The Billiken's Bluff

An initiated college student cramming for final exams, writing four term papers in the span of 36 hours is familiar with speed in its various prescribed forms. The side effects that accompany them are known quantities:



You don't sleep, you lose your appetite, you are a little jumpy, paranoid. But you focus like a savant.



Kerouac was familiar with them, knew their uses and unpleasantries, wrote about them in On the Road:

Jane was still looking for her fire; in those days she ate three tunes pf benzedrine paper a day. Her face, once plump and Germanic and pretty, had become stony and red and gaunt.

in fact used them to write On the Road:



Yemenite cab drivers chew a homegrown leaf variety called qat. Salim Hamdam, Bin Laden's driver ruminated on these, wired.





Baseball players use it. Watch them sweat profusely. Eyes buggy, pupils dilated. It sharpens their senses, quickens their reaction time, and leads them to chew copious amounts of gum, sunflower seeds, dip and whatever else they use to prevent grinding of teeth. Commentators are either complicit in this practice or ignorant. Players look high strung, if not strung out.





This angle has been written about, but not with the same fanfare as the steroid enhancements. The average fan either doesn't understand this drug as well, or can't bring themselves to be outraged by more than one chemical concurrently.

Here is what Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated re: speed (Full disclosure... Caminiti died a few years ago from a Crack induced heart attack):

"I would say there are only a couple of guys on a team that don't take greenies [speed] before a game. One or two guys. That's called going out there naked. And you hear it all the time from teammates, 'You're not going to play naked, are you?' And even the guys who are against greenies may be taking diet pills or popping 25 caffeine pills and they're up there [at bat] with their hands shaking. So how good is that? This game is so whacked out that guys will take anything to get an edge. You got a pill that will make me feel better? Let me have it."

Former outfielder Chad Curtis agreed with Caminiti:

"You might have one team where eight guys play naked and another team where nobody does, but that sounds about right. Steroids are popular, but quite a lot more guys take [amphetamines] than steroids. I'm talking about illegal stuff. Speed ... ritalin, which is legal only with a doctor's prescription ... sometimes guys don't even know what they're taking. One guy will take some pills out of his locker and tell somebody else, 'Here, take one of these. You'll feel better.' And the other guy will take it and not even know what it is."

Curtis added that amphetamine use is so prevalent that non-users are sometimes ostracized as slackers.

"If the starting pitcher knows you're going out there naked, he's upset that you're not giving him more than what you can," Curtis said. "The big-time pitcher wants to make sure you're beaning up before the game tonight."

An AL manager told me last month greenies are so prevalent with old and young players alike that baseball would have to shorten the season if they banned them.

But I woulnd't have bothered to post anything about this, if I hadn't read this story about David Ortiz's recent hospitalization that was hiding in plain site on ESPN.com. No one in MSM was going to dissect this story for what it appears to be, so I have to.

Sleeplessness, dehydration sent Papi to Hospital

SEATTLE -- Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz said stress and nearly a week of sleeplessness caused dehydration and eventually the irregular heartbeat that landed him in a Boston hospital last weekend.
The major-league leader in home runs said he was "stressed out about everything" -- including the New York Yankees' first three wins of their eventual five-game sweep of the Red Sox last weekend that has turned both teams' seasons. A team doctor advised him to go to Massachusetts General Hospital last Saturday evening.

And he didn't miss a game -- he has missed only two of Boston's 128 games. He spent one night under observation while receiving intravenous fluids. He went home Sunday and returned to Fenway Park a few hours later to hit his 44th home run in another Boston loss to New York that night.

But he was stressed.

"I stress a lot, sometimes," the usually gregarious, outwardly jolly giant said before starting again as Boston's designated hitter in the series opener against the Seattle Mariners.

"We got to play all those games against New York. You know, there was a lot of stress going on," the 30-year-old Ortiz said. "And then to go out there and receive that [butt] kicking ... I wasn't feeling good. I was beat."

It was his first time speaking publicly about the hospitalization, which was first reported on the Internet earlier this week. He initially would not discuss the situation, and Boston manager Terry Francona continued to honor Ortiz's request to remain mum Friday afternoon.

"He just prefers it that way. I just have to follow protocol," Francona said.

But then about an hour later, Ortiz emerged from the trainer's area of the Safeco Field visiting clubhouse to tell what happened.

"I didn't want to go back to Boston with people freaking out about something like that," he said. "When something like this comes out, the press wants to get more information. But you just want to get it over with."

Now, Ortiz said, "I'm a healthy son of a [gun]."

Thursday, he hit his second home run in as many games to lead the Red Sox to a series win at the Los Angeles Angels. Boston entered Friday with 15 losses this month -- its most in a calendar month since August 2002. But it hasn't been Ortiz's fault. He had five home runs in nine games entering Friday.

He reached 46 home runs in his 125th game Thursday, faster than any hitter in Boston history. Jimmie Foxx hit his 46th in his 140th game of 1938.

"Actually, you know what? I'm feeling way better here on the West Coast," Ortiz said. "There's more time to sleep in. I've been sleeping my [rear end] off."

Ortiz said he began feeling ill between games of a day-night doubleheader on Aug. 18 against New York that dragged into the early morning. Between games, he had gone home and tried to sleep but couldn't.

He said by Aug. 19, "It was like my whole body was cramping ... I've felt dehydrated before, but it wasn't like that. It wasn't a good feeling."

Dr. Larry Ronan, a member of the Red Sox medical team, checked Ortiz after that Saturday afternoon loss to New York and sent Ortiz to Massachusetts General for more tests.

Doctors there found an irregular heartbeat and told Ortiz the cause was stress. Ortiz said he had been having problems sleeping for "four or five days" before his hospital stay.

Forget that by the age of 27 Ortiz had never hit for power (no more than 20 HRs in a season as a 1st baseman, a power position). He was cut from Minnesota, signed by Boston and has been dominating the game since. Announcers consistently express disbelief that Minnesota did this. Something nearly on par with taking Bowie before Jordan in the '84 draft. I express some disbelief that no one has questioned where he found all this power beginning in 2002. It's possible was natural, he is a big guy, maybe he was just coming into his prime.

Big Papi is nearly universally heralded for his clutch hitting and expansive personality. People just want to give him a big bear hug and have him carry them on his back.



The story above is the type of thing you would want to cover up as a player and team, especially when we are talking about the Big Papi. At least I think you would want to cover up this story because there is seemingly such a one to one correlation between the described symptoms surrounding his trip to the ER and someone who has clearly taken too much speed for too long a time with too little sleep.

Consider the following:

• Symptoms of an Adderall overdose include restlessness, tremor, rapid breathing, confusion, hallucinations, panic, aggressiveness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, an irregular heartbeat, and seizures.

• Other, less serious side effects may be more likely to occur. Continue to take Adderall and talk to your doctor if you experience
• restlessness or tremor;
• anxiety or nervousness;
• headache or dizziness;
• insomnia;
• dryness of the mouth or an unpleasant taste in the mouth;
• diarrhea or constipation; or
• impotence or changes in sex drive.

Shit is nervous.




I assume everyone in the NFL is on steroids and speed. But this doesn’t matter to me in a sport where it is a battle of strength, team vs. team, war metaphors and the like, fighting it out in the trenches, the war room, a quarterback as "field general". Everyone is doing it, an equal playing field, so it matters to me less. All is fair in war...



You are competing against the player in front of you. Mutual assured destruction. Superpowers, fully armed. Order, peace, and some really cool caches of weapons on display every Sunday.







In baseball again everyone may be doing IT, but they are also always competing against history or some gold standard in understood physical limitations, a 500 foot homerun, 61 homeruns in season, 755 for a career, a 100 mph fastball. These types of statistics are not as much a part of football. The highlights are of one-handed catches, and violent tackles. No one reads the box score in football. People are more let down by the disclosure of steroids (and speed) in baseball. But we already know this and this has been talked to death.



I am less interested in proselytizing about drugs and sports, than I am in pointing out how no one else is pointing out that Ortiz's symptoms seem to be so straight forward and so widespread across the sport. Just read the back of a prescription pill bottle.



Stay hydrated, brother. Get well soon.