Stop Being Surprised

The new buzz around steroids and PEDs is that Albert Pujols is/was juicing. 

Granted, this is just hearsay from ex-ball player Jack Clark who has a radio show and plenty of incentive to ruffle the feathers for viewership. This is at least somewhat obvious in that he throws Justin Verlander's name under the bus due with no reason other than his struggles this year:

“Verlander was like Nolan Ryan, he threw 97, 98, 100 miles an hour from the first inning to the ninth inning,” Clark said on the air. “He got that big contract, now he can barely reach 92, 93. What happened to it? He has no arm problems, nothing’s wrong. It’s just the signs are there.

“The greed ... they juice up, they grab the money and it’s just a free pass to steal is the way I look at it.” 

However, although Clark's juice on Pujols' juice is still hearsay, it is at least somewhat more convincing. Chris Mihlfeld is a former personal trainer of Pujols and a few years back he was connected with Jason Grimsley, who he also trained and who admitted to steroid use. That alone doesn't mean much but Clark is claiming that Mihfield told him that Pujols was using. 

Now, whether or not there is any meat to Clark's claims, I don't know. As I said, he would seemingly have incentive to exaggerate a few points but he'd also have a lot of reasons to not wrongfully throw a guy like Albert Pujos under the bus. Plus, his claims on Justin Verlander's use are just idiotic and deserving of it's own take-down post. 

Either way, if it comes out that Pujols did in fact use steroids (or cheat if you prefer that terminology) I refuse to be surprised. Each time a star baseball player has been found to use PEDs the baseball world is shocked and turns its collective head to the next best player or "good guy" who clearly doesn't use. We then quickly put them on a pedestal, only to be shocked again when he's caught. When the world hated Barry Bonds, it was pretty convinced that A-Rod was one of the good guys.

While deep down I feel we are all possibly cynical of our revered athletes, we have trained ourselves to hide that, creating room for the shock and awe at each name that comes out. We all obviously want Barry Lamar Bonds, A-Rod, Ryan Braun and in this case, Pujols and countless others to be clean. We want it so bad that we lose sight of logic, the players' incentive to use steroids and maybe even the loosey-goosey era. 

I don't know anything about Albert Pujols' use or non use of steroids and I won't pretend that his shaved head or recent decline carries any significance. But, I've seen this game before, we all have, and unfortunately we should stop being surprised.