The Strange Case of Jenrry Mejia: another Dominican nailed.

Stupid or evil. Take your pick of the knee jerk reactions to Met relief pitcher Jenrry Mejia being suspended for life or until he gets reinstated. Mejia denies his guilt after failing a drug test for the third time, setting a new Major Baseball League (MBL) record. When and where was the test? Here in the good old USA or in his native Dominican Republic? If in Dominican Republic, Mejia was living there, not taking a vacation. Imagine someone showing up at your home and demanding bodily fluids.

Even with two previous suspensions Mejia has been paid about a million dollars, which should have him set for the rest of his life.

Mejia has tested positive for performance enhancing drugs (PED):

- stanozolol: commonly sold under the name Winstrol ... in 1962 ... approved by the FDA for human use ... oral tablet form ...

In humans, it has been demonstrated to be successful in treating anaemia and hereditary angioedema...

Stanozolol is one of the anabolic steroids commonly used as performance-enhancing drugs and is banned from use in sports competition

Publicized abuse cases:
Ben Johnson
Rafael Palmeiro was suspended 10 days ... not long after he testified before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on steroid usage in baseball, and he denied ever using steroids.
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens was reported to have been injected with stanozolol (Winstrol) by major league strength coach Brian McNamee during the 1998 baseball season.
Ervin Santana, Minnesota Twins pitcher, was suspended for 80 games without pay in 2015 after testing positive for stanozolol.

- boldenone: anabolic steroid ... increase nitrogen retention, protein synthesis, increases appetite and stimulates the release of erythropoietin in the kidneys ...

Boldenone is among the substances banned by Major League Baseball, as well as most other major athletic organizations.

Los Angeles Angels minor league outfielder Reynaldo Ruiz in September 2010[1] and Philadelphia Phillies minor league pitcher San Lazaro Solano in January 2011[2] each received a 50-game suspension for the 2011 season as a result of testing positive for a metabolite of boldenone.
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Rafael Palmeiro was born in Cuba and is a borderline Hall of Famer. His case never rang true to me.

Something was wrong. It didn't add up. That's how the Mejia case feels. Something is missing.

Bonds and Clemens are all time greats, with Hall of Fame credentials even before they started using PED.

Ervin Santana was born in Dominican Republic. Santana is still a good MBL pitcher with almost 2,000 innings.

Ruiz was born in Falcon, Venezuela.

Solano was born in Dominican Republic.

Neither has pitched in the MBL, only in its minor leagues.

Great White Father  Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Major Baseball League (MBL) suspended yet another player born in the Dominican Republic for 50 games: Bartolo Colon, a pitcher with Oakland...

Colon tested positive for testosterone, same as fellow Bay area Dominican San Francisco Giant  Melky Cabrera who was suspended for 50 games August 15, 2012.  So what's the box score on 50 game suspensions?  Something like 12 of 21 are Dominicans? ...

Including minor leaguers, only 43% are from the Unites States...

The MBL treats the Dominican Republic like a colony.  Why isn't there more concern about this arrangement, which culminates with Dominican players being discarded disproportionately?  Star players, especially those born in the USA, are pretty much immune from detection and even more so from punishment...

Nolan Ryan, like Roger Clemens, is a good old boy from Texas.  Some members of the House of Representatives were fawning all over Clemens when he testified before a committee hearing on the use of performance enhancing stuff.  At that same hearing Sammy Sosa played the Dominican card to his advantage by suddenly losing his well demonstrated ability to speak English and hid behind an attorney...

There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around but let's start with MBL commissioner Bud Selig, the Great White Father in this scenario.  Allan Huber Selig was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not in Altamira, Puerto Plata like Bartolo Colon.  Colon and Cabrera wandered off the reservation and Selig's organization punished them according to the peace treaty.  It's all according to the rules but there's something disturbing in all this, including the juvenile attitude about baseball, which is very different from our attitude toward football and basketball.  Maybe it confirms that baseball is in our culture much more deeply than we realize, even if the national pastime is past its time.
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Nolan Ryan, Tom House and steroids.  Monday, August 11, 2014

Nolan Ryan could have been using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PED), not just late in his career, but also in the 1970s.

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