You Fat Liar.

I was enjoying an otherwise relaxing evening on the Cape on Saturday when a headscratcher of a line scrolled across the bottom of ESPN's Yankees-Red Sox telecast, something along the lines of "Former BALCO chemist says Ortiz may have been victim of supplement spiked with Nandrolone." The story seems to have originated in a New York Daily News article, which has the huge, stupid balls to state:

"Patrick Arnold, who did prison time for his role in the BALCO scandal, said it's possible Ortiz took 19-norandrostenedione, a supplement that contained the hard-core steroid nandrolone and which could be purchased legally in 2003."

Their source--a felon convicted of assisting athletes in masking the use of PEDs--is referring to 19-norandrostenedione, a supplement which--no matter how hard the pro-Sox cabal at ESPN squeezes their asscheeks together and wishes--has never contained Nandrolone.

Until 2005, 19-norandrostenedione was a perfectly legal prohormone, part of a shady group of supplements that includes DHEA and the much better known androstenendione, a substance so infamous it doesn't even trigger my Blogger spellchecker. Prohormones have essentially two uses: First, they provide a monstrous case of backne while elevating useful hormone levels at a useless rate; and Second, they provide a convenient excuse when stacked with more effective, illegal substances.

At some point in the process of transforming steroid use by a bunch of grown men playing a child's game into the great Moral Swamp of our time, one would expect that our sports media might have accidentally contracted some basic knowledge of...well, steroids...but this clearly hasn't happened. Let me mention some things that I learned as a 15 year old cleaning tanning booths at Gold's Gym in scenic Waterbury, CT. First, some useful context...

People who sell performance enhancing drugs know an enormous amount about performance enhancing drugs. They don't just take your money and sprint for the nearest tanning booth. They tell you what you need to take, what the ideal dosage should be, how to cycle the often labyrinthine complexes of substances they recommend, and most importantly, how not to get caught taking those substances by the hypocritical losers--bodybuilding promoters, high school football coaches, Bud Selig, etc.--who order tests for such things. All of this is included in the basic service, which can also include actually injecting the stuff between your toes in a mensroom stall at your gym. Imagine your pot dealer in college taking you aside, telling you what specific kind of pot would best suit your literary interests, what delicious snacks might best complement said pot, which studio take of 'Kind of Blue' to listen to, and most importantly, exactly how long said pot will stay in your system in any noticeable concentration.

That is what steroid dealers provide, and it's been that way since Arnold's Muscle Beach days. Beyond the businessmen, the steroid subculture is host to more obscure knowledge and rabid detail than your average Dr. Who wiki. There are hundreds of forums on the internet with queries like 'Will Deca show up in a test 12 months out from my last cycle?' and 'How do I trick my pit bull's veterinarian into writing me a Clen scrip?' Before the internet, there was The Steroid Bible, which started life as a self-published looking booklet/fanzine that made the rounds at every Powerhouse Gym on earth, but is now available on (goddamned) Amazon.com (fer chrissakes).

Another interesting reality that the sports media is glossing over is that an enormous number of people have been taking A LOT of steroids for a very, very, very long time. For example, I can comfortably assure you that roughly 65% of every high school football team on Earth will use Winstrol or D-bol or Nandrolone at some point.* Every gym in this country is flooded with people who know a great deal about performance enhancing drugs--making it incredibly easy for even a casual gym member to get indoctrinated into the culture--and I can only imagine how enthusiastic these people would be to share their knowledge with a celebrity athlete. When I was a kid, I'd often take supplements based on the recommendations of older gym members, recommendations that usually included statements like 'Better try it now before they make it illegal.' In the cases of GHB, Clenbuterol, Ephedrine, Androstenendione, and every other over-the-counter AAS in the last twenty years, they were right.

Getting back to the article, let me list the things I don't believe about this scenario...

• Sometime in 2003, David Ortiz walked into a GNC and bought a bottle of androstenendione, presumably because he read that Mark McGwire used it in Sports Illustrated, and look how big Mark McGwire got using it.
  
• The bottle that Ortiz bought was part of the batch contaminated with 19-norandrostenedione, which is a metabolite of Nadrolone, and was known even at the time to trigger a positive test for Nandrolone, an illegal steroid.
• Although David Ortiz was a professional athlete at the time, he didn't workout at a gym with experienced, um, exerciser people, with a trainer, or with any of his teammates, any one of whom could have told him that A.) prohormones have very few meaningful benefits*, and B.) they will cause false positives in drug tests. He especially didn't ask Manny Ramirez, who also knows nothing about steroid use, as evidenced by the fact that he apparently knew to take a female fertility drug as part of an anabolic steroid cycle earlier this year.
• Unlike Mark McGwire, Shawn Merriman, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada, Barry Bonds, CJ Hunter, Marion Jones, Jason Giambi, and A-Rod, Ortiz really did only ingest 19-norandrostenedione, because as a professional athlete with limitless resources, he wasn't aware of the fact that prohormones won't actually help you hit 54 homers, run a sub-10 second 100m dash, or throw a shotput really far, all on their own. Unlike all of those people, he didn't have access to a trusted advisor, who would have told him that he should take an oral prohormone with those injections of Nandrolone, so that he'd have an excuse, just in case. Which is something I knew when I was 15. Poor David Ortiz.
  

Here is my version of this fairytale. In 2003, Ortiz showed up in Boston. He became fast friends with Manny Ramirez, who recommended that on his next trip to the Dominican, he walk into a pharmacy and purchase steroids, which are readily available EVERYWHERE in Latin America. Looking to improve on his journeyman stats and salary, Ortiz tried it, because hell, his friend is doing it, everyone in the league is doing it, and the league doesn't even test for it. Manny mentions he should take a prohormone, too, because someone he met at the gym told him it might be helpful if he ever gets tested, a very real possibility in the post-Sosa/McGwire era of 2003. Ortiz takes Nandrolone (or something) for a cycle, which increases his bat speed just enough to transform him from a good hitter into a great hitter, he gets a $13 million per annum salary, and the Sox win two World Series.

Big deal. I would have done the same thing. But when A-Rod's name was leaked from that PA list, when Giambi's name was leaked, when Bonds' head grew four sizes and McGwire lied to Congress, no one rushed to their defense. Just because the man looks like Shrek, doesn't mean he should get a free pass on this one, and the fact that the media and MLB seem to be changing tactics for his benefit disgusts me.

There is also something deeply stupid about using a BALCO chemist as a source. Two high profile cases of athletes claiming false test results based on over-the-counter supplementation are CJ Hunter and Marion Jones, who both later admitted to using anabolic steroids. Both were under the supervision of Mr. Arnold's former employer, and the fact that any credible news outlet would even entertain the idea of printing a tired and well-known lie in defense of David Ortiz is enough to impact a nice day at the beach. Let's also ignore the fact that when prohormones were finally banned by various organizations like the IOC and MLB, it wasn't because of their advantages as training aids, but because athletes were known to use them as masking agents. If even the idiots responsible for testing programs know that the Andro defence is a lie, shouldn't ESPN?

In closing, I just wrote this off the top of my head during my lunch hour. The least we can expect of the Daily New and ESPN--if they insist on wringing my hands for me twice a month--is a bless'd little research.

*According to our Congress--which wasted its attentions on this nonsense while the world crumbled around our ears--these athletes abruptly stopped using steroids immediately after signing their NFL contracts. Which makes a hell of a lot of sense, provided your learning disability can convince you that normal, four-hundred pound humans can run the 40 in 4.4 seconds
*Prohormones have been shown to produce anabolic effects in the range of less than 10% of their illegal cousins, which is fine if you want tender nipples, nightmares about werewolves during the four minutes a night you'll actually sleep, and spending twenty minutes a day screaming at random babies. The real benefits are minimal, and could probably be matched by a high-protein/high fat diet, and replacing those endless sets of preacher curls with some squats, you narcissistic pussy.

Through such deafening silence...

Without so much as a word of context, here is the note I forwarded this past week to the kind folk at US Air. My intention is to write them one note per week detailing my increasing distemper at their inability to do the simple act we pay them to do. I am hoping I grow more and more angry, that my notes grow more and more weird, and that they never write me back. I'd hope they go out of business, as well, but as they are barely even in business, that seems a bit vindictive.

To whom it may concern,

I'm really unsure how to phrase this, but I'm sufficiently curious to at least try. I am, at present, sitting in my office in Boston, waiting for my girlfriend's flight to arrive at Logan. I do this every Thursday, as she is a consultant and travels frequently. Her firm uses your airline exclusively, and for the last seven weeks of her customer engagement, every single one of her return flights has been at least 30-45 minutes late. Last week and this week averaged one and one half hours. Out of curiosity, why is it that you are unable to limit flight delays to AT LEAST the duration of the flight itself? I've tracked these flights online, and the last two 1:30+ delays were caused by 'baggage handling' and 'cabin servicing'. Seriously? It takes an hour and a half to load the baggage for a 737? If that is true, please let me know, as I am somewhat concerned about you at the moment.

Yours,
Gavin

Modigliani on a Cigarette Boat

Dude, I totally need a coffee. And a woman shaped like this...

Sunrise on Oahu, and the light of the grey day whispered between the blinds. Morning here is a sound I’ve heard a thousand times, that whisper that tells you the day has begun without you. It sneers at the corners of your eyes, sneers that somewhere in the Hawaiian morning, no matter the weather, something is very, very wrong with your Ferrari.

"Bastards," I mumbled, dragging a sleepy hand across my mustache. There were no stewardesses in the room, no Polynesian tour guides drowsing like honey under several strategically-placed pillows, and if that wasn't disorienting enough, Mr Fujikori was standing on my end table, beaming down on me with the highest watt smile a 65-lb man can muster.

"Mother of a Retarded Christ!" I shouted, but Fujikori was already shaking my hand, and before I could drag my unbelievably limber body from my 900 count sheets, he vanished, leaving nothing but a puff of green tea scented smoke, and a page torn from an address book.

819 Kahala Beach Road.

The tuning fork in my head shook like a new-hatched bird. 819 Kahala Beach Road.

I slipped into a polo (the wonderful white Burberry one with the fuschia cuffs and the embroidery on the button placket...but that is neither here nor there), a pair of short shorts that shouted 'Macho!' rather than 'Rent me by the hour!', grabbed my .45, and disappeared into the AM mists.