As a ten year old kid living in the Bronx, I remembered the newspaper headlines but of course was too young to understand what was happening so the film, for me, was a visual trip down memory lane. It did capture the feel of the times. The sports writers I all got to know in the years that followed.

As mentioned, that was the last year I rooted for the Yankees. When the Mets came in the following, it was then that the Yankees stunk!

Sure I knew about the Greenies from Bouton’s book and though it was also drug abuse so I can’t condone it all it resulted was not being physically tired. Many forget that it’s not just the game that tires a baseball player out but the rigors of traveling after games and getting into hotel rooms at all strange hours so not being able to follow a normal sleep pattern. Those pills didn’t juice or cork their bodies.

I WOULD LIKE EVERYONE TO READ THE ATTACHED ARTICLE FROM SPORTS ILLUSTRATED about three prospects with limited talents who started out in the minors around the same time and the path of their careers – due or not due to the use of drugs.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/05/29/baseball.steroids/index.html

I’ll try to catch that movie, though to tell you the truth, as a Mets fan, I usually have no interest in watching movies about Yankees players.

All the Yankee players who were still alive after Billy Crystal presented them with a private screening said it was authentic.

You mean the screening killed some of the players?

Btw, I consider Maris to hold the single season HR record, and Hank Aaron to be the overall HR king. Some say Aaron did greenies, but I never bought into the idea that greenies were on the same level as anabolic steroids.

You’re not familiar with the Roger Maris story? The attached will help explain a little of the ordeal he had to go through.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-09-06/sports/1998249192_1_roger-maris-mark-mcgwire-asterisk

Suggest you catch the film “61*” next time it airs on HBO or you wish to rent/download it. All the Yankee players who were still alive after Billy Crystal presented them with a private screening said it was authentic. To me, one of the best baseball movies ever made, maybe because I was one year away from becoming a Met when those things happened.

But I agree with you that if reporters on the beat started making accusations based on speculation, then they would be blacklisted by players on the team as well as possibly others. As a journalist, you can’t do that. Especially regarding something as serious as PEDs allegations.

The problem is most don’t have the journalistic integrity those guys had nor the Editor who insisted they only report on what could be confirmed by three independent sources because the focus of news these days is not to get it RIGHT but get it FIRST!

The Internet changed that forever and the 24 Hour News Cycle didn’t help much either…

They never do that except when they do that….We get your pointless point….

Here’s the difference: Martino can’t write a report (for the main paper; not their blogs) that is titled “MLB Needs to Clean Up Their Act Regarding Steroids Testing” … but writers like Lupica, Harper, Madden, and Sherman can.

What Martino may do, is insert a line like this “MLB should implement stricter PEDs testing” within the context of a story he is doing on the Mets — for example, maybe he is covering the annual spring training visit of the head of the MLBPA to the Mets St. Lucie complex and he’ll insert that line in that story.

See the difference? One has a decided soapbox (Lupica, Harper etc); and the other is mainly team reporting. And it’s usually the beat guys who are the closest to the team. So unless they tell the columnists about all these things they see, then the columnists usually (there are a few exceptions) don’t have much to go on. And even if they do tell the columnists, it’s second hand stuff. Not something most have witnessed with their own eyes.

Point is, you will never see a team beat reporter write an article titled something like this: “MLB Needs to Clean Up its Act Regarding Steroids Testing” and then focus exclusively on those broader issues. But you will from writers like Lupica, Sherman, Madden, and Harper.

I remember the abuse Roger Maris took from all the beat writers when he was chasing Babe Ruth’s record. The things said about him were horrendous. The stories were full of witch hunting inuendo. We read it today in rags like the Post and sports talk radio. Beat writers and all.

Did you ever think those beat reporters stayed silent so not to ruin their connections and ability to get stories? If it involved a few players or even a team, that’s one thing. But they would have been unofficially blacklisted by all inside baseball.

I see where this circle jerk is going….

Point is most sports writers post opinion pieces either under the guise of a game report or whenever they write a piece when games are not being played….

http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/8739537/new-york-mets-beef

http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/8720510/major-issues-unresolved-winter-meetings-wind-down

Nah he doesn’t write opinion pieces at all….Just a figment of my and the rest of the worlds imagination and all those links were written by a ghost writer while Rubin is away fishing in florida until the BEAT gets back into action….

As for what reporters do during the hot stove season — they cover trades, free agent signings, the winter meetings, the owners meetings, team winter activities (ie, x-mas parties, fan caravans, charitable events, charity work such as with Hurricane Sandy), plus they sometimes do feature stories on individual players such as what kiernan did with D’Arnaud in today’s Post.

The papers they write for are STILL PAYING THEM!

What are they writing about with no baseball being played?

As for thier Blogs well who do they blog for and what company owns the site?