EVERYONE'S JUICING
Let's discuss the worst excuses for getting caught using PEDs
Dec 2, 2020, 11:55 am
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.
Texans' CB Bradley Roby announced he also is being suspended six games. pic.twitter.com/pNcNC8otAU
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 1, 2020
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.
Texans WR Will Fuller announced on Instagram that he has been suspended by the NFL for violating the league's performance enhancing substances policy: pic.twitter.com/7UXk0A4cCd
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 30, 2020
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).
With overnight temperatures dipping into the 20s this week in Houston, it seems good timing to have the warm thoughts of baseball being back, at least spring training games. The Astros have more shakiness about their squad than they have had in nearly a decade, but the Astros still have a nucleus of an American League West contender. With the exits of Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, it’s just a notably different nucleus than in recent years.
Jose Altuve is the last remaining mainstay of the greatest era in Astros’ history, and he is one of the biggest stories of their preseason as he for the time being at least is left fielder Jose Altuve. By every indication he is embracing the challenge with class and energy. The obvious impetus for test driving the move is the soon-to-be 35 years old Altuve’s defensive deterioration. It can be tough for the player himself to notice that his range has declined. The voiding of defensive shifts after the 2022 season shined a brighter light on Altuve’s D decline. Still, last season Altuve made his ninth All-Star team and despite also displaying some offensive decline remained the clearly best offensive second baseman in the American League. It’s part of the tradeoff of reducing the defensive workload on Yordan Alvarez, and hoping to upgrade defensively at second with some combo of Mauricio Dubon, Brendan Rodgers, or other.
The natural comparison in Astros’ history of a franchise icon losing his defensive spot and making a late-career position change is to Craig Biggio. Biggio’s All-Star days were behind him when the Astros moved him from second base to center field for the 2003 season because of the signing of free agent Jeff Kent. It spoke to the athlete Biggio was that at 37 years old he could make the move at all. After not quite a season and a half in center, Biggio moved to left when the Astros traded for young stud center fielder Carlos Beltran. Both Kent and Beltran left in free agency after the 2004 season, and Biggio moved back to second for the final three seasons of his career.
Second basemen are often second basemen and not shortstops in part because of their throwing arms. Altuve’s throwing arm will be an issue in left field. Even though Daikin Park has the smallest square footage of fair territory in Major League Baseball because of its left to left-center field dimensions, Altuve’s arm will be a liability. In understandably wanting to put an optimistic spin on things, manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown have talked of how Altuve will be able to get momentum behind throws more so than when playing second. That’s true when camping under a fly ball in the outfield. That is not true when Altuve will have to cut off balls hit toward the left field line, or cutting across into the left-center field gap. There will be balls that would be singles when hit to other left fielders that will become doubles when Altuve has to play them, and baserunners will go from first to third and second to home much more readily. As an infielder Altuve has always been outstanding at running down pop-ups, so there is reason to believe he’ll be solid tracking fly balls in the outfield. However, the reality of a guy who is five feet six inches tall (in spikes) is that there will be the occasional fly ball or line drive that is beyond his grasp that more “normal” sized outfielders would grab. Try to name a good outfielder who stood shorter than five-foot-nine...
Here’s one: Hall of Famer Tim Raines (also originally a second baseman) was (and presumably still is!) five-foot-eight.
Here's another: Hall of Famer Hack Wilson was five-six. Four times he led the National League in home runs topped by a whopping 56 in 1930 when he set the still standing record of 191 runs batted in for a single season.
And another: Hall of Famer five-foot-four “Wee” Willie Keeler. Who last played in 1910.
Just a bit outside
Another element new to the Grapefruit League in Florida (and Cactus League in Arizona) this year is the limited use of what Major League Baseball is calling the Automated Ball Strike System. The ABS is likely coming to regular season games next year. This spring will be our first look at its use in big league games. Home plate umpires making ball and strike calls will not be going the way of the dinosaur. Challenges can be made until a team is wrong twice. Significantly, only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge and must do so within two seconds of the pitch being caught. No dugout input allowed. No time to watch a replay.
The Astros’ spring park in West Palm Beach is not among the 13 facilities set up with ABS cameras. That seems silly given that the Astros share the place with the Washington Nationals. More use would be gotten from, and more data collected there than will be from a park with half the spring games played in it.
The countdown to Opening Day is on. Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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