Essay 2

Alek Stemen
Mr. Boczkowski
Intensive Reading and Writing 109.02
6 February 2008
Essay #2

This blog I read was by Adam Newton a sports fanatic who gives his view on what he thinks on this whole steroid controversy. At the beginning he says that he had never really been part of organized athletics until he had reached high school. But throughout his younger years he watched sports with his family and friends. He talked about how he was never really the athlete who stayed out on the field after practice, or workout in the weight room for the whole day he just basically was there did what he had to and just left when everyone else did.

Now a days he watches games with his brothers, friends, and roommates where they have heated debates he says. Mainly it is how the United States Congress is not doing what it can to take care of this whole steroids situation. He states that steroids have been around sports for around these past fifteen years. Football and baseball are the two main sports that are directly involved with steroids but with the harsh punishment of football penalties players don’t get in trouble with them along with basketball too. Baseball is the main sport where steroids are the most caught. Also he states that it is basically grown men trying to get an edge on one another and must bear the consequences of their actions.

Then he goes into this metaphor where he uses an office and basically says that if someone breaks the rules and does whatever he or she wants in order to produce high-quality work that is enjoyed by your consumers and co-workers and asks if that is cheating just because you are breaking the rules. To me I think that if you break the rules to make a consumer or co-worker happy then it is okay to do.

After that he basically talks about how shitty the MLB and Bud Selig did in getting steroids out of baseball. Also says that he wants steroids out of all professional sports and that the punishments should be greater. He states that the Mitchell Report is the closest thing to intervention that we have witnessed with a public institution. He thinks that baseball should have harsher penalties for steroids. And he ends with saying that the whole sports entertainment business is all fake athletes instead of the raw natural athlete.

To me this is a good point of view from someone who came from a limited athletic background. He made a lot of good points which I agree with. With me coming from a very strong athletic background I have seen some things that this guy may not have seen. Coming from a school enriched with sports I was around them all the time whether or not participating.

Steroids in my mind is a way of cheating yourself because the results you see at first will look good but at the end the end up turning bad just from the affects it does to your mind and body. I have seen steroids around me before because they don’t normally drug test in high school and people will do whatever sometimes just to get that edge on others. I had always watched sports growing up especially with my dad and always wondered how these professional athletes got to be the size they were. I hadn’t really heard about steroids until the late 90s when they were talking about Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and the monster seasons they had in baseball that year.

I think that sports should be all natural working out to be the better athlete. You should work to gain the edge without using roids. I know of people who use things such as like whey protein and like creatine and all those other pills and powders which to me is perfectly legal. All those do is just hydrate you and helps build muscle faster so that you get the results you want faster. I have used a protein powder before and I can see the difference after awhile. It is amazing what a little hard work can do. I mean look at UFC fighters those guys train for hours at a time and for years to get at the best physical shape possible for them and the sport that they are competing in.

Finally I think that steroids should be taken out of all sports and if caught they should have the harshest penalty there is. And if you work hard you should have the advantage over everyone so that everything is even and there are no cheaters.

Do Steroids effect length of play?

The other day Brett Favre had retired from seventeen years in the National Football League. He will go down as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. He went out on a record breaking season and will most likely make it into the Hall of Fame his first year on the ballot.

Along with Brett retiring, Sam Cassell signed with the Boston Celtics basketball team the other day. He will be ending his fourteenth season with the National Basketball Association this year. Throughout these years he has been with multiple teams along the way.

Barry Bonds will be entering his twenty second season in Major League Baseball. He currently holds the home run record* and is now a free agent in the MLB. He has only been with two teams in his career and who knows if anyone will sign him now because of the whole steroids controversy.

What do all these people have to do with exactly? Well steroids can have the effect of players lasting longer in athletics becasue they will always have energy to perform every game. Now I am not saying that all these players had used steroids or HGH but it could be a possibility just because of the length. There are many other players the I could have pointed out but there are to many of them to name. It is just remarkable how they can stay in the game this long and still perform at their best.

The Guest Blogging Experiment

I felt like my guest blogger did a good job on acting as me for this guest blog. The length like Derek said was basically the same as my usual post but he also noticed that the style was different. I can see some similarities to the guest post and mine but there were some differences in this too.

His style was much more grammatical than mine I feel. Also his had a better flow to it and sounded smoother when you read it. Unlike me he used the press conference as a tool to write this post because of the press conference with Andy Pettitte to tie in with this whole Roger Clemens steroids case. Another difference I had noticed was he had done more research than I usually do with reading up on this article. He did a good job with research and if anything the guest blogger may have done a better job writing and planning out this post than I normally do. Well done guest blogger.

Having this guest blog gave me some more ideas on where to take my blog. I should follow his ways in writing these because I think that this was a great post. Overall with all these guest blogs and all I could tell some similarities and differences in the actual posts and guest posts. I think that we all did good jobs on guest blogging. We all have come a long way with these blogs like Derek said.

Guest Blog by: SSR

Andy Pettitte, pitcher for the New York Yankees and long time friend of Roger Clemens, provided a deposition before Congress last week on the use of performance enhancing drugs - steroids. Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone (HGH) between 2002-2004. Pettitte also provided information that Roger Clemens had talked about steroid use in the past. There were a lot of reports that Andy Pettitte's father received the human growth hormone from a guy Andy Pettitte went to high school with. More and more people keep getting drawn into the steroid controversy.

I think if Roger Clemens were to come clean and admit that he used steroids, everyone could move on. His wife was accused and has since admitted using human growth hormone to look good before posing in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue 4 years ago. Pettitte was forced to betray his friend and now Roger's wife has been linked. The longer this goes on, the more people won't believe a word Roger says and more people will be hurt. All he has to say is; it was 10 years ago, it was a mistake and I regret doing it. His character has already been questioned and not many people seem to believe him so I think he is better off just admitting it.

What are they??

This week I think that I am going to take a different approach to my blog and tell you about steroids and what they are actually. I think this is good because some people are not well informed about them and some of the damage that they can do to you, so that you don't get caught up in them so that your life could potentially be messed up.

Anabolic Steroids are a synthetic version of testosterone which is the male horomone. They are drugs which have very many side effects that cause psychological and physical effects. The psychological effects are edginess, impatience, "roid rage" which is basically violent outbursts. Also can cause severe mood swings towards depression.



General physical effects are liver and kidney damage, increased blood pressure and cholesterol, a higher risk of infections, nosebleeds, headaches and stomachaches, etc. Those are just general for anyone one who takes them, but for women, men, and teens they are much different. Men suffer from enlarged breasts, shrinkage of the testicles, low sperm count, increased sex drive but a decrease in erectile function. For women they receive growth of facial hair, deepend voice, male pattern baldness, enlargement of clitoris, infertility, and abnormail menstrual period. And in teens they have stunted growth and severe acne.

The Super Bowl overall was a good exciting game to watch. It was an action packed game and kept me on the edge of my seat especially in the fourth quarter. The Giants were the underdogs and came out on top of the favored patriots who previosly were undfeated and trying to be the second team to go undefeated ever. While watching it i realized how athletic and muscular the two teams were.

Looking at the size of the players it just amazes me the size of the linemen and the masculinity of the major athletes that make the big plays in the games. Somehow i don't see how some of these older players can stay in this game because of how fast paced the games are now. I'm not saying that they are taking steroids but there has to be some question of whether or not they are taking something to still be as fit as they are. The celebration after Michael Strahan sacked Tom Brady made me realize how jacked he still was. He was contemplating retiring this season because of his age. Still though he was very impressive.

Still sometimes I think that these athletes as they get older I wonder that they are using the performance enhancing drugs to keep them in the game and keep them up with all the new athletes as they get faster the game will be getting faster.

This weekend I will be the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships)80 pay per view on tv and noticed one fighter in particular by the name of Brock Lesnar who was formerly part of the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). While I was watching his training videos I realized how much bigger and more muscular than the other fighters he was facing. Now from what we know abbout the WWF there is steroids all involved in that scene and I don't see how anyone could be that big and get away with it. I know that all UFC fighters train so hard to get to where they are but that is tottally opposite to the WWF. I know that they do drug tests but you can't tell me he didn't take them while he was in the WWF. After seeing him in the WWF I can tell that he has gotten bigger. I think that it is from his training which is very rigorous and long. They say that he is country strong because he grew up on a farm and just worked hard in what he did.