EVERYONE'S JUICING

Let's discuss the worst excuses for getting caught using PEDs

Let's discuss the worst excuses for getting caught using PEDs
Everyone else is doing it! Composite image by Jack Brame.
How a simple adjustment will allow the Texans to get the most out of Will Fuller

Can a professional athlete come up with a worse excuse for getting caught using performance-enhancing drugs than blaming it on a doctor?

Fans would have more respect for a player if he said the dog ate his urine test results.

Texans wide receiver Will Fuller V (as in I'm taking the Fifth) and cornerback Bradley Roby have been suspended after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Both will sit out for the remaining five games of the 2020 season, plus the first game of the 2021 season.

There were many questions about Fuller heading into Year 5 of his NFL career. Up until 2020, his tenure in the NFL has been plagued with injuries, and some Texans fans clamored for him to be swapped before the 2020 trade deadline. Fuller was having his best season, and the Texans decided to keep him. In fact, Deshaun Watson said the team would've revolted if Fuller had been moved. In 11 games, Fuller has 53 receptions for 879 yards and eight touchdowns.

I'm going to cut Bradley Roby some slack because he took ownership for using a banned substance. He made it clear that it was his responsibility to know what is on the NFL's list of banned PEDs. He will probably have that list taped on his fridge the rest of his NFL career.

Fuller took a different approach, one that unfortunately resembles many other famous athletes' excuses for getting caught with PEDs; Blame a medical professional. Or somebody, anybody else.

Whether Fuller and Roby were receiving treatment from the same medical professional is unknown. More important, it's irrelevant. In 2020, how could athletes possibly blame a medical professional when a list of banned substances is hanging on the wall in every team's training room?

The answer is they shouldn't. Let's take a look at athletes with the worst excuses for juicing. Specifically for getting caught juicing.

Rafael Palmeiro (MLB) - Other than a physician or trainer, the only person more improbable to blame for a positive steroid test is your own teammate. When Palmeiro tested positive in 2005, he blamed a supposed B-12 shot (it wasn't B-12) administered by Baltimore Orioles Miguel Tejada.

Brian Cushing (NFL) - Cushing played his entire NFL career with the Houston Texans. Cushing's first positive test came in 2009. He had abnormally high levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, a human growth hormone that typically shows up in pregnant women. He later changed his excuse to "overtraining." He has since claimed the positive test was a result of a cancerous tumor. He tested positive for PEDs again in 2017.

Maria Sharapova (Tennis) - Sharapova claimed she never read an email which listed the banned substance, meldonium, she was caught taking.

Barry Bonds (MLB) - When Bonds tested positive for PEDs in 2000 and 2001, he put all of the blame on San Francisco Giants trainer Greg Anderson. Bonds said Anderson told him that he was using flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is not typically injected, and certainly doesn't lead to your hat size growing.

Lance Armstrong (Cycling) - Armstrong, after years of denial, admitted he used performance-enhancing drugs on an Opera Winfrey prime time special. His excuse? Every other cyclist was doing it. Oprah did not ask him if he would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if the others did. How could anybody win seven Tour de France titles after surviving testicular cancer? They might as well have renamed the race Tour De Lance. His sad saga ended with him being stripped of his seven titles and banned for life.

Melky Cabrera (MLB) - Cabrera tested positive while playing for the San Francisco Giants in 2012. After his positive test, he paid a patsy $10,000 to create a fake website that sold fake products to try and fake his innocence. The FBI busted him and he served a real suspension.

LaShawn Merritt (Track & Field) - The famed American sprinter blamed his third positive steroid test on a testicular enlargement supplement called Extenze.

Petr Korda (Tennis) - Korda stated that his love for veal was the reason he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone. He went further saying he liked veal even more when the calf was injected with steroids. A scientist testified Korda would have to eat 40 calves every day for 20 years to equal the amount of nandrolone discovered in his system. Sounds like the Ivan Drago diet (from the first fight, when he killed Apollo Creed).

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The Royals beat the Astros 2-0. Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images.

Michael Wacha scattered four hits over six innings, Vinnie Pasquantino homered and the Kansas City Royals beat the Houston Astros 2-0 for the second straight night Saturday to run their winning streak to six.

Wacha (1-3) once again received little run support, but the veteran right-hander made the meager production stand up on chilly evening at Kauffman Stadium. He struck out six while walking two and never allowed a runner past second base.

Steven Cruz worked the seventh for Kansas City, his seventh appearance this season without allowing a run. John Schreiber left runners on the corners in the eighth, and Carlos Estévez had a perfect ninth for his seventh save.

Bobby Witt Jr. doubled and scored in the first inning for the Royals, extending his career-best hitting streak to 18 games.

Framber Valdez (1-3) gave up a sacrifice fly to Mark Canha in the first inning and Pasquantino's shot down the right-field line in the fifth. Otherwise, the Astros left-hander kept Kansas City in check, allowing three hits and two walks over eight innings.

Valdez had tossed seven shutout innings against the Royals last August in a 3-2 victory.

The Astros, who have lost five straight at the K, have managed just nine hits while getting shut out over the first two games of the series. They had rolled into Kansas City having won three straight and five of their last six games.

Key moment

Isaac Parades hit a two-out double and Jeremy Peña followed with a single to give Houston runners on the corners in the eighth inning. Schreiber bounced back to strike out Christian Walker with a four-seam fastball to end the threat.

Key stat

The Royals have only scored seven runs in the 32 innings that Wacha has pitched this season.

Up next

RHP Hunter Brown (3-1, 1.16) tries to extend a 24-inning scoreless streak for Houston in the series finale Sunday. LHP Kris Bubic (2-1, 1.45) gets the start for Kansas City after tossing seven shutout innings against the Rockies his last time out.

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