Do PEDs actually help?
February 13th, 2008 by Cliffy
Do PEDs actually help and/or are they “bad” for the athletes who take them? Two articles which discuss this:
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spdoctors0213,0,551092.story
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/
The second article is far longer than the first - but they discuss the same basic theory: Perhaps athletes are taking nothing more than placebos when they take PEDs and/or HGH.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Yikes, that second one is LOOOOOONG - i’ll have to print that out and read it on the throne…
IMO, it does help. However, for the sake of argument, let’s say it doesn’t. I maintain that, while PED might not enhance performance, at the very least it maintains performance.
To wit - PED may (or may not) allow a batter to hit the ball 20 feet further or a pitcher throw 5 PMH faster, but by all accounts I’ve read, it appears to allow quicker recovery time, etc.
So, perhaps steroids did not help bonds hit all those HR directly, but IMO it did allow him to seemingly avoid the drop off that happens to most 40+ year olds throughout ML history…
To sum up, PED does inflate numbers - not directly perhaps, but indirectly in that it can help inhibit/eliminate the drop off that most players suffer as time goes off
February 13th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Print out and read the long one next chance you get in the Loo. It addresses the “quicker recovery time” question.