The Weak In Rock

According to this article at ESPN Washington University psychology researchers recently put Albert Pujols through a battery of tests once given to Babe Ruth 85 years ago to measure his reflexes, eyesight and a bunch of other things.  The original tests were designed to try to determine why the Bambino was so great at baseball and concluded that he had a wide range of abilities that were far superior to most people.

The results of the test on Pujols show that he, like the Babe, is no mere mortal.  What no one is talking about (yet) is that these tests also show that what counts for a baseball player isn’t brawn, but a very finely tuned neurological system that helps him see the ball, keep track of the action on the field, read the spin of a ball and react with a coordinated response.  Sure, it doesn’t hurt if you’re as strong as an ox, but if you don’t have such a fine-tuned neurological system being The Hulk isn’t going to help you much.

The more I think about it the less I care about performance enhancing drugs.  I don’t care if Floyd Landis was using artificial testosterone to help him recover from long rides faster, I don’t care if Barry Bonds crammed the clean, the clear and the kitchen sink up his ass and I don’t care if Marion Jones gobbles HGH by the bucketful.  I don’t care because it really doesn’t matter.  Being a great athlete has so much more to do with the composition of your mind than it does the composition of your muscle fibers that it really doesn’t matter how artificially bulked any of these folks are.

That’s one reason.  The other is that it’s beyond stupid and naive for any sport, whether it’s cycling, track and field, baseball or curling to think that any one competitor has managed to develop some sort of scientific edge over anyone else.  For two years sports writers (note: I didn’t say the public because the fans don’t give two shits about this, only the balding, pot-bellied whiners who write about sports for a living and a bunch of grandstanding jackasses in Washington actually think this is important) have been bitching about how unfair baseball is in the steroid era.  That is they were bitching about that when their argument was that hitters on performance enhancing drugs where outmatching the poor defenseless pitchers.  *bzzzzzzzt* WRONG.  Then the Jason Grimsley story broke and it became obvious, even to a dimwitted sportswriter, that pitchers were just as juiced, if not more, than the hitters.  And what does that make, friends?  A level playing field.

Likewise, anyone who thinks that Floyd Landis was the only cyclist in the Tour de France using performance enhancing drugs is, well, a nitwit.  If it were otherwise then Floyd would have left the peloton in the dust, which he did not.  In fact the second-place finisher in the Tour was only a minute behind after the final time trial.  A little application of logic and you have to come to the conclusion that if not every cyclist in the Tour all but a few is using some form of performance enhancing drugs to allow their bodies to recover more effectively between stages.

My hunch is that all of this wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth about athletic drug use is really just the same nitwittery that fuels the battle against recreational drugs.  In spite of the fact that we westerners love our drugs (just look at the fortunes being made by the makers of everything from aspirin to zoloft and you know that western culture is pretty much running on drugs) our professional pontificators and puffed up politicians are on and have been on an anti-drug crusade for the past 50 years or more.  And the story is always the same - we’ve got to stop these drugs to protect our children.  Won’t someone please think of the children.

Ok, here’s my thoughts on the children - they’re going to do what they want regardless of what we say.  In fact, the more restrictive we are and the more forbidden the drug the more attractive it is to kids who are trying to define their identities as separate from their parents, teachers, coaches and other elders.  Instead of shaking our fingers at kids and telling them “drugs are bad” whether we’re talking about pot or HGH just give them the facts and let them make up their own minds.  Sure, give them your opinion but don’t turn drugs into a shortcut for defining themselves as individuals by demonizing them.

As for adults - so long as they’re not driving a car, flying a plane or operating a crane lift under the influence then let ‘em alone.  Likewise for athletes.  Unless you want to tell me that you don’t find feats of strength exciting let them gobble all the roids they can handle.  And once again, make sure this stuff is out in the open so that athletes can make educated and intelligent decisions about whether or not they want to deal with the consequences of using steroids, HGH or whatnot now on their future lives.

At the very least the sportswriters of America need to find something more interesting to write about.  And in the interest of them knocking off this business about being so excited about tearing athletes down I think there ought to be a physical fitness standard for sports hacks.  Maybe that would weed out the bitter old jerks who quite openly hate the sports and the athletes they write about.

Technorati Tags: Washington University, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, performance enhancing drugs, Floyd Landis, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, HGH

We have plenty of these in the US, and if you have any European friends you’ve no doubt been lectured once or twice (or thirty times) about how awful the racism of America is. So, it’s actually somewhat refreshing to be reminded that some of the biggest racist nitwits in the world live in Europe.

Case in point - Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen is a fixture in French politics as the leader of the right wing, fascist-tinged National Front party. In 2002 he ended up in a run-off with Jacques Chirac for the Presidency of France, which tells you a little bit about how broad-minded the French polity is. They ended up choosing a President who comes from the businessman’s section of the right-wing over someone who comes from the ignorant and unschooled day-laborer section of the right wing.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s (and right here I have to point out that for a guy who talks so tough he sure has a girly first name) latest attempt to draw attention to himself came prior to the French team’s victory over Brazil in their quarterfinal match of the 2006 World Cup. Le Pen was recycling comments he’d made in 1998 after France won the championship that the French people really cannot rejoice in their team’s victories because there are too many black players on the squad.

I’ll stop here and let you ruminate over that for a second.

Now I will repeat his assertion - because there are quite a few black players on the French team it is difficult for French people to be truly proud of their victories. He also suggested that the French coach ought to put more white players on the field so that the team will be more reflective of French society.

This man wins the award for nitwit of the month of June.

First, he’s just plain dead wrong about the composition of French society. I haven’t been in France for several years, but the last time I was in Paris all the available hues of humanity were in abundance. France is one of the more racially diverse countries in Europe and has been so for quite a long time. Historically speaking, when black American soldiers were stationed in France during WWI and WWII they found a society that hardly noticed their color. Many ended up choosing to stay there rather than return to the US and deal with the racial inequity here. Others who returned home did so with a vision of what America might be like if the racial barriers were to come down and they threw themselves into the civil rights movement here.

Secondly, as wonderful as the acheivements of the American civil rights movement have been it’s been my opinion for quite a long time that diversity on the playing fields of our professional sports has done more for racial harmony and acceptance of diversity in America than any other single force. Think of it this way - lots of white boys grow up with posters of great black athletes on their bedroom walls. Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Tiger Woods, Donovan McNabb, etc. have adorned the walls of a whole generation of kids by now. Prior to that group you’ve got Magic Johnson, Dr. J., Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson and so on.

If you grow up worshipping someone because of his skill on the field, even though he doesn’t look like you, you’re more likely to grow up judging people by what they do in this world, not what they look like, and that is how it should be. My guess is that the French national team have done the same thing for French kids since at least 1998 when they won the whole shebang. I’m quite sure that there were tears of joy throughout France when they beat Brazil the other day, and Le Pen and a few old coots were probably the only people who gave even half a thought to what the ratio of pink to brown to black was on that field.

Fortunately, it would seem that France’s soccer players are quite a bit smarter than the nation’s politicians are. Lilian Thuram, one of the star players on the French national team had this to say about Le Pen’s comments:

“When we take to the field, we do so as Frenchmen. All of us. When people were celebrating our win, they were celebrating us as Frenchmen, not black men or white men. It doesn’t matter if we’re black or not, because we’re French. I’ve just got one thing to say to Jean Marie Le Pen. The French team are all very, very proud to be French. If he’s got a problem with us, that’s down to him but we are proud to represent this country. So Vive la France, but the true France. Not the France that he wants.”

Vive la France indeed.

Now stick it to those dirty cheating Portuguese!

Technorati Tags: Jean-Marie Le Pen, National Front, Jacques Chirac, 2006 World Cup, Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Tiger Woods, Donovan McNabb, Magic Johnson, Dr. J., Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Lilian Thuram, Vive la France