Replies to post #87852 on Baseball Chat (BASEBALL)

[DewDiligence]

It was his very high level of testosterone. Then they chased a paper trail. You don't have extremely high levels of testosterone unless there is a reason.

Do I have this right? Manny passed the standard MLB testing, but the test results nevertheless were suspicious and this led MLB officials, acting covertly, to search for hard evidence of Manny’s juicing. With the evidence in hand, MLB got Manny to acquiesce to another test, and the banned substance was then detected in the results.

Please correct me if this is not how it went down.

[bladerunner1717]

Linchuk,

On a further close reading of the article, there is a contradiction in the story that leaves some questions open.


"The sources said that in addition to the artificial testosterone, Ramirez was identified as using the female fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG." But notice that the article doesn't specify HOW Ramirez was identified as using hCG. It clearly wasn't through drug testing as ESPN had earlier reported:

"ESPN reported earlier that testing showed Ramirez had used hCG, which is typically used by steroid users to restart their bodies' natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle..."

But later in the article, ESPN reports:

"While investigating, MLB obtained documents that indicated Ramirez's use of hCG, AND IT WAS THOSE DOCUMENTS (emphasis mine) that formally were used to hand down the 50-game suspension. Baseball decided to suspend Ramirez for only hCG because, in the end, he would have been suspended for just the 50 games either way. There was a chance Ramirez could have proved that the testosterone did not come from a banned substance, the MLB source said."

In other words, it wasn't the testing per se that "identified" Ramirez as using hCG. It was the "paper trail" that identified Ramirez. And the "paper search" was set in motion by the high levels of testerone that were discoved in the drug testing.

This leads to a couple of quesions: Why wasn't the hCG identified through the original drug testing? And why weren't the steroids that Manny was clearly using identified through the drug testing? All that was discovered through the drug testing was a higher than normal level of testosterone that any decent attorney could have defended Manny on (if this were the only evidence of PED use), which the article makes clear.

I think this supports my contention that the athletes still feel free to take the banned substances with impunity, because they have figured some way to outwit the drug testing procedures. It seems that no levels of ANY banned sustance were ever detected in Manny's samples. And Manny, like Lance Armstrong and virtually every other steroid user, claims that he has been tested many times and always found clean. (Whenever I hear an athlete make that claim, I know he/she has been juicing. That's partly why I don't believe Armstrong.)

Am I the only one who's wondering why the drugs were never found through the drug testing process? It's the "paper trail" that was crucial in getting Manny suspended, not the drug testing. Shouldn't somebody be raising eyebrows about this?



Bladerunner