, benefit they do. In a colony of tree wasps (where workers care for the queen's offspring instead of laying their own eggs), a special caste of wasps sting other worker wasps that try to lay eggs, even as the vigilante wasps get away with laying eggs themselves. In a strange but mutually beneficial bargain, punishing other cheaters earns punishers the right to cheat.

 

In the year since Eldakar and Wilson wrote up their analysis, their insights have remained largely under the radar. But the idea of a division of labor between cooperators and policing defectors appeals to Pete Richerson, who studies the evolution of cooperation at the University of California, Davis. "It's nothing as complicated as a salary, but allowing the punishers to defect in effect does compensate them for their services in punishing other defectors who don't punish," he says. After all, policing often takes effort and personal risk, and not all altruists are willing to bear those costs.

 

Corrupt policing may evoke images of the mafia, and indeed Eldakar notes that when the mob monopolizes crime in a neighborhood, the community is essentially paying for protection from rival gangs a deal that, done right, lowers crime and increases prosperity. But mob dynamics are not always so benign, as the history of organized crime reveals. "What starts out as a bunch of goons with guns willing to punish people [for breaching contracts] becomes a protection racket," Richerson says. The next question, therefore, is, What keeps the selfish punishers themselves from overexploiting the group?

 

Wilson readily acknowledges this limitation of the selfish punishment model. Although selfish punishers allow cooperators to gain a foothold within a group, thus creating a mix of cheaters and cooperators, "there's nothing telling us that that mix is an optimal mix," he explains. The answer to that problem, he says, is competition not between individuals in a group but between groups. That is because whereas selfishness beats altruism within groups, altruistic groups are more likely to survive than selfish groups. So although selfish punishment aids altruism from within a group, the model also bolsters the idea of group selection, a concept that has seen cycles of popularity in evolutionary biology.

 

What is more, altruism sometimes evolves without selfish punishment. In a software simulation, Eldakar and Wilson have found that as the cost of punishing cheaters falls, so do the number of selfish punishers. "When punishment is cheap, lots of people punish," Wilson explains. And among humans, there is no shortage of low-cost ways to keep others in line from outright ostracism to good old-fashioned gossip.

[JPN366]

I wouldn't be suprised if ESPN turns to a "everybody did it" tact and start spewing that basically everyone was on them so the playing field was equal and they didn't really have an advantage

 

Already have, they're trying to steer away from Ortiz and Ramirez as much as possible.

[JPN366]

I've been telling people on here for 5 years that the son of a scout who I went to Grad School with told me back in 2003 that the Red Sox players were the biggest abusers of PEDs in all of baseball.

 

Boston sports teams get a free pass for cheating.

[RME JICO]

How many MVP awards have been given out to steroid users?

[Buehrle>Wood]

I wouldn't be suprised if ESPN turns to a "everybody did it" tact and start spewing that basically everyone was on them so the playing field was equal and they didn't really have an advantage

 

They did that with A-Rod and Manny earlier this year. Now it will be tenfold because it's Boston.

[NorthSideSox72]

I'm betting there is a 50/50 chance that Congress attempts to force the list to be published in the near future. I am not sure how that would work legally, but depending on the type of agreement made originally, an act of Congress could potentially crack it open. If they can, I bet they will.

 

[ChiSox_Sonix]

How many MVP awards have been given out to steroid users?

 

Not everyone here is proven but...

 

Clemens ('86)

Canseco ('88)

Bonds ('90, '92-'93, '01-'04)

Bagewell ('94)

Caminiti ('96)

Gonzalez ('98)

Sosa ('98)

I-Rod ('99)

Kent ('00)

Giambi ('00)

Tejada ('02)

A-Rod ('03, '05, '07)

Edited July 30, 2009 by ChiSox_Sonix

[chw42]

How many MVP awards have been given out to steroid users?

 

Good thing Ortiz has never won one.

[Buehrle>Wood]

Not everyone here is proven but...

 

Clemens ('86)

Canseco ('88)

Bonds ('90, '92-'93, '01-'04)

Bagewell ('94)

Caminiti ('96)

Gonzalez ('98)

Sosa ('98)

I-Rod ('99)

Kent ('00)

Giambi ('00)

Tejada ('02)

A-Rod ('03, '05, '07)

Has Kent ever been caught? I don't think he used steroids, personally. He didn't have all too much of a build it seemed. Plus he was active against steroids on a near-Thomas level throughout his career, not that that makes him innocent.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Buehrle>Wood

[LittleHurt05]

And the list is now at 4...

 

Doesn't surprise me. Somewhat disappointing just cuz now I have to deal with all of my Yankee$ friends talking about this non-stop for the next month and upping their obnoxious levels by a few notches.

 

Considering their 04 team had A-Rod, Giambi and Sheffield on it, and the teams that won WS in the previous years had Clemens & Pettite, I dont know how much talking they should be doing either

[wallyburger]

I like the concept of name dropping one or two at a time. This gives the liars and the cheaters a better chance of burying themselves. With the absence of a union backed test for HGH, if the names were all dumped in one fell swoop, the non named cheaters would just start right back up or continue. The union is protecting cheaters and if all of the names were made public, they might make a case for the violation of secrecy and immunity pact they thought they had with MLB. No wonder Donald Fehr retired.

[nitetrain8601]

Has Kent ever been caught? I don't think he used steroids, personally. He didn't have all too much of a build it seemed. Plus he was active against steroids on a near-Thomas level throughout his career, not that that makes him innocent.

 

Agreed. You can't put guys there just because you think they took steroids. It's like someone saying they think Frank Thomas juiced and add him to a list. They have as much credibility as you. I don't remember Bagwell being linked, but he may have. Does anyone remember?

[Brian]

ESPN cries. I've suspected Kevin Millar back then as well. Damon?

[ILMOU]

Agreed. You can't put guys there just because you think they took steroids. It's like someone saying they think Frank Thomas juiced and add him to a list. They have as much credibility as you. I don't remember Bagwell being linked, but he may have. Does anyone remember?

 

I'd be shocked if Kent was clean, frankly. Innocent until proven guilty is a nice ideal, but rather unrealistic in this toxic environment.

 

The news on Papi is the biggest non-surprise of the year. The man has the largest skull I've ever seen. It wasn't that big when he was a Twinkie.

 

The revelations about Manny were much more surprising to me, personally, because he put up great numbers prior even to the dawn of the so-called steroid era. I now believe he was one of the "pioneers", relatively speaking.

 

[ILMOU]

Another thing I'd really like to know is how and why these names are being leaked, who's doing the leaking, and why they're being leaked one by one.

 

My conjecture is that the leaker or leakers are being paid - HANDSOMELY - and that there's more money in it for them by doing it this way. Some dirty dealing is going on, that's for certain.

 

[CanOfCorn]

This is like Death by a Million Paper Cuts. Enuf already...although this might be a PR person's dream...no pr is bad pr.

 

And I'm not sure on Bagwell...he seemed pretty consistent.

[ILMOU]

Bagwell, BTW, now looks TINY if you ever see him interviewed. He has been suspected for a while, actually.

 

[Buehrle>Wood]

The revelations about Manny were much more surprising to me, personally, because he put up great numbers prior even to the dawn of the so-called steroid era. I now believe he was one of the "pioneers", relatively speaking.

 

A certain now banished poster claimed the 2005 White Sox were the cleanest champion of the last 20 years. I think there's a good chance the steroid era started well before anyone has realized it.

[fathom]

A certain now banished poster claimed the 2005 White Sox were the cleanest champion of the last 20 years. I think there's a good chance the steroid era started well before anyone has realized it.

 

I got banned?

[Buehrle>Wood]

I got banned?

 

You said that? I remember bureau spouting off about similar stuff.

[ILMOU]

I think there's a good chance the steroid era started well before anyone has realized it.

 

Agreed. But I also think that things really exploded after '98. A whole bunch of players saw the success/publicity/endorsements happening to Sosa/McGwire and knew they were enhanced. Sosa was hanging with the Clintons at the State of the Union address for Christ's sake. Many players, I am sure, said to themselves "I want ME some of THAT".

 

Look at all the players who had great or breakthrough seasons in '99. There are many, including our beloved JD. Not accusing, just sayin'.