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The Barry Bonds Conspiracy · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Welcome to Conspiracy The Show with your hosts Adam Todd
0:16
Speaker 1: Brown and Connor ms pattern. Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy
0:33
Speaker 1: the Show.
0:34
Speaker 2: I'm Adam Todd Brown, I'm Conor mc.
0:36
Speaker 1: Welcome to mother fucking Sports Month. I forgot we have that.
0:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a vote for that.
0:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's working again.
0:43
Speaker 3: I gotta get one of those little like task gam
0:45
Speaker 3: things so I can pretend I'm Kanye Yeah, doing just
0:48
Speaker 3: doing a soul chop.
0:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty fucking great.
0:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
0:51
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. We're talking about sports related conspiracy theories this month.
0:55
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them.
0:56
Speaker 1: There are quite a few, and there's some there's some
0:58
Speaker 1: really interesting ones. We'll definitely at some point get into
1:03
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's retirement. Yeah yeah, yeah, or was it a
1:07
Speaker 1: suspension from basketball? Well, we'll get into that. We'll probably
1:12
Speaker 1: talk about the nineteen eighty five NBA Draft lottery, which
1:17
Speaker 1: is for all intents and purposes, the Zappruder Film of Sports.
1:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a notorious one conspiracy. Yeah, the Monstars steroid scandal.
1:26
Speaker 2: Will be addressed.
1:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
1:28
Speaker 3: I rewatched Space Jam while I was in New York.
1:29
Speaker 3: It's fucking is a fun movie.
1:31
Speaker 1: Man. I still I saw it once back when it
1:35
Speaker 1: came out, and I never really watched it again.
1:37
Speaker 3: I just like there's a lot of movies where I
1:39
Speaker 3: would just miss the point, like I'm pretty dumb like
1:41
Speaker 3: media consumer. And when I watched Space Jam, I thought, like,
1:43
Speaker 3: you know, when he gives him like the water, He's like,
1:45
Speaker 3: it's my special serum to make you play. But I
1:47
Speaker 3: really thought, like for like like a decade, that the
1:49
Speaker 3: message of Space Jam was to stay hydrated. I didn't
1:52
Speaker 3: realize it was like a believe in yourself thing.
1:54
Speaker 1: That either of those messages are pretty great.
1:56
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yeah, it thing, hydride is probably a
1:58
Speaker 3: more productive message than believing, you know, if.
2:02
Speaker 1: It'll kind of make you believe in yourself. Yeah, yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: like you'll feel great.
2:05
Speaker 3: The best, like the one of the best things in life,
2:08
Speaker 3: like the like the gatorade after you have sex. My goodness,
2:11
Speaker 3: my buddy, my buddy Opee got me onto that. He's
2:13
Speaker 3: like he's got a mini fridge in his rooms, Like, yeah,
2:14
Speaker 3: every time I have sex, I have a Gatorade.
2:16
Speaker 2: And I was like, that does sound nice.
2:17
Speaker 1: Gatorade is a marvel of fucking science.
2:20
Speaker 3: I really think I could live with HIV quite comfortably.
2:23
Speaker 3: If I just drank gatorade every day, if I just
2:25
Speaker 3: got like it, like a two two for three, like big,
2:27
Speaker 3: like Kiwi strawberry fucking gatorade, you'd be fine.
2:30
Speaker 1: Even pedia Lite, have you ever had PDA?
2:32
Speaker 3: I wouldn't because I was I was sick, and yeah,
2:34
Speaker 3: it's fucking good stuff. The Gatorade I drank when I
2:36
Speaker 3: had food poisoning was the best thing I've ever tasted
2:39
Speaker 3: in my life. That felt like, you know, like wandering
2:41
Speaker 3: in the desert and seeing an oasis.
2:42
Speaker 2: It was so good.
2:43
Speaker 1: You know. Another thing that we'll probably talk about at
2:47
Speaker 1: some point this month is a theory of mine that
2:50
Speaker 1: Trump's cracked down on the NFL is a revenge thing.
2:55
Speaker 2: Over oh, the Buffalo Bills over well.
2:57
Speaker 1: He that I haven't even looked into the Buffalo bill.
3:00
Speaker 2: I think he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills.
3:02
Speaker 1: That could be true.
3:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:04
Speaker 1: He also was one of the early owners of teams
3:09
Speaker 1: in the USFL.
3:10
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah, And the.
3:12
Speaker 1: USFL for the first couple of seasons was really successful
3:15
Speaker 1: because they were playing in the spring in the NFL
3:18
Speaker 1: plays in the fall.
3:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was like a not like an XFL
3:21
Speaker 3: that they had like some pretty name brand players.
3:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were getting big name players out of the
3:24
Speaker 1: draft like Jim Kelly, Herschel, Walker, Steve Young, all these
3:28
Speaker 1: really these big NFL legends.
3:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:30
Speaker 1: Hit. Eventually they started in this in the USFL. But
3:35
Speaker 1: then Trump initiated kind of got all of the enough
3:40
Speaker 1: of the ownership on board to agree to file a
3:45
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the NFL, like a monopoly lawsuit. Interesting because
3:50
Speaker 1: they wanted to play in the fall also, and they
3:53
Speaker 1: were arguing that the NFL like had such a monopoly
3:56
Speaker 1: on professional football in America that they made that impossible
4:01
Speaker 1: and Trump won. The USFL won, but the jury awarded
4:05
Speaker 1: them one dollar in damages, so it was like they
4:10
Speaker 1: won on a technicality. Yeah, everyone was like, fuck you,
4:14
Speaker 1: this is stupid, and they folded a couple of years
4:17
Speaker 1: after that.
4:17
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
4:18
Speaker 1: So but we'll talk about that more.
4:20
Speaker 2: Doesn't fucking Gene Simmons have an arena football team, the
4:23
Speaker 2: La Kiss. Is that still happening? Yeah? I remember seeing
4:26
Speaker 2: billboards for that when I'd be in Orange County.
4:28
Speaker 1: I wonder if it is still happening. We need to
4:29
Speaker 1: get to a game.
4:30
Speaker 2: That would be fun. Shit, dude.
4:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this week we're talking about what is also
4:38
Speaker 1: kind of my own theory, but I think it's not.
4:42
Speaker 1: I think there are people out there who also have
4:44
Speaker 1: their suspicions. I feel like I add a wrinkle to
4:48
Speaker 1: it that, yeah, most people don't.
4:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, you kind of you synthesized all the source materials here.
4:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to talk about baseball and the steroids scandal.
4:59
Speaker 1: Uh huh, because what I believe the steroids scandal was.
5:03
Speaker 1: I think that was baseball one covering for the fact
5:09
Speaker 1: that amphetamines had been an integral part of baseball for
5:12
Speaker 1: about eighty years really up to that point, like they
5:16
Speaker 1: were mandatory for playing baseball, and they still are to
5:20
Speaker 1: this day. It's just that now players now that amphetamines
5:25
Speaker 1: were finally banned in two thousand and six.
5:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, you band dip, You got to grind your teeth
5:30
Speaker 2: on something, you know.
5:31
Speaker 1: Right, And today it's just energy drinks and caffeine pills
5:36
Speaker 1: and all that shit, which sounds normal. But we'll get
5:37
Speaker 1: into why even that is abnormal for sports things that
5:43
Speaker 1: sports allow. But I think at that time steroids were
5:47
Speaker 1: such a big deal because Lance Armstrong was starting to
5:51
Speaker 1: win the Tour de France all the time, and people
5:54
Speaker 1: were like what the fuck is going on with this? Yeah,
5:57
Speaker 1: and just the phrase performance and hands drugs was such
6:02
Speaker 1: a thing. I feel like baseball, if they didn't manufacture
6:07
Speaker 1: the steroids scandal, they at least encouraged it so it
6:11
Speaker 1: would give them something really high profile to clean up.
6:16
Speaker 1: That would allow them to also clean up amphetamines without
6:19
Speaker 1: so much fanfare.
6:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, because when people if you if you go like
6:23
Speaker 3: a like the steroids are kind of synonymous with your cheating, right,
6:26
Speaker 3: you know, and sports fans love like.
6:28
Speaker 2: A would he deflated the football? This is fucking bullshit.
6:31
Speaker 1: Take They love putting an asterisk next to.
6:34
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it gets everybody's dick hard.
6:36
Speaker 3: It's the water cooler gossip forever, you know, So like
6:39
Speaker 3: throwing that in the mix.
6:40
Speaker 2: If you've got to cover up a couple of little
6:42
Speaker 2: little things, is it like a good strategic move?
6:44
Speaker 1: Right, We're talking with steroids, we're talking about a ten
6:48
Speaker 1: to fifteen year scandal, whereas amphetamines. Bud Selig at one point,
6:52
Speaker 1: who was the Commissioner of Baseball for a time, said
6:55
Speaker 1: that amphetamines at the time they banned them from baseball
6:58
Speaker 1: had been a problem in the league or seven or
7:00
Speaker 1: eight decades yeah, and that when you go back that far,
7:04
Speaker 1: you're talking Mickey Mannle, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays.
7:07
Speaker 3: You're talking to real life stay awake while you fight
7:09
Speaker 3: the Vietcong era mes.
7:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all of these like really beloved high profile
7:15
Speaker 1: players who in the performance enhancing drugs era. When people
7:19
Speaker 1: are demanding that people who are caught cheating have their
7:23
Speaker 1: records tarnished or taken from them, baseball was gonna have
7:27
Speaker 1: to address pretty much every record that had ever been set,
7:31
Speaker 1: but steroids allowed them to just address a few and
7:36
Speaker 1: then clean up the game and then make it look like,
7:39
Speaker 1: well that was our first scandal involving performance ants and drugs.
7:43
Speaker 1: Didn't we take care of it nicely?
7:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah.
7:45
Speaker 3: And if it's like if you control the roll out,
7:47
Speaker 3: it's kind of like you know, right, it's like celebrities.
7:50
Speaker 2: Will do it.
7:50
Speaker 3: You know, it's like like, oh, okay, like he hit
7:53
Speaker 3: his wife. It's like, hey, why don't we go just
7:55
Speaker 3: get you a dui or whatever to get you know,
7:57
Speaker 3: or something in a rehab trip, you know.
7:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it's like I said, it's kind of
8:03
Speaker 1: my own theory, but there are also a lot of
8:06
Speaker 1: people out there who questioned baseball's focus on steroids over
8:11
Speaker 1: amphetamines and the other thing. What you don't hear brought
8:16
Speaker 1: up as much, but I suspect it just as much
8:20
Speaker 1: is that part of this was also baseball getting ahead
8:24
Speaker 1: of the fact that Barry Bonds was going to become
8:27
Speaker 1: the home run champion at some point, and baseball hated
8:32
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds really and not because he's black. There are
8:35
Speaker 1: plenty of revered black baseball players, Hank Aaron, who has
8:39
Speaker 1: the home run or had the home run record before
8:42
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds, Like Baseball fucking adores Karon. So it's not
8:46
Speaker 1: that he's black, it's that I mean, some of it's
8:50
Speaker 1: probably because he's black, but I.
8:51
Speaker 2: Mean it's not a complete non factor.
8:55
Speaker 1: But he was just kind of a dick.
8:58
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just kind of like a diva.
9:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. He didn't like talking to reporters. He didn't really
9:03
Speaker 1: give a shit about being nice to fans.
9:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:05
Speaker 3: Well, because if if you're the big guy, like it's
9:07
Speaker 3: like it's like, you know, Shack was always kind of charming,
9:10
Speaker 3: you know, and he was a big character, and it's
9:12
Speaker 3: like that's good, you want the guy there's a big character.
9:13
Speaker 3: But it's like if you're there, like big, bankable.
9:16
Speaker 2: Fucking like power player.
9:17
Speaker 3: They want you to also like, yeah, go say some
9:19
Speaker 3: crazy shit on the couch and Dave Letterman, you know,
9:21
Speaker 3: like yo, sign some shit for kids, Like that's all
9:23
Speaker 3: good money for baseball. But if you're not going to
9:24
Speaker 3: play ball, you know, forgive the pun, right, that's kind
9:27
Speaker 3: of bad.
9:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was addicted to reporters and interviews. He
9:31
Speaker 1: wasn't nice to fans. It's kind of the same thing
9:34
Speaker 1: you hear about Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who is one of
9:38
Speaker 1: the best players in NBA history, but you don't see
9:41
Speaker 1: him getting coaching jobs. You don't see him getting front
9:44
Speaker 1: office jobs. And I read an article once and they
9:47
Speaker 1: were like, the NBA just doesn't just clean. Doesn't fucking
9:50
Speaker 1: like that dude, Like he was just an unfriendly guy
9:54
Speaker 1: to be around. H And now that he's retired, people
9:57
Speaker 1: don't want to fuck with him.
9:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense.
9:59
Speaker 1: And I was watching the NBA Finals last week and
10:04
Speaker 1: they showed this like they were doing cuts to all
10:07
Speaker 1: these different celebrities in the audience and all these people
10:10
Speaker 1: were court side and they were like politicians, Rob Low,
10:14
Speaker 1: all this shit. All of these fucking people are court
10:17
Speaker 1: side or relatively court side, and then they cut the
10:19
Speaker 1: Kareem Abdul Jabbar and he's just up in the fucking
10:22
Speaker 1: stands and I'm like, that's Kareem. He should be on
10:25
Speaker 1: the court if he wants to be on the court.
10:28
Speaker 1: And that was kind that's kind of Barry Bonds. Barry
10:31
Speaker 1: Bonds is just an unlikable guy who was just like, look,
10:35
Speaker 1: I'm just here to play baseball. And the problem is
10:38
Speaker 1: he was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Yeah, like,
10:42
Speaker 1: hands down, steroids or not, he was one of the best.
10:46
Speaker 1: And I kind of feel like baseball saw steroids as
10:51
Speaker 1: a way to head that off and make sure that
10:55
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds didn't become that. And it's the it's it's
10:58
Speaker 1: just it's not a thing I can prove.
11:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
11:03
Speaker 3: But like if Michael Jordan wasn't like, you know, saying
11:05
Speaker 3: dumb shit or you know, like fucking putting out shoes
11:08
Speaker 3: or anything, it's like you're just leaving so much money
11:10
Speaker 3: on the table for you, you know.
11:11
Speaker 1: It's like what I wish they would the NFL would
11:14
Speaker 1: have done to Emmett Smith when oh, okay, he's stuck
11:17
Speaker 1: around for all these years past his prime, when he
11:20
Speaker 1: was just borderline worthless, just so he could break Walter
11:24
Speaker 1: Payton's all time rushing record, and it's like, will you
11:27
Speaker 1: tear an acl already? My god? Yeah, but he eventually
11:31
Speaker 1: broke the record, but he, like everyone loved Emmett Smith.
11:35
Speaker 2: So yeah, you can't. It was fine, yeah, yeah.
11:37
Speaker 1: But Barry Bonds a lot of people didn't like. So
11:40
Speaker 1: let's talk about amphetamines in baseball. There's a really great
11:44
Speaker 1: article you could go out and read everybody, written by
11:48
Speaker 1: a dude named Adam Todd brown Baby for the website
11:53
Speaker 1: crack dot com. I wrote this in twenty thirteen. It
11:55
Speaker 1: was called five reason Steroids were never the real problem
11:59
Speaker 1: in Baseball and go out and give it a read.
12:02
Speaker 1: It explains a lot of the things I bring up here.
12:05
Speaker 1: But the thing about amphetam meines. If you think about baseball,
12:08
Speaker 1: it's a grueling, fucking schedule. Yeah, Like, I think my
12:11
Speaker 1: schedule is tough, but baseball players they play one hundred
12:15
Speaker 1: and sixty two games in one hundred and eighty two days.
12:17
Speaker 2: That's nuts.
12:18
Speaker 1: And that's only if you don't make the postseason. Oh,
12:21
Speaker 1: you make the playoffs or the World Series, you're talking
12:23
Speaker 1: closer to one hundred and eighty one hundred and ninety
12:26
Speaker 1: games in two hundred days or so.
12:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
12:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, like most bands don't tour that much.
12:31
Speaker 3: No, I mean most like like comics, even comics you
12:33
Speaker 3: do like a full hour, you know, full hour show
12:35
Speaker 3: on the road.
12:35
Speaker 2: It's like you probably do.
12:37
Speaker 3: Like how many full hours a year, like maybe like
12:39
Speaker 3: one hundred, right twenty, you know, And it's like that's
12:42
Speaker 3: just on the weekend. You got three days off, four
12:43
Speaker 3: days off. You know, you take two weeks off to
12:45
Speaker 3: hang out with the kids. Like that's like a lot of.
12:47
Speaker 1: Fucking and it's always it at the same time to
12:50
Speaker 1: at the.
12:50
Speaker 3: Same time nice and but yeah, that's you know, you
12:52
Speaker 3: got a fucking time zone changes. You're always on an airplane,
12:55
Speaker 3: you know, you're trying to stay in shape. On top
12:56
Speaker 3: of that, have a social life.
12:58
Speaker 1: And with baseball sometimes times you will fly across country,
13:03
Speaker 1: have a night game, and then have a day game
13:07
Speaker 1: the next day. Yeah, which is it's fucking brutal. Like
13:09
Speaker 1: baseball should be about half as many games as it
13:13
Speaker 1: is right now. Yeah, but it's not, and they're never
13:16
Speaker 1: going to change that. Baseball loves tradition. I think That's
13:20
Speaker 1: kind of what was at the root of them letting
13:22
Speaker 1: the steroid scandal get to where it did before they
13:26
Speaker 1: did anything about it, is they knew it was gonna
13:29
Speaker 1: cast less of a shadow on the dition legacy of baseball.
13:34
Speaker 3: Than if we expose it. Everyone had been hopped up
13:36
Speaker 3: the entire time.
13:37
Speaker 1: Right, whereas this just made it seem like this new
13:39
Speaker 1: class of fucking roid rage assholes, yeah, came in and
13:43
Speaker 1: ruined basically briefly.
13:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when you find out that, like JFK gave
13:47
Speaker 3: his commencement speech like meth to shit, you know, and
13:50
Speaker 3: you look at it and you're like, oh, it's a
13:51
Speaker 3: winter day and Homeboy is sweating, you know. Yeah, I'm
13:55
Speaker 3: sure this has been suggested before, but how coolould it
13:58
Speaker 3: be to just have a steroid league where it's like,
14:00
Speaker 3: do whatever.
14:01
Speaker 2: You want, like become a superhuman.
14:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's just basically everyone looks like the abomination
14:05
Speaker 3: from the first Hulk movie, you know.
14:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even then it would be that's kind of
14:11
Speaker 1: that's kind of how NASCAR works. Like with NASCAR, you're
14:15
Speaker 1: always you're trying to build the perfect machine, but not
14:20
Speaker 1: just the perfect machine, the perfect machine for those circumstances.
14:24
Speaker 3: Well, Nascar, I feel like that's more like Formula one
14:26
Speaker 3: raising because Nascar is pretty uniform with the idea is
14:29
Speaker 3: that it's kind of the skill of the driver where
14:30
Speaker 3: there's like a lot more kind of calculus that goes
14:33
Speaker 3: into like, you know, it's like other kinds of racing,
14:35
Speaker 3: like when you're pay what kind of tires gonna pump?
14:36
Speaker 3: About Nascar, it's pretty much just like very cookie cutter.
14:39
Speaker 3: There's very small adjustments that you're allowed to do, but
14:42
Speaker 3: it's just like you know, get out there and driving
14:43
Speaker 3: an oval.
14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true, but it's Yeah, so that's a
14:48
Speaker 1: good comparison also than a Formula one where you're building
14:52
Speaker 1: this thing and constantly tweaking it, like just overloading on steroids.
14:56
Speaker 1: And that's one of the points I'll get to in
14:57
Speaker 1: this just overloading on steroids doesn't necessary we make you
15:00
Speaker 1: a good baseball No, absolutely not, Like there's a lot
15:03
Speaker 1: more to it, and there's a lot that steroids don't. Like,
15:06
Speaker 1: steroids don't do a lot for helping you hit. But
15:10
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. Yea, So the schedule is crazy. Also,
15:14
Speaker 1: hitting a baseball is hard. Oh yeah, yeah, I played
15:17
Speaker 1: baseball in a little bit into high school. And it's
15:21
Speaker 1: not easy hitting a baseball that's being thrown really fast
15:25
Speaker 1: with a skinny bat. Like, go to a bat and
15:28
Speaker 1: cage and try it. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's very difficult.
15:31
Speaker 1: And it's not a skill that lends itself to being sleepy.
15:35
Speaker 1: Ye point, if you're tired, it's gonna be a lot
15:38
Speaker 1: more difficult.
15:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can podcast high and hungover, and you know,
15:42
Speaker 3: we do it all the time, you know.
15:43
Speaker 1: But most of my jobs I could do on no sleep,
15:46
Speaker 1: all the jobs I've ever had.
15:47
Speaker 3: But like, hand eye coordination goes before most things you
15:51
Speaker 3: think of a sleepy person they're bumping around the kitchen,
15:53
Speaker 3: you know.
15:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and hand eye coordination is actually the most
15:57
Speaker 1: important component of hitting a home run, oh yeah, getting
16:01
Speaker 1: a baseball in general.
16:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:02
Speaker 1: Like, wait, and steroids don't do shit for that, you know.
16:05
Speaker 3: They Yeah, there's no steroids where it like, give it term.
16:08
Speaker 3: It gives you, like the limitless pill. Jesus Christ. I
16:12
Speaker 3: hate Jersey Mikes before I came.
16:14
Speaker 1: Oh goddamn it, the one here in Burbank.
16:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, dude. Where is it at right by
16:18
Speaker 2: the in and out? Oh shit, yeah, yeah, by the mall.
16:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, I was gonna go to In and Out,
16:24
Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm gonna treat myself to a
16:25
Speaker 3: big fucking jersey.
16:27
Speaker 1: Mikes has the best meatball subs.
16:28
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, you get the giant size. That's two meals, right.
16:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's fucking great. So yeah, because of all this,
16:35
Speaker 1: because of the schedule, because of the type of skill
16:38
Speaker 1: baseball requires, amphetamines were just in Major League Baseball clubhouses
16:44
Speaker 1: for decades. It goes as far back at least as
16:48
Speaker 1: Willie Mays, where people have reported Willie Mays had like
16:52
Speaker 1: liquid amphetamines in his locker room. There were these things
16:57
Speaker 1: called greenies, which is also the name of a very
17:00
Speaker 1: famous dog treat.
17:01
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, but.
17:03
Speaker 1: Greenies are a type of amphetamine that were just dispensed
17:07
Speaker 1: in baseball locker rooms forever.
17:10
Speaker 2: They were a big punch bowl full of them. Yeah yeah,
17:12
Speaker 2: take two, you know, yeah, basically the phillies today.
17:15
Speaker 1: And like I said, Bud Selig said that they had
17:18
Speaker 1: been a part of the game for seven or eight decades.
17:21
Speaker 1: That's a quote.
17:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was as long as racism or mascots,
17:25
Speaker 3: you know.
17:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a big And.
17:28
Speaker 1: The thing is it wasn't a secret either, which to
17:33
Speaker 1: me would give them all the more motivation when it
17:36
Speaker 1: got to the point where they were going to have
17:37
Speaker 1: to clean it up. It would give them a little
17:39
Speaker 1: more motivation to hide it. Yea is. In nineteen seventy
17:44
Speaker 1: there was a book called Ball four that was written
17:46
Speaker 1: by an active Major league player went into great detail
17:51
Speaker 1: about how common amphetamine use was at the time, and
17:55
Speaker 1: it was all true. Like, no one disputed what he
17:58
Speaker 1: was saying in the book. Baseball major League Baseball's stance
18:02
Speaker 1: on it was just, well, you shouldn't have written about that.
18:05
Speaker 1: That's not cool, because it again, baseball is such a
18:07
Speaker 1: game of tradition.
18:09
Speaker 2: That they're like, well, yeah, I kind of keep that,
18:11
Speaker 2: you know.
18:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he also outed Mickey Mantle as an alcoholic,
18:16
Speaker 1: which is I don't know how people wouldn't have known that.
18:19
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty obviously.
18:20
Speaker 2: Look at his nose.
18:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, white guys, you fucking the nose did giveaway for alcoholism.
18:25
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
18:26
Speaker 1: And so baseball had known about this for at least
18:31
Speaker 1: that long, like at least nineteen seventy, which by the
18:36
Speaker 1: by the time we get into the steroid era, that's
18:38
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah. So there's an article on si
18:43
Speaker 1: dot com from June third, two thousand and two, which
18:46
Speaker 1: is kind of before steroids really became the scandal that
18:51
Speaker 1: they were in.
18:52
Speaker 2: Part of the dialogue, you know, right, And it.
18:55
Speaker 1: Was an article called getting amped. Popping amphetamines or other
19:00
Speaker 1: stimulants is part of many players pregame routine. And this
19:04
Speaker 1: is the opening quote from the article. The idea of
19:06
Speaker 1: playing baseball without taking amphetamines or other stimulants is so
19:10
Speaker 1: absurd to some major leaguers that they have a catchphrase
19:14
Speaker 1: for it, playing naked. So that's how common this shit was.
19:18
Speaker 2: Y Yeah.
19:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is another quote. If the starting pitcher
19:22
Speaker 1: knows that you're going out there naked, he's upset that
19:25
Speaker 1: you're not giving him everything you can. The big time pitcher,
19:29
Speaker 1: what's to make sure you're beaning up before the game.
19:32
Speaker 1: So now, whenever you drink an energy drink, I'm gonna
19:34
Speaker 1: call it beaning up.
19:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, beaning up. You take a little right that.
19:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's apparently. They also they did also call them beanies.
19:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
19:44
Speaker 3: That's like it's like the guy who doesn't want to
19:45
Speaker 3: do the group prayer before the game. It's like you're
19:47
Speaker 3: not being a team player if you're not your nervous system.
19:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's kind of the the flip side of
19:55
Speaker 1: that is the argument a lot of players make. It's like,
19:57
Speaker 1: is it cheating if everyone's doing it?
19:59
Speaker 2: Yeah?
19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like did I even have a choice but
20:02
Speaker 1: to do it if everyone else was doing it because
20:04
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to succeed in my sport?
20:07
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah.
20:07
Speaker 3: If you like, if you told me to fucking go
20:09
Speaker 3: to go on tour without you know, a red bull
20:11
Speaker 3: or whatever, it's like, it's not happening. It's not gonna
20:13
Speaker 3: be good, you know.
20:14
Speaker 1: And then and now imagine if someone told all comics
20:17
Speaker 1: to do it, and then they were like, but it's
20:19
Speaker 1: just on our system.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so you know, nobody someone finds.
20:24
Speaker 1: Out you drank a red bull, people are going to
20:27
Speaker 1: be mad, but we're not really going to check.
20:29
Speaker 3: All the top comics in the world would be Mormon
20:31
Speaker 3: because they've just adjusted to it, you know.
20:34
Speaker 1: But then you know, if no one's checking, people are
20:37
Speaker 1: going to do it. Yeah, and then it's going to
20:39
Speaker 1: give those people an advantage. And then at that point,
20:43
Speaker 1: having the rule in place, almost you're almost doing a
20:47
Speaker 1: disservice to the people who aren't taking the drugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
20:51
Speaker 1: because you're sort of putting them in a position where,
20:54
Speaker 1: you know, to be genuine in the eyes of the game,
20:59
Speaker 1: you have to not play on the same playing field
21:02
Speaker 1: as everyone else. Yeah.
21:03
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you're wrong down.
21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's kind of a common argument
21:07
Speaker 1: with performance enhancing drugs, especially with the Tour de France,
21:10
Speaker 1: because you know, Lance Armstrong lost all those titles, but
21:14
Speaker 1: after him, like fifteen twenty other people who finished in
21:19
Speaker 1: the top twenty all had doping scandals of their own.
21:22
Speaker 2: Didn't you go back and win it Vanilla one year afterwards?
21:26
Speaker 1: I don't think so, okay, I think he got them
21:30
Speaker 1: all stripped. I worked at Demand Media, which owned Live Strong.
21:34
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and I worked there the day Lance Armstrong
21:39
Speaker 1: finally got outed and got all his titles stripped. Oh man,
21:43
Speaker 1: And I went into work that day and I didn't
21:45
Speaker 1: have to walk past Live Strong's department to get the mind.
21:49
Speaker 1: But you're like, yeah, def did, because I was like,
21:52
Speaker 1: I want to see this car. A black Tuesday for
21:54
Speaker 1: ship bracelets. It was a somber affair.
21:57
Speaker 3: Those fucking bracelets were like, those are a thing I
21:59
Speaker 3: don't see out in the I love the two thousands
22:01
Speaker 3: list because I remember those going around took the fuck off.
22:04
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, everyone had one.
22:05
Speaker 1: There was a bracelet for everything.
22:07
Speaker 2: Oh yeah it was.
22:07
Speaker 3: And then for a while just like, yeah, I go
22:09
Speaker 3: one that's dedication, you know, which is really important to
22:12
Speaker 3: me as a twelve year old in Ontario.
22:14
Speaker 1: You know, see, I went the other way, and I
22:16
Speaker 1: think I had one that said like fuck on it.
22:18
Speaker 1: At one point, I mean we still people could look
22:20
Speaker 1: close and yeah.
22:21
Speaker 2: See the embossed letters.
22:22
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, we have well we have fuck everything,
22:24
Speaker 3: God is dead bracelet's you know.
22:25
Speaker 2: I can't say shit, but I mean, yeah, do those sell?
22:29
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, one of them are popular. I just
22:31
Speaker 3: we just bought two hundred because there was like an
22:33
Speaker 3: early Patreon thing. We take them on the road and
22:34
Speaker 3: be like, oh shit, yeah, hell yeah. You know, I
22:37
Speaker 3: don't wear them. I find him to be tacky, like
22:38
Speaker 3: I was never like, you know, I would. I wouldn't
22:40
Speaker 3: be caught wearing that shit. It's fucking dumb.
22:42
Speaker 2: But the day you like them, cool.
22:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for it. So there's another article that talks
22:48
Speaker 1: about this was on bleacher report dot com called a
22:51
Speaker 1: Look inside Baseball's ever evolving stimulant culture and This was
22:55
Speaker 1: written way after amphetamines were banned in baseball, and it
23:00
Speaker 1: talks about how even today players go to these crazy
23:05
Speaker 1: lengths to replicate that boost that amphetamines give you because
23:09
Speaker 1: you have to have it to play baseball. It makes
23:12
Speaker 1: baseball really difficult if you don't have a stimulant of
23:16
Speaker 1: some sort.
23:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:17
Speaker 1: So now they're like pounding caffeine.
23:19
Speaker 2: Pills, the drinking the Caveman coffee thing.
23:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, energy drinks, and.
23:25
Speaker 3: You're doing any kind of cardio where you're overcaffeinated sucks.
23:27
Speaker 3: You just feel like, you know, you feel like you're
23:29
Speaker 3: running from like aliens and it's super dangerous.
23:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you feel like shit.
23:34
Speaker 1: Like there.
23:34
Speaker 2: I remember I like had like a like a like
23:36
Speaker 2: a race that I likely.
23:37
Speaker 3: Qualified for when I was in I was in middle school,
23:39
Speaker 3: like you know, it's like, oh, like the regional thing.
23:41
Speaker 2: If you qualify, can.
23:42
Speaker 3: Go to the national like you know, like distance running race.
23:44
Speaker 3: And I was like, I'm gonna give myself advantage and
23:46
Speaker 3: drink a rock star in the bathroom beforehand.
23:48
Speaker 2: And I just went out there and I was just
23:49
Speaker 2: like I want to puke.
23:50
Speaker 3: Fuck this, Yeah, and I'll like go to the gym
23:53
Speaker 3: like right, after I have like a like a morning
23:55
Speaker 3: coffee or something, I'm like, h yuck.
23:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I used to take a fedron like recreationally.
24:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because I was working shitty office jobs, of course.
24:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:05
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, why not, I'll be on
24:07
Speaker 1: speed all day?
24:08
Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
24:08
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I was prescribed riddling for a while
24:10
Speaker 3: and I'd be like, well, yeah, I'm just staying in
24:12
Speaker 3: the night. Yeah, let's ride the lightning and check watch
24:14
Speaker 3: Cowboy Bebop till four.
24:16
Speaker 2: In the morning instead of two in the morning, you know.
24:18
Speaker 1: And I wonder if because the other thing that's really
24:22
Speaker 1: prevalent in baseball and always has been and probably always
24:25
Speaker 1: will be is drinking. Yeah, Like alcoholism is a huge
24:29
Speaker 1: problem in baseball. And one thing I know about abusing
24:33
Speaker 1: amphetamines or a fedron, which is basically the same thing,
24:38
Speaker 1: it makes you want to drink, Like, okay, it really
24:42
Speaker 1: because the you want to People.
24:44
Speaker 3: Say that about like cocaine, it's like it does feel
24:46
Speaker 3: better if you're drunk.
24:48
Speaker 1: Well not just that, but if you're just high on speed,
24:51
Speaker 1: how are you going to sleep? Yeah?
24:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you can't take that shit, like even riddling
24:54
Speaker 3: just like two little like very innoculous looking like white tablets.
24:57
Speaker 3: It's like, if you take those at four pm, you're fucked. Yeah,
25:00
Speaker 3: you know, you're You're have the UF til three four
25:02
Speaker 3: in the morning.
25:03
Speaker 2: You know.
25:03
Speaker 3: It's like, so if you want, if you if you do,
25:04
Speaker 3: if you've got a night game, you know, and you're like, oh, man,
25:06
Speaker 3: she just got off the god damn.
25:07
Speaker 2: Bus, I got two hours.
25:08
Speaker 3: You pop some It's like, you're not going to bed,
25:10
Speaker 3: but you know, fucking you know, just like straight, like
25:12
Speaker 3: you're just coming down off that.
25:13
Speaker 2: You got to cut it with something. You gotta smoke
25:15
Speaker 2: some pot, which you can't do.
25:16
Speaker 1: So you can't do that. You're stuck with alcohol, right,
25:18
Speaker 1: And it was to the point, I don't know if
25:21
Speaker 1: it's still this way, but a lot of Major league
25:23
Speaker 1: teams would just have beer in the locker room and
25:26
Speaker 1: they would have beer on the bus to go to
25:29
Speaker 1: the airport to fly home. Yeah, yeah, because you know, people,
25:32
Speaker 1: they players would be so wired from all these stimulants
25:36
Speaker 1: that they want to be able to sleep on the plane.
25:38
Speaker 1: But how the fuck are they going to do that? Yeah,
25:40
Speaker 1: because they're all hopped up on amphetamines. So Baseball by
25:45
Speaker 1: making their schedule the way it is which kind of
25:48
Speaker 1: necessitates amphetamines. They were kind of promoting alcoholisms. Yeah. Yeah,
25:53
Speaker 1: it's like baseball for decades as well.
25:55
Speaker 3: It's like that old Simpsons thing where it's like you know,
25:57
Speaker 3: you know, you bring in the snakes, you got to
25:58
Speaker 3: bring in the mongoose, and you gotta bring yeah, you know.
26:02
Speaker 1: So what they're doing now, like I said, is taking
26:05
Speaker 1: all these caffeine pills, all these energy drinks. And the
26:09
Speaker 1: thing about that we're in the United States, we would
26:11
Speaker 1: never hear that and go, oh, these cheating fucks taking
26:14
Speaker 1: all this caffeine because we just assume caffeine is you know,
26:20
Speaker 1: a part of everyday life that you can take as
26:22
Speaker 1: much as you want.
26:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but you I mean, I'm so many drinks
26:25
Speaker 3: a dangerous amount of caffeine at time, if you know,
26:27
Speaker 3: I got to stop.
26:28
Speaker 1: But the thing is so you would assume that would
26:31
Speaker 1: extend to sports, but it doesn't. Like in Japanese baseball,
26:35
Speaker 1: for example, if you have more than like a cup
26:40
Speaker 1: of green teas worth of caffeine in your system when
26:43
Speaker 1: they drug test you, you're considered a cheater.
26:46
Speaker 2: Interesting in the.
26:48
Speaker 1: NC DOUBLEA, all of the chemicals in energy drinks if
26:52
Speaker 1: they find any of those at too high of a
26:55
Speaker 1: level in your system, you're a cheater. Same with the Olympics.
26:58
Speaker 1: But baseball's not like that because baseball has to allow
27:03
Speaker 1: some way for players to get hopped the fuck up
27:07
Speaker 1: so they can play, yeah, because it's like they can
27:10
Speaker 1: do their schedule.
27:11
Speaker 3: It feels like a slow game, but like you got
27:12
Speaker 3: to be alert as shit, right, you know, you have
27:16
Speaker 3: to just kind of like a lot of waiting and
27:17
Speaker 3: watching and snap decisions, you know. So it's like, yeah,
27:20
Speaker 3: you want to be fucking injacked for that.
27:22
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You could still do it, but baseball
27:25
Speaker 1: already gets enough flack for being boring.
27:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
27:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, well if everyone's out there just missing
27:30
Speaker 3: shit all the time, like.
27:32
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the era they're getting into again
27:35
Speaker 1: now where hitters are just like it's a lot of
27:38
Speaker 1: ground balls. Yeah, yeah, just a lot of strikeouts. And
27:44
Speaker 1: I think it's been going in that direction ever since
27:48
Speaker 1: amphetamines were taken away from the game.
27:50
Speaker 3: But then you can't you can't cut out the games
27:52
Speaker 3: because it's like, you know, that's what it's part of
27:53
Speaker 3: the tradition.
27:54
Speaker 2: People like it.
27:54
Speaker 3: And it's also like you can't tell also the owners
27:57
Speaker 3: of the stadiums to make less money. You can't tell
27:59
Speaker 3: the advatar they're not gonna get as much exposure. You're like,
28:02
Speaker 3: it's just not gonna play like that, right.
28:03
Speaker 1: And the players make so much money. Baseball players I
28:08
Speaker 1: think are probably the highest paid athletes because those teams
28:13
Speaker 1: no shit.
28:13
Speaker 2: I would think football or basketball, Well.
28:15
Speaker 1: Think about how many games there are every year.
28:18
Speaker 2: And you get paid per game. Well, I guess I
28:20
Speaker 2: guess there'd be more ticket sales because of that.
28:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. The I mean, these even the shittiest teams just
28:24
Speaker 1: have a ton of fucking cash. Interesting, and baseball players,
28:29
Speaker 1: like they sign one hundred million dollar contracts, you know,
28:32
Speaker 1: routinely and have been like I think a Rod at
28:35
Speaker 1: one point, you got a ninety million contract back when
28:38
Speaker 1: nobody was getting money like that.
28:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's at this point they have to keep
28:46
Speaker 1: making the money they're making now to finance those contracts
28:49
Speaker 1: if nothing else. I wonder if players would be willing
28:52
Speaker 1: to take a pay cut to play fewer games.
28:55
Speaker 2: I don't know.
28:56
Speaker 3: I mean there's there's people who be like, fucking I
28:57
Speaker 3: don't care, Like I didn't get into professionals because I
29:00
Speaker 3: didn't want to like put a bunch of fucking city
29:02
Speaker 3: miles on my body. It's like, yeah, if I'm gonna
29:04
Speaker 3: do this, I might as well go whole hog, and
29:06
Speaker 3: you know, stack enough money so I don't have to
29:07
Speaker 3: work at a car dealership that has my name on
29:09
Speaker 3: the front until I die after this.
29:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, baseball kind of needs
29:14
Speaker 1: stimulants for the game to be interesting. But as for steroids,
29:19
Speaker 1: for one thing, Baseball didn't even ban steroids until nineteen
29:22
Speaker 1: ninety one. Yeah, and steroids have been around since the fifties.
29:27
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay.
29:27
Speaker 1: They the first professional sports team to use them was
29:31
Speaker 1: the sixty three San Diego Chargers. Okay, and they were
29:36
Speaker 1: really good the year they started using steroids. Yeah, but
29:39
Speaker 1: it started in the Olympics. I think Russia actually first
29:42
Speaker 1: introduced steroids.
29:43
Speaker 2: That sounds like some cold warshit, you know, yeah.
29:46
Speaker 1: Which sounds exactly like Russia. And but Baseball they didn't
29:51
Speaker 1: even ban them until nineteen ninety one. So when they
29:55
Speaker 1: try to paint the steroid era as these big meathead
29:59
Speaker 1: players coming in and tarnishing the name of baseball by
30:03
Speaker 1: bringing these new fangled steroids to the game, otherfuckers were
30:06
Speaker 1: using steroids in baseball forever. Oh yeah, they just never
30:10
Speaker 1: banned them. Yeah, it was legal, so like why wouldn't,
30:15
Speaker 1: Like amphetamines and steroids were both legal for a long
30:18
Speaker 1: time in baseball. Yeah, they banned steroids in ninety one
30:21
Speaker 1: and didn't start testing for him till the two thousands.
30:24
Speaker 2: Oh.
30:24
Speaker 3: Interesting, It was just kind of like, okay, Tex, just
30:26
Speaker 3: so you can say we didn't do it.
30:27
Speaker 2: We banned them, you know, right.
30:29
Speaker 1: So to act like like I said, to act like
30:32
Speaker 1: the problem started with Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds is crazy. Also,
30:37
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, steroids and hitting don't go hand
30:40
Speaker 1: in hand. They're not steroids.
30:43
Speaker 3: What's like, Yeah, it's like a more of a finetic steroids.
30:46
Speaker 3: Playing football, it's like, yeah, you can run into a
30:48
Speaker 3: guy harder, you know, not that there's not more finesse
30:50
Speaker 3: needed in football, but it's like that you can see
30:52
Speaker 3: a direct correlation to level of performance with that shit,
30:55
Speaker 3: where it's like with like basketball, it's like that there's
30:58
Speaker 3: not a pill you can take that I'm you a
31:00
Speaker 3: good shooter, you know, right.
31:02
Speaker 1: And the thing about steroids, you.
31:04
Speaker 2: Gotta get some of that bugs bunny water.
31:05
Speaker 1: The the thing about steroids what they do is they
31:09
Speaker 1: help your muscles recover faster.
31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can work out more, you know. Right.
31:13
Speaker 3: I had friends that like would like do like took
31:15
Speaker 3: topical steroids when we were all in high school. They're
31:17
Speaker 3: all like like eroid vault kids where they're just like, yo, yeah,
31:20
Speaker 3: we're gonna make get high on nutmeg, you know. So
31:22
Speaker 3: they yeah, they took like topical steroids. And he was
31:24
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, I'm just not really doing anything. It
31:26
Speaker 3: was like, well, yeah, that's supposed to be speaking work
31:27
Speaker 3: out yeah more, And it's like all it did was
31:30
Speaker 3: give you like a fucking pizza face and shrink your balls.
31:32
Speaker 3: Like he showed me his balls one time and it
31:34
Speaker 3: was like like a big grape, but not like a
31:36
Speaker 3: very big grape. And I was like, dude, this is
31:38
Speaker 3: not worth it.
31:39
Speaker 2: Man.
31:39
Speaker 1: You have to work out for that chick.
31:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you and you also you could just had
31:42
Speaker 3: lizard face, you know. And he's just like, I'm just
31:44
Speaker 3: doing a short cycle and I'll just maintain. And I'm like,
31:47
Speaker 3: the fucking you just eat a little Caesar's pizza and
31:48
Speaker 3: you go to the gym three times a week.
31:50
Speaker 1: It's not And the position in baseball that steroids do
31:54
Speaker 1: help a lot, is pictures. Because if you've ever'.
31:59
Speaker 2: You' probably get the most strenuous job in baseball. You know.
32:01
Speaker 1: Yeah I pitched when I played baseball, and after pitching
32:06
Speaker 1: an entire game or just a few innings, your arm
32:09
Speaker 1: burns for the entire next day because, like believe it
32:14
Speaker 1: or not, those fast pitch softball women in college actually
32:19
Speaker 1: have the right idea because that is the natural motion
32:22
Speaker 1: of your arm. So the way they throw a ball,
32:24
Speaker 1: which is this like really fast underhand motion, that's how
32:29
Speaker 1: your arm is supposed to move. It's not supposed to
32:32
Speaker 1: move like it does when you throw a baseball, and
32:35
Speaker 1: it just wears your muscles, especially your muscles in that arm.
32:38
Speaker 2: Yeah fuck out, Oh totally yeah.
32:40
Speaker 3: And it's like, think about do something as hard as
32:42
Speaker 3: you can, you know, like something physical as hard as
32:44
Speaker 3: you can, and then do that what two hundred times
32:47
Speaker 3: night sometimes or whatever. It's like that's a lot, you know.
32:50
Speaker 3: And then also add in like the little like finesse movements.
32:52
Speaker 3: You gotta do these weird little like fucking rotary cuff
32:55
Speaker 3: like you know, like the articulations. And it's like it's
32:58
Speaker 3: like when you when you work out and differ. It's
33:00
Speaker 3: like I didn't know I had that group to be sore.
33:02
Speaker 3: It's like just doing that every single day, you know,
33:05
Speaker 3: the one hundred and eighty times or whatever it is
33:06
Speaker 3: a season, it's like it's going to fuck you up.
33:08
Speaker 1: And here's a thing that doesn't come up a lot
33:11
Speaker 1: in relation to steroids and baseball, because no one ever
33:14
Speaker 1: talks about pitchers and steroids. As a kid, I watched
33:18
Speaker 1: a ton of baseball, and I never remember pitch count
33:22
Speaker 1: being a thing. I remember them letting pitchers go until whatever.
33:27
Speaker 1: Man you know, they're starting to fucking hit the ball.
33:30
Speaker 1: Now we need to bring in a relief pitcher. But
33:33
Speaker 1: I never remember managers making a big deal out of
33:37
Speaker 1: when a pitcher hits one hundred pitches, But now they do.
33:41
Speaker 1: Once a pitcher hits a hundred pitches, unless he's like
33:44
Speaker 1: throwing a no hitter or a perfect game or is
33:47
Speaker 1: just cruising, they usually pull him. And I have to
33:52
Speaker 1: kind of wonder, is that because there used to be
33:55
Speaker 1: a time where you could really max your arm the
33:57
Speaker 1: fuck out in a game, but you knew you were
34:00
Speaker 1: on steroids, so they would recover a little bit faster
34:03
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter.
34:04
Speaker 2: And now it's like okay, like, yeah, we can't fucking
34:06
Speaker 2: we're playing on you know, the bodies like base specs.
34:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now no steroids, you're not going to recover
34:11
Speaker 1: as fast one hundred pitches for you, that seems suspect
34:16
Speaker 1: if nothing else. So yeah, it shouldn't surprise anyone. At
34:20
Speaker 1: the time I wrote this Cracked article, most of the
34:24
Speaker 1: majority of the steroid suspensions in baseball among the different positions,
34:30
Speaker 1: pitcher had the most steroid suspensions.
34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine, and.
34:34
Speaker 1: The closest group behind them was outfielder. But that actually
34:38
Speaker 1: covers three positions. Yeah, that's middle, right, and centerfielder. But
34:42
Speaker 1: pitcher still had the most. And when they finally banned steroids,
34:47
Speaker 1: you would expect home runs would have gone down and
34:50
Speaker 1: just kind of stayed down. The year they banned steroids,
34:54
Speaker 1: home runs went down a little bit across the league average,
34:58
Speaker 1: and then went right back up the next year, which
35:02
Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened if like they kind of returned to
35:05
Speaker 1: the pre steroid testing numbers, which that shouldn't happen if
35:10
Speaker 1: steroids were that big of a deal.
35:13
Speaker 2: So that is, Oh, I see the connection you're drawing that.
35:17
Speaker 2: It's more the methemic.
35:18
Speaker 3: The methamphetamine then would be like the steroids for home
35:20
Speaker 3: run stuff.
35:22
Speaker 1: Well yeah, And also in two thousand and five, pitchers
35:26
Speaker 1: couldn't take steroids anymore, so that's why the home runs
35:30
Speaker 1: briefly dropped. Among the few people that steroids were benefiting
35:34
Speaker 1: when it comes to home runs, which were still the
35:36
Speaker 1: players with the best hand eye coordination that could hit,
35:40
Speaker 1: you know better, It was just that, you know, having
35:42
Speaker 1: bigger arms, you can hit the ball a little further.
35:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
35:45
Speaker 1: Another really interesting aspect of this, they ban steroids in
35:49
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and there's all this fanfare around it,
35:54
Speaker 1: and then the next year they really quietly ban amphetamines,
35:58
Speaker 1: like no one ever talked about m FETA means in baseball,
36:01
Speaker 1: but they finally banned them in two thousand and six.
36:04
Speaker 1: And one of the most interesting after effects of that
36:08
Speaker 1: is the perfect game, which perfect games is a perfect
36:12
Speaker 1: game anyone listening who isn't familiar, is when a pitcher
36:17
Speaker 1: there's no hits, no runs, no errors, he just gets
36:20
Speaker 1: twenty seven people out in a row. And that boring
36:23
Speaker 1: shit is called a perfect game in baseball. And those
36:28
Speaker 1: prior to two thousand and six were really rare. There
36:31
Speaker 1: were I think seventeen, and those seventeen happened between something
36:37
Speaker 1: like eighteen eighty four in two thousand and six, so
36:40
Speaker 1: they were happening like every ten to fifteen years after
36:44
Speaker 1: amphetamines were kicked out of baseball. Between two thousand and six,
36:49
Speaker 1: and when I wrote that article, which was twenty thirteen,
36:52
Speaker 1: there were six perfect games.
36:53
Speaker 2: Oh so the ratio is way up.
36:55
Speaker 1: So they went way up because interesting, all of a sudden,
36:58
Speaker 1: players didn't have that boost to get them through the day.
37:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, And coincidental.
37:07
Speaker 2: Was trying to shake off what he did at the
37:08
Speaker 2: bar in Cleveland.
37:09
Speaker 1: Right, and coincidentally the incidents of attention deficit disorder among
37:16
Speaker 1: baseball players, Oh hell yeah, compared to the rest of
37:20
Speaker 1: the world.
37:21
Speaker 2: Like like we all found overnight.
37:24
Speaker 1: Everyone was like, oh shit.
37:25
Speaker 3: I mean, you know what, I have a learning disability
37:28
Speaker 3: and that's really important in my career as a guy
37:30
Speaker 3: who runs for twenty at a time.
37:34
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened, and it was, you know,
37:37
Speaker 1: players started getting prescriptions for that. If they couldn't get prescriptions,
37:41
Speaker 1: they would get the pills from their teammates. But overall,
37:45
Speaker 1: amphetamines became less common and became less easy to find,
37:49
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, perfect games go way up.
37:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how fucking completely tracks. Yeah, you have some
37:55
Speaker 3: real freakonomic shit there.
37:57
Speaker 1: But it the other there's a really interesting article on
38:03
Speaker 1: this is where I get into the conspiracy part of
38:06
Speaker 1: it for real. There's a dead Spin article that questions
38:10
Speaker 1: if the home run era or the steroid era was
38:14
Speaker 1: actually just a juiced ball era. And if you're not
38:18
Speaker 1: familiar with that term, one of the reasons people wanted
38:22
Speaker 1: to put an asterisk on Hank Aaron's home run record
38:25
Speaker 1: when he broke Babe Ruth's record, which was seven fourteen
38:30
Speaker 1: I believe was because Babe Ruth played a lot of
38:33
Speaker 1: his career during the dead ball era, which is when
38:37
Speaker 1: baseball had decided there were too many home runs and
38:40
Speaker 1: they needed to make it more fair for pitchers. So
38:42
Speaker 1: they started making the ball in a way that literally
38:45
Speaker 1: made it so when you hit it, it doesn't go as far.
38:48
Speaker 1: But then sometimes they do that to cause home runs too,
38:52
Speaker 1: because sometimes baseball needs a lot of home runs and
38:55
Speaker 1: a lot of action to seem more exciting.
38:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can kind of make the ball, like,
38:59
Speaker 3: you know, more better projectile.
39:01
Speaker 1: Right, and there is a really strong argument that all
39:07
Speaker 1: of those home runs we saw in the steroid era
39:10
Speaker 1: were actually a juiced ball era. So it was interesting
39:15
Speaker 1: baseball because the thing is baseball. At the time when
39:20
Speaker 1: Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa started competing for Roger Merris's
39:24
Speaker 1: home run record, for one thing, up to that point,
39:27
Speaker 1: baseball players were hitting like forty five fifty home runs
39:30
Speaker 1: a year at the high end of things. I think
39:32
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds had topped out at like fifty two at
39:35
Speaker 1: one point before that, and then all of a sudden,
39:38
Speaker 1: Sosa hit sixty six, McGuire hit seventy, and some of
39:44
Speaker 1: that is going to be, you know, might be the
39:46
Speaker 1: steroid era, because baseball, like home runs did go up
39:50
Speaker 1: a little bit in what is actually considered the steroid era.
39:55
Speaker 1: But what if baseball at that point was like, Okay,
40:00
Speaker 1: someone is going to break Pank Aaron's record. Yeah, and
40:04
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be Barry Bonds.
40:07
Speaker 3: What if we do what if we get someone who's
40:09
Speaker 3: gonna be a better kind of you know, face for it.
40:11
Speaker 1: Right, And so they juice the baseball. So now home
40:16
Speaker 1: runs which have been at forty five to fifty, possibly
40:19
Speaker 1: because of steroids. Yeah, like Jose canseeko argue, and I'm
40:22
Speaker 1: not discounting that steroids do help if you have gigantic arms.
40:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and recovery. You know, in between, you're gonna
40:29
Speaker 3: better to hit the ball.
40:31
Speaker 1: But if you were a home run hitter before, you're
40:33
Speaker 1: probably going to hit home runs. And then if baseball
40:36
Speaker 1: also throws a juiced ball into that and now you're
40:40
Speaker 1: hitting sixty seventy home runs a year, they know, all
40:45
Speaker 1: of that is like all of the drugs in baseball
40:47
Speaker 1: they knew were a problem that needed to be cleaned up,
40:50
Speaker 1: but steroids were such a new problem.
40:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's kind of a sexier problem, you know,
40:55
Speaker 3: because it was to the layman. You're like, oh, well,
40:57
Speaker 3: he's stronger, he's going to be better. You know, you
41:00
Speaker 3: don't think of it. He's more focused, he's going to
41:02
Speaker 3: be better.
41:02
Speaker 1: And it's a sexier problem and also one that ostensibly
41:07
Speaker 1: isn't going to tarnish the name of Babe Ruth and
41:10
Speaker 1: Joe DiMaggio and Roger Marris and all these people who
41:13
Speaker 1: played in the pre steroid era or even like you know,
41:16
Speaker 1: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron who were playing in
41:21
Speaker 1: when there were probably steroids in baseball, but they just
41:24
Speaker 1: weren't that big of a deal, so no one talked
41:26
Speaker 1: about it. So by focusing on steroids when they did,
41:30
Speaker 1: it allowed them to still kind of romanticize that whole
41:34
Speaker 1: past history of baseball as if it was just this
41:37
Speaker 1: kind of pure, clean thing that deserves no tarnish to
41:41
Speaker 1: its name at all, when really there was this amphetamine
41:44
Speaker 1: thing happening for sixty or seventy years. And if you're baseball,
41:49
Speaker 1: which of those two do you want to be the
41:51
Speaker 1: bigger deal?
41:51
Speaker 3: Absolutely like you much rather people to be like, oh,
41:54
Speaker 3: the last decade was a liar, Like this entire game
41:57
Speaker 3: is a lie.
41:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that I think baseball knew that
42:00
Speaker 1: was kind of the problem they were facing when performance
42:03
Speaker 1: enhancing drugs became a thing. So if you just put
42:07
Speaker 1: the juiced ball in there and all of a sudden
42:09
Speaker 1: home runs go from you know, forty five fifty a
42:13
Speaker 1: year at the high end to sixty and seventy, you
42:15
Speaker 1: can go, what the fuck is going on?
42:17
Speaker 2: Yeah?
42:18
Speaker 1: For one thing, thank you, this is great for the game.
42:21
Speaker 1: We appreciate all the home runs, but also in a
42:23
Speaker 1: few years we're going to crack down on steroids and
42:26
Speaker 1: then really quietly, we're going to end amphetamines too, just
42:30
Speaker 1: so we get rid of all our scandals, but we
42:32
Speaker 1: can look like we did it in an ethical way.
42:36
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's kind of what happened. I
42:39
Speaker 1: feel like Baseball was covering for their amphetamine era, But
42:43
Speaker 1: I also kind of feel like they wanted to discredit
42:46
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds. Absolutely, Yeah, because once without, even without steroids,
42:52
Speaker 1: Barry Bonds was gonna break the home run record if
42:55
Speaker 1: he kept at the clip he was going, which was,
42:58
Speaker 1: you know, forty to fifty home runs a year. He
43:01
Speaker 1: broke the record even though there's an entire season near
43:04
Speaker 1: the end of his career where he didn't play at all. Yeah,
43:06
Speaker 1: So you take all of those like it would have
43:09
Speaker 1: averaged out. There would have been no suspensions, there would
43:12
Speaker 1: have been no cloud over his name, like you would
43:15
Speaker 1: have just had to admit that one of the most
43:17
Speaker 1: dislikable players in baseball history was also the best player
43:23
Speaker 1: in baseball history. And even if that wasn't the main intent,
43:27
Speaker 1: I feel like Baseball probably at some point recognized steroids
43:32
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to not have to praise Barry Bonds
43:36
Speaker 1: the way he deserves, which is a shame. Like if
43:40
Speaker 1: I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame a couple
43:42
Speaker 1: of years ago, which I had been dreaming about that
43:45
Speaker 1: my entire life, and man, was it born. Oh, it's
43:49
Speaker 1: in the middle of It's in Cooperstown, New York. I
43:51
Speaker 1: don't know what the fuck I expected. Cooperstown, New York.
43:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like, hey, this is the gas station, but
43:57
Speaker 3: Baseball Hall of Fame.
43:58
Speaker 1: It is the town own embodiment of a dude named Cooper.
44:03
Speaker 1: It's that interesting. And it's just this like quiet, dank museum.
44:07
Speaker 1: And then in the basement, Barry Bonds just has one
44:11
Speaker 1: little wall dedicated to him breaking the home run record,
44:15
Speaker 1: and every like every other major record has like its
44:18
Speaker 1: own rooms, all this fucking pageantry, and they're just like,
44:25
Speaker 1: fucking yeah, Barry.
44:26
Speaker 2: Bonds too, display Bonds.
44:30
Speaker 1: And I think that's what Baseball wants when it comes
44:34
Speaker 1: to paying tribute to Barry Bonds. And I think it's
44:37
Speaker 1: what they probably always wanted. And I think steroids. I
44:40
Speaker 1: think they knew it was an issue they were going
44:42
Speaker 1: to have to confront, and I think steroids gave them
44:45
Speaker 1: a good cover to do that and to clean up
44:49
Speaker 1: amphetamines without looking like a sport that's been dirty from
44:52
Speaker 1: the beginning.
44:53
Speaker 2: Yep, I think you're right, man. That all tracks to me.
44:56
Speaker 1: There's I don't know, Like here's the thing. I know,
44:59
Speaker 1: I can can't prove it, and I don't even know
45:01
Speaker 1: if I care enough. Yeah, like to like go and
45:03
Speaker 1: be should dedicate four years to a documentary about to
45:06
Speaker 1: be the Brokovich of this. Yeah, I should really dig in.
45:09
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, it's still baseball. I still want to
45:10
Speaker 1: go to all the stadiums before I die.
45:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like you don't want to fuck up your
45:14
Speaker 3: this thing you also enjoy, you know. It's like it's
45:16
Speaker 3: at the end of the day whatever.
45:17
Speaker 1: I like watching it, you know, and like if they
45:19
Speaker 1: got away with it, cool, it's a neat conspiracy.
45:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck it. You know. It's a good couple of
45:23
Speaker 2: clicks for your boy, you know.
45:25
Speaker 1: So Yeah, that's that's my that's my Berry Bonds conspiracy.
45:30
Speaker 3: Well done to kick off sports months, well synthesized. That's
45:33
Speaker 3: there's a lot of there's a lot of correlation causality.
45:36
Speaker 3: I think you've teased out pretty nicely where it's like, okay,
45:38
Speaker 3: everything's kind of got got a little explanation.
45:40
Speaker 1: It is one where I'd almost have to put up
45:42
Speaker 1: a conspiracy board, and it certainly it's.
45:44
Speaker 2: A thumb tack kind of one.
45:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would. It would be interesting to like.
45:49
Speaker 2: I don't try to try to find someone to talk
45:50
Speaker 2: to you off record.
45:51
Speaker 1: About it, you know, records or something like. There has
45:54
Speaker 1: to be like leaked memos I could get my hands on.
45:58
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, I mean it's like, you know,
46:01
Speaker 3: if you get one person to crack, you could probably
46:03
Speaker 3: you know.
46:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, that's that's that's the conspiracy. What do
46:10
Speaker 1: we have to plug before we get out of here?
46:12
Speaker 3: We're going going up to the Pacific Northwest in August.
46:15
Speaker 3: Get on our armiways, email us a Mean Boys podcast
46:17
Speaker 3: dot com if you want to come see us.
46:19
Speaker 2: That'll be fun.
46:20
Speaker 1: Nice uh, Patreon dot com, slash on pops, sign up
46:24
Speaker 1: for more podcasts, or to just uh you know, show
46:28
Speaker 1: some support, keep the lights on, things of that nature.
46:30
Speaker 1: We just moved. I had to build a new studios.
46:32
Speaker 1: Not cheap.
46:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, got pimpleicious new studio here. It doesn't pay for itself, guys, come.
46:37
Speaker 1: On, damn right, uh And I think that's it all right,
46:40
Speaker 1: Let's get the fuck out here, Connor.
46:42
Speaker 2: Say goodbye, goodbye everybody, goodbye everybody.
46:44
Speaker 1: We love you. Yeah, people, you can s