{"id":11781,"date":"2015-12-28T14:44:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T19:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11781"},"modified":"2016-01-07T16:16:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T21:16:00","slug":"ryan-zimmerman-hgh-and-al-jazeera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11781","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Zimmerman, HGH and Al Jazeera"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Well,<\/a>

Well, if he’s been juicing you could have fooled me looking at his stats lately. Photo team official<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the Xmas holiday weekend, a bombshell broke in the sports media world.\u00a0 The Qatarian TV network Al Jazeera was to air a documentary<\/a> titled “The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers<\/em><\/span>” on sunday 12\/27\/15 and had shared the entirety of the broadcast with the Huffington Post ahead of time.\u00a0 The whole video is available from youtube (via this link<\/a> thanks to Deadspin.com).<\/p>\n

While the “big scalps” claimed in the documentary were more on the NFL side (namely, Peyton Manning<\/strong> and a number of pretty well known NFL players, mostly related to the Green Bay team), there were two baseball players mentioned: Ryan Howard<\/strong> and our own face of the franchise Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong>.\u00a0 There was a third player actually captured on film (journeyman catcher Taylor Teagarden<\/strong>) who should probably get his resume updated, as I doubt he continues to have a job playing after this airs (he’s in the Chicago Cubs organization right now on a MLFA deal), probably faces a lengthy suspension already and would seem to be completely un-signable once its completed.<\/p>\n

I dutifully watched the documentary on TV when it aired on 12\/27\/15.\u00a0 The premise of the show was to have the filmmakers take some (well known?) British sprinter and run him through the under-world of morally questionable doctors here and far in order to see just how easy it was to get PEDs these days.\u00a0 He traveled to the Bahamas, to Vancouver, to Austin and then took a long road trip with the primary name dropper, one Charlie Sly<\/strong>, all with the use of a hidden camera.\u00a0 Sly is the \u201csource\u201d who fingered Manning, Zimmerman, Howard and a slew of other pro athletes and was portrayed in the documentary as a \u201cPharmacy doctor\u201d but per the Guyer Institute where he worked was actually an \u201cunpaid pharmacy intern.”\u00a0 In the film, he frankly looks more like a sloppy college student than some mastermind of PED use.<\/p>\n

Sly, of course, has already recanted everything he said in the film (as was announced during the showing of the program).\u00a0 So, between the clear “name dropping” going on and his lack of actual medical credentials, he’s not exactly a source who inspired confidence. But the problem I have is this: how does he decide to pick these specific athletes? I mean, Ryan Zimmerman and Ryan Howard are pretty random baseball players to pick. No basketball players named; just two aging veteran baseball players who certainly have not exactly shown the kind of career resurgences you\u2019d expect for someone using illegal substances.\u00a0 Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.\u00a0 Maybe he got the two Ryans’ names from some other procedure they underwent at the Guyer institute that was completely legitimate.\u00a0 Who knows.<\/p>\n

The Nats (and Phillies) have issued statements of support<\/a> for their players.\u00a0 All those mentioned have (of course) issued denials<\/a>.\u00a0 The Guyer Institute has announced that Manning wasn’t seen at the clinic during the time period in question.\u00a0 Some reporters have noted that it is common to prescribe HGH to women going through fertility treatments (guess what: the Mannings went through IVF and just had twins).\u00a0 And the Al Jazeera film-maker defiantly defending her work<\/a> and saying that Manning hasn’t answered the charges.<\/p>\n

I think in someways I agree with Will Leitch<\/strong>‘s take on it, as published today<\/a> in Sports on Earth, that once they got a-hold of a big name that became the focus.\u00a0 There’s no “proof” to be had of any of these players other that the discredited and recanted word of one guy with a tenuous connection to the institute where this all supposedly occurred.\u00a0 How reliable is that?<\/p>\n

Life in sports with PEDs is tough.\u00a0 Everyone’s a target in some ways.\u00a0 This documentary could be nothing or it could be completely legitimate, but the damage to all of these players is now done.\u00a0 Whatever the heck Delta-2 is, or any of the other mind-boggling slew of medications mentioned by Sly and the other slime-ball doctors caught on film, is immaterial.\u00a0 The players can say “there’s no proof” until they’re blue in the face.\u00a0 Mike Piazza<\/strong> is the best hitting catcher of all time and has been kept out of the Hall of Fame thanks to one reporter noting that he had “back acne” and jumping to the obvious conclusion (that he was ‘roided up).\u00a0 Is that fair?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Is it reality in today’s baseball climate?\u00a0 You bet.\u00a0 Not that anyone was mistaking\u00a0 Howard or Zimmerman for hall-of-famers, but still its a shame that both guys’ reputations will take the inevitable hits.<\/p>\n

Post Publishing Update 1\/7\/16<\/strong>: Zimmermann (and Howard) have filed suit.\u00a0 Here’s some links post-publishing.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/sports.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/baseball-players-attorneys-spare-no-insult-in-lawsuit-against-al-jazeera<\/p>\n

http:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/news\/2-baseball-players-sue-al-jazeera-over-documentary-012353550–mlb.html<\/p>\n

http:\/\/espn.go.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/14511191\/ryan-zimmerman-ryan-howard-file-defamation-suits-vs-al-jazeera<\/p>\n

http:\/\/espn.go.com\/espn\/otl\/story\/_\/id\/14515727\/charles-ely-recanting-ryan-zimmerman-ryan-howard-ped-usage-allegations-problematic-al-jazeera-media<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/2016\/01\/06\/ryan-zimmerman-ryan-howard-lawsuit-al-jazeera-peds-dark-side<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the Xmas holiday weekend, a bombshell broke in the sports media world.\u00a0 The Qatarian TV network Al Jazeera was to air a documentary titled “The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers” on sunday 12\/27\/15 and had shared the entirety of the broadcast with the Huffington Post ahead of time.\u00a0 The whole video is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[3020,636,889,675,36,3019,2919],"class_list":["post-11781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-natsgeneral","tag-charlie-sly","tag-mike-piazza","tag-peyton-manning","tag-ryan-howard","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-taylor-teagarden","tag-will-leitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11781"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11882,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11781\/revisions\/11882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}