NHL and MLB
Posted by: Bradley McDonald
NHL
After a last ditch effort to save what's left of the NHL season (no doubt after reading my last blog entry), the two sides got together in a 6 hour meeting on Saturday. Unfortunately, the talks went nowhere, even with hockey greats Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux at the table. Now the focus is on saving the 2005-6 season.
No matter who you put the blame on, most people agree that more should've been done to save the season. One email asked, "Why get inflexible when you've got a low-visibility sport anyway? NHL ALWAYS seems to make the short-term decision w/no sense of how they fit into the bigger sports world."
MLB
The other big news of the past week was the release of ex-MLB player Jose Canseco's book titled "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big". Canseco admits to rampant steroid use and by the way he talks, steroids were passed around clubhouses like sunflower seeds. In the book many current players are accused of using steroids including Mark McGwire, Rafeal Palmeiro, and Ivan Rodriguez.
There's no doubt that Canseco wrote the book for the sake of money and publicity (his credibility on some of the events mentioned in the book have already been proven to be shaky, at best), but his claims bring up a bigger issue. If steroid use was so well-known as the book claims, why didn't MLB do something about it then?
The drug testing policy in MLB is pretty much a joke now, even after a much needed rehauling. It appears the policy in Canseco's day was don't-ask/don't-tell. In a league that keeps Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame for betting on baseball to protect the "integrity of the game", it's hypocritical that they haven't done more about steroids. But 70 home runs sells tickets, doesn't it?
NHL
After a last ditch effort to save what's left of the NHL season (no doubt after reading my last blog entry), the two sides got together in a 6 hour meeting on Saturday. Unfortunately, the talks went nowhere, even with hockey greats Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux at the table. Now the focus is on saving the 2005-6 season.
No matter who you put the blame on, most people agree that more should've been done to save the season. One email asked, "Why get inflexible when you've got a low-visibility sport anyway? NHL ALWAYS seems to make the short-term decision w/no sense of how they fit into the bigger sports world."
MLB
The other big news of the past week was the release of ex-MLB player Jose Canseco's book titled "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big". Canseco admits to rampant steroid use and by the way he talks, steroids were passed around clubhouses like sunflower seeds. In the book many current players are accused of using steroids including Mark McGwire, Rafeal Palmeiro, and Ivan Rodriguez.
There's no doubt that Canseco wrote the book for the sake of money and publicity (his credibility on some of the events mentioned in the book have already been proven to be shaky, at best), but his claims bring up a bigger issue. If steroid use was so well-known as the book claims, why didn't MLB do something about it then?
The drug testing policy in MLB is pretty much a joke now, even after a much needed rehauling. It appears the policy in Canseco's day was don't-ask/don't-tell. In a league that keeps Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame for betting on baseball to protect the "integrity of the game", it's hypocritical that they haven't done more about steroids. But 70 home runs sells tickets, doesn't it?
