This might go in sprts section, but probably not, feel free to move it if so.



I had problems with it in the State of the Union Address and I still have problems with it now. Let Baseball clean up its own act, or let it fall apart. This is a waste of Capital Hill's energy. All sports have been leaning towards it, and if I were a concerned parent, I'd emphasize my kid do good in school and develope role models in the science or humanities fields (for example) rather than taking them out to the baseball diamond every day to practice hitting. Sorry guys, but if your teenage kids are already taking steroids in grade school, they have a pretty skewed idea (from somewhere, I wonder where) of where sports will take them in life. I'd love to sit every kid down and show them Hoop Dreams, were neither one of the boys pretty much ends up making it as an athlete, even if they had the talent, willpower, and physical abilities.

And if baseball screws itself over and fans become jaded with the experience and the dream around it, then those team owners will clean up their teams pretty damn quickly when ticket sales drop.

So what the hell does Congress have to do with this? Do they intervene in gymnastics when 11 year olds are already doing permanent damage to their bodies? Do they intervene in weightlifting competitions (talk about sterpoid use)? How about just psycho fitness people? What a waste of time and money to salvage a sport that can't get its own act together. Good riddance, let it fall apart then....I like soccer better anyways, heh.

They're grandstanding. However, Congress does have some connection with baseball because Congres granted them anti-trust protection. (outdated, if you ask me.)

What's "grandstanding"? Anti-trust is business management issues, it still had little to do with if some athlete dopes up to put muscle on. Sure, as a business the government can investigate baseball as it would a computer company, an oil company, an organic food company, etc. But this is just some moral play about bad role-models for kids. Frankly, if parents weren't showing up and beating up parents from opposing teams in the middle of games, maybe kids would realize (maybe parents would too) that its recreational, and not worth doing that to your body just to be #1. If the government was truly concerned, they'd take all this time and energy and put it into creating school initiatives for recreational sports, academic after-school activities, and library programmes. Sitting around telling athletes to not use steroids when they're not supposed to already is like nipping hte ankles of a system that won't pay you attention. Let that system ruin itself when fans stop being invested. Or better yet, maybe fans will love it, maybe it'll become like the Steroid Olympics on Saturday Night Live?

Oh I spose because it takes up time that might instead be used for discussing issues like the number 26 -- the number that military investigators said this week were likely tortured to death by US forces and CIA personnel, only one of them in Abu Ghraib.

And they certainly aren't going to want to hold hearings on US checkpoints that killed an Italian agent last week and an Iraqi general walking home from work today.

Baseball, even with steroids mixed in, is soft harmless stuff to show the folks at home you are on the job.

It basically means that they are shouting their opposition from the biggest stage, where they can get as much publicity as possible, but they really don't give a hoot to oppose the problem when the cameras are not on them. The point of it, is to draw as much negative publicity as you can to whatever you're in opposition of, so that they will know they are under a microscope, and will have to police their own actions. It's just a tool for an agenda. If congress actually had to put some blood , sweat, and tears into the issue, instead of just standing on a grand stage and pointing the figure of shame at MLB, they wouldn't bother.

At least that's my take on what it means.

Whatever this is the first usefull thing congress has done all session.

Baseball has a serious problem, and if congress has any control left over the money spending campaign donators then they will force baseball to let the Olympics steroid commission do the testing. Baseball is clearly not trying to do anything to solve the problem on their own other than putting in a name only steroid policy.

Hell Sosa went to congress and testified that he never took steroids ... this coming from a known cheater who corks his bats, and has all the injuries associated with steroids ... not to mention a huge size increase just like bonds, cammanitti, canseco, mcguire, and so many others. Baseball is full of lies.

Go McCain go.

Heh, yes Archie, exactly. Its really the easiest non-partisan cutsie "We don't like American youth taking performance enhancing drugs...see, we really do care," type issue. What a waste, when yes, there are bigger issues that are actually within the realm of government concern. This grandstanding thing is about getting the support of the people behind something so easy its silly, rather than, well, tackling an issue that's not quite so clear cut and sentimental.

Eagle, if baseball isn't doing anything to solve the problem, than the problem will be its downfall, and then watch how quick they let the Olympic steroid commission come in and dope test. My call is less than 24 hours once they realize no one is going to support their business anymore.

Congress shouldn't have anything to do with it, let the donors and team owners swim in thier lies 'til those lies bite them in the butt. Seriously, I rarely pull the taxpayers card out of my hand since I believe in paying fairly high taxes, sometimes for things I don't agree with, but this is one time where I am going to say...waste of taxpayers goddamn money.

No one apart from America really follows Basketball or Baseball, or American Football

What's your point? (And I'm not saying your statement is true anyways)

Do you realize Canada isn't America? (and I'm sure you weren't referring to North America) Do you realize how big baseball is in Cuba? The Dominican Republic? Mexico? Japan? Do you realize how big basketball and baseball are in the Olympics?

Obviously you were projecting your own interests on parts of the world that you didn't really know very well...

What, theres other places in the world apart from America and UK?
SHUT UP no way!!!!

That's the rumor, anyway, but you know how it is with rumors, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

In order to enter canada you must go through a wardrobe door. Or take a pink pill.

One of the dumbest comments you have made on this board heh.

I don't even want to argue with you, but you might want to go look at Japan, China, and all South American countries before writing off baseball.

Basketball is quite popular in most countries .... convienant to leave out the other US sport Hockey.

Football is not as popular overseas, and I really think that has more to do with it stealing the name 'football'

I hope you mean the Internation Olympic Committee, as the US Olympic team is bloody disgrace when it comes to steriod use in my opnion. The whole Balco thing, is the merely the latest.

Quite frankly, we as a country condone steriod use, why the hell shoudl we be shocked that bsaeball is dopping. They ought to take thei rmodel from football, were players are randomly tested for almost the whoel eyar except for a few months (2-3) in the off season (I think they shoudl be tested then to).

Hi Dolce, I know its been awhile, but I felt compelled to come here and just try to figure out why Congress would investigate steroids in baseball. Or at least laugh about it in unison. Careful about taking that red pill there Senator, there are some places you wont come back from, does anyone think the NFL players over 350 lbs are just "big-guys"? Nolan Ryan's got a 102 mph fastball at age 50...hmmm.... Wow you seem to have bounced right back after knee surgery

Gas is $3 a gallon, 41 people wound up in bodybags in Iraq today and we ship home 20+ US troops in caskets once a week, not even mentioning wounded for life, 40 million US citizens dont have health care blah, blah, blah. Congress see's these numerous crisis and decides to act and .....lets investigate......steroids in baseball.

The other problems are too hard to solve so they pick a nice fluffy target, before you say oh C Klown its just congress, listen up, WE pay them $100,000+ a year each to be there so its my right as an American to bitch about this.

Santa Claus has been indited!!!!

I am going to write my representatives and let them know exactly how I feel, Grey Davis thought he was untouchable too, and he got a nice wake up call one day, that worthless fuck. If they cant focus on the real problems they need to be replaced.

Post recycled with permission from myself

=D>



Heh, this seems bad compared to Grey Davis for me. Grey mishandled a situation, congress is currently trying to avoid all situations by paying attention to steroids for cryin' out loud. I don't know that much about Grey, so I can't argue except for to ask, didn't people get pissed at him for trying to tax gasoline to fund highway construction? I know its a big state and everyone has to drive alot, etc, so it would be expensive and people were mad. But at least that's tackling the issues (rather in appropriate method or not is debateable). Sittin' around talking about a bunch of profession sports stars who can't get their acts together is, yes, a waste of tax-payers money. I'm sorry, I said I don't usually say that, but this is where I put my foot down. When their fans turn their back on the sport, than it'll clean itself up real quickly, 'nuff said. Frankly, I don't see why they bother body-building anyways since they routinely miss seasons going on strike over how to divy up their million dollar salaries? Congress needs to get a grip as well. Like you said, its fluffy. I thought the State of the Union Address was deferring from the issues mostly because the more complex ones can't really be spoken about easily in a speech. I was mad, but I also said to myself, Dolce, this is just a speech, whatever. But now I see this, and it's not just half an hour of air time, its freakin' days and days on the Congress' floor. Get some backbones gentlemen, take some heat for the serious decisions, but I hope they illicit a massive outrage over this waste of federal money, attention, energy, and anything else that goes with it.

Dolce, Yes that plus the obvious "jokes on you" guys, the fact of the matter is everyone, YES everyone in the majors is on the shit, why spend millions of dollars investigating a bad joke. Its like investigating people who drive over 55. These are not "amatuer" or Olympic athletes, people who make $1M a year can pass a drug test very, very easily, the desginer shit Bonds is on wont even show up on the banned list. (I guarantee it)

As EL Masked Prohobido user he'll tell ya.

By "grandstanding," I meant that Congress was far too public about their investigation. Because of the anti-trust connection, and because the drugs are illegal, yes Congress has the right to investigate. But this is the type of issue where you set up and independent committe to do some research and some interviews. Then you wait (i.e. focus on some larger issue) while the independent committee to hand in the report, and then you come up with some regulations or whatever.

You can do all the investigating and lawmaking you want without setting up the three-ring circus by calling the "legends" up on the carpet and inviting the cameras in. It was a nice engineered photo op for the Congresspeople to display how down-home and moral they are.

C. Klown, the salary of Barak Obama is $156K/year. The senior senators might make more.(?)