In The Good Old Days.

Even if you don't follow Major League Baseball you've probably heard about the latest performance enhancing drug use suspensions, including Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees.  People think that the achievements of plays like Rodriguez, and the previous generation of players associated with PEDs, like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, are tainted by comparison to the greats, who supposedly played clean.  But once again I wonder how clean some of those guys were.  Drug testing didn't exist in the days of Ruth and Gehirg, Mays and Aaron.  What stuff might those guys have tried?  Unlike the modern cocktails it's likely any of the crude methods they tired had little if any effectiveness.  Or for that matter the drugs they may have used that aren't normally associated with performance enhancement, like speed.

Not that this is an excuse for today's behaviour.  Rodriquez and the others broke the current rules, knowing very well what might happen.

I was just doing some reading online about drug use in sports and came across this headline: Lawyer says hooker could sue league. But its not what a typical North American(at least) reader might think. Rather, as you find out if you read the Guardian article a hooker is a position on a rugby team, and the article in question is about a rugby player who was given prohibited substances without his apparently knowing about it. Just another interesting example of the confusion a word can cause if you don't know the context.

My reading was prompted by a thread over at the Fender Discussion Page(yes, we do discuss things besides guitars over there) on who is the greatest athelete of the last 50 years. Carl Lewis was mentioned, and the obvious thought came to mind about whether performance enhancing drug use should be considered, given that Lewis may very well have been "on the juice" during his glory days, despite his holier than thou attitude on the issue over the years.