It's not exactly the face you were thinking of.
You're on Family Feud. Richard Dawson asks you, "Who is the face of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball?" There are six spots on the board. Go.
Alex Rodriguez
That's the top spot on the board. You've brought the question back to your family. Move it up the line.
Barry Bonds
Good, that's #2. Say would you like to read words about Bonds? Sure you would. But it's up to your Uncle Bamph now, and you're all literally on TV, so don't blow this.
Ryan Braun
Sure.
Mark McGwire
Probably.
Sammy Sosa
Whatever. Maybe Rafael Palmeiro or Jose Canseco. Maybe Bartolo Colon. Is Melky Cabrera still a thing? At some point, the names blur together, but you're pretty sure about the names at the top.
Allow me to be the weirdo who breaks the curve and gives the answer that ruins the Fast Money bonus round for my entire family: Arodys Vizcaino. That guy who was just busted. He's the face of PEDs, your honor. I mean, Richard Dawson. It's Vizcaino that should pop into all of our minds when we think of baseball players taking banned substances in an attempt to gain an advantage.
I don't know Vizcaino's story. I don't know his reasoning, and I don't know his inner thoughts. But I can guess.
The early years
Vizcaino was signed by the Yankees as a 16-year-old. I have no idea if he's taking Benadryl or Special K or Airborne at this point. Maybe he's pure talent, maybe he's not. Either way, he was still a pretty good prospect. He doesn't have the prototypical size, but he has that electric arm. After mowing through the New York-Penn League when he was three years younger than most of his teammates, he was considered an absolutely fantastic prospect.
He was traded to the Braves for Javier Vasquez, but that's good! It means that other teams want him. Before the 2012 season, he's the #40 prospect in baseball, according to Baseball America. He got a few innings in the majors the previous season, and he's certainly in the right organization. The Braves are a Play-Doh spaghetti maker for pitchers, and whatever they jam in the hole comes out perfectly formed on the other side. He's going to be fine.
SB Nation presents: The Braves are in trouble
The injury-marred years
Also, the Braves tend to mush the Play-Doh spaghetti with their palms and make snakes, and then they throw the snakes at the cat. Then they hit the spaghetti maker with a Tonka truck. It's been a rough few years for young Braves pitchers. Vizcaino needed Tommy John surgery, which isn't a big deal, right? Everyone has it these days. More of a rite of passage, really. Except Vizcaino didn't come back in 12 months. He didn't come back in 15 months. It was two years before he returned.
He was on the Cubs now, for some reason, but that's okay. That meant that other teams still want him. He just had to suffer delay after delay, setback after setback. Two years is a long, long time, especially for someone that young.
It's worth wondering what a 21-year-old baseball player is thinking at this point. It's just his life. It's just the only thing he knows, the only chance he'll have at the fame and fortune he was so sure he was going to have. It's just the burdens and expectations that have been tossed onto his back by everyone, the pressure he put on himself. It's all dependent on something inside his body, something he's never seen before, something that will define him for the next couple of decades. No big deal.
He comes back in 2014 and shows some promise. There are glimmers of promise, at least. The Braves, who never stopped being enamored of him, re-acquire Vizcaino in a trade. He's 23 now. Not old. Just uncertain.
The present
Does he want to succeed again? Does he want to be the pitcher everyone thought he'd be? That is, the pitcher he always imagined he would be? Well, there's a drug for that. Stanozolol, apparently. Please, hold your Stanozololololol jokes until the end. Do you know what Stanozolol does, without looking? According to Wikipedia, it "has a high oral bioavailability, due to a C17 α-alkylation which allows the hormone to survive first-pass liver metabolism when ingested." And don't you forget it.
The benefits?
Vizcaino had thrown significantly harder this spring than he had in recent seasons.
The downside?
Its side effects include weight gain, water retention, and difficulty eliminating nitrogen-based waste products and it is toxic to the liver, especially in cats.
That isn't a pair of shrinking testicles. That isn't exploding-heart syndrome. That's something that makes you tally up a little risk/reward ledger in your mind. Well, if I do this and that happens, maybe I'm rich and successful. Promise fulfilled. If I do that and they find out, well, I'm suspended for 80 games. Maybe my liver gets a touch of the toxics.
Is this a way to excuse everything? No. No, no, no, no, no. Because Vizcaino would have been fighting for a job with players who weren't willing to take those risks. Liver toxicity? "Screw that," says the clean player, "I'll just spend an extra hour with Tom Emanski every day." If a clean player isn't willing to take those risks, he shouldn't be at a disadvantage against players who are willing to take them. That's why there are rules. That's why there are suspensions. Those are good things, necessary things. Deterrents make the game better, and they make the players healthier.
But Vizcaino is a typical baseball player. He's young and short-sighted. Baseball has been his whole life, and it's impossible to see a life beyond it. There usually isn't another obvious path for professional baseball players if they wash out, whether they come from the Dominican Republic, Korea, or Colgate. Most of them show up on the other side of 30, thinking, "What now?"
Everything hadn't worked out as planned so far for Vizcaino, but if he took this, maybe ....
I'm not saying it's right. Not saying it's ethical. I'm just saying it's not a decision made by a cartoon villain as he gleefully yells about breaking the hero into two. There was no mustache-twisting involved. It's fear and hope, desire and doubt. It's enough of a mess growing up if you aren't saddled with a lot of expectations. Then you add all this disappointment and scrutiny ...
Or maybe Vizcaino called up an offshore pharmacy and yelled "GIMME ALL YOUR STEROIDS" just because he felt like cheating and crushing people. Like I said, this is only a guess. When you think of the face of steroids, the superstars getting better aren't a bad place to start, but the real deep tracks are probably the best places to start. Here's a guy who used to be a top prospect, until he was broken, until he was fighting for a job. Then he had a shortcut. Can't you at least see his position, just a little bit?
That's the real face of PEDs in baseball today. You can still find disgust and disdain with it, if that's your thing. Just avoid the all-caps CHEATER talk, and we'll have a much better dialogue about this stuff for the next 50 years.
Source SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/19SK77E
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