By
Travis Waldron
The headline news from 60 Minutes interview with Anthony Bosch, the
crank doctor at the center of the Biogenesis drug scandal that enveloped
Major League Baseball throughout 2013, is easy to spot: Bosch claims he
supplied New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who Saturday
was handed the longest drug-related suspension in baseball history, with
performance enhancing drugs like human growth hormone, insulin growth
factor-1, and testosterone. Sometimes, Bosch even personally injected
Rodriguez, and he did it all in exchange for $12,000 a month...
Start with the fact that Bosch provided details that, if true, aren’t
just damning for Rodriguez but for the entire testing regime Major
League Baseball has in place. Bosch claims that he began providing
Rodriguez with banned drugs in 2010, two-and-a-half years before the
Yankee star was implicated as part of the Biogenesis scandal. During
that time, Bosch says, Rodriguez passed no less than a dozen
MLB-required drug tests. How easy were the tests to beat? Bosch said he
gave Rodriguez one product, a testosterone “gummy,” that could be
ingested before a game, improve Rodriguez’s performance, and be out of
his system by the time he returned to the locker room nine innings
later. Whether Bosch is being completely truthful about the drugs he
gave Rodriguez or their effect, this much is clear: Rodriguez never
failed a test. So either he didn’t take the drugs, as he asserts, or the
tests failed to catch him.
[60 Minutes] could have followed up that information by asking Bosch and,
more importantly, Selig and other MLB officials a simple question: if
it’s that easy to beat tests, how can we possibly know how many players
are using without getting caught? In other words, how do we know
baseball’s testing system is effective at all?
Continue Reading...
Republicans remind Hank Aaron of racists who threatened his life during home run pursuit (via Raw Story )
