Sergio Mitre to get 50 game suspension

if what he's saying is true, i don't see how it would be fair to follow through with the suspension....if a professional ballplayer takes a supplement from GNC and the illegal substance is not listed as an ingredient, i don't think you can hold the player responsible imo.

 

Disagree. It's the players responsibility to make sure what he's taking is legit.

 

But if the supplement did not list an illegal substance and he did his due diligence prior to taking it, how is he supposed to know about it?

 

Which is why the manic state that surrounds "performance enhancing drugs" in sports is absolutely ridiculous and overblown. I think you are eventually going to see more lawsuits like the one recently involving the 5 NFL players over this issue and could evolve into suits against the manufacturers(I won't get into the proof problems that they would have to deal with). All of which is sad because if this issue was approached with a level-headedness across the board a resolution could be reached to avoid some of the nonsense.

 

50 games for Mitre and Romero just because they took something from GNC which the league knows should not have had the substance contained in it but in fact did. Really? 'Cause that makes sense.

Wow, I could not agree with you more. It does seem sometimes like we live in 1600s Salem when it comes to PEDs. Maybe soon athletes will bring their trainers to restaurants with them just to make sure the cook doesn't taint their food with drugs.

if what he's saying is true, i don't see how it would be fair to follow through with the suspension....if a professional ballplayer takes a supplement from GNC and the illegal substance is not listed as an ingredient, i don't think you can hold the player responsible imo.

 

Disagree. It's the players responsibility to make sure what he's taking is legit.

 

But if the supplement did not list an illegal substance and he did his due diligence prior to taking it, how is he supposed to know about it?

 

How do we know he did his due diligence? How do we know he didn't take a supplement with andro so he could use it as an excuse to actually take andro?

 

Players don't have to shop at GNC. It's an unregulated business and the labelling is completely unreliable. Every year we hear about guys being shocked about what was in there supplement. Jim Freaking Miller pulled that crap back in 1999.

 

The bottom line is the players are responsible for what they put in their body. It's not hard to avoid the junk.

Peter Gammons wrote an excellent article on the Romero situation (which for the most part applies to Mitre as well).

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3812334

I found this snippet particularly relevant:

Three months after Romero was tested before a Phillies-Mets game on Aug. 26, the players' association sent a Nov. 21 letter to players that stated, "We have previously told you there is no reason to believe a supplement bought at a U.S. based retail store could cause you to test positive under our Drug Program. That is no longer true. We have recently learned of three substances which can be bought over the counter at stores in the United States that will cause you to test positive. These three supplements were purchased at a GNC and Vitamin Shoppe in the U.S."

 

In Romero's arbitration hearing that was held in Tampa, Fla., during the first two days of the World Series, it was claimed that, in early July, the National Center for Drug Free Sport had notified MLB of questions about the supplement Romero had purchased. Somehow, MLB and the players' association never got that straight, according to Romero.

Also, Gammons wrote that the supplement bottle brought to the hearing by MLB contained a warning label about potentially containing illegal PEDs. Romero brought the bottle that he used, which did not contain that warning label.

BTW, if Andro is a banned substance, then technically doesn't think prove that McGwire was using PEDs when he was playing?

 

It was added to the banned list after McGwire was found with it.

 

Yeah, it wasn't illegal PED use, but he was using PEDs that are no longer allowed which contributed to his 580+ HRs. He's not guilty of illegally using them from the info we know, but his numbers can be called into question based on what he's admitted to using.

 

ex post facto?

I think what UMFan83 is saying that since McGwire admitted to using andro, it's not hard to assume he also used PEDs that were illegal at the time. That's a slippery slope argument, if you ask me, but it's the common belief.