More Speedy Baseball

I'm not the only one who noticed the unexpected inclusion of amphetamines in the new baseball drug policy. A real live journalist has a similar take:

"Wait: Are they really going after the greenies?

Is baseball really acknowledging its historic association with amphetamines and beginning an attempt to turn the tide of their use? This is, after all, a sport so steeped in speed that a whole host of its players might not even think they're doing anything illegal when they "bean up" before a game.

Baseball and greenies go together like hot dogs and apple pie, assuming the hot dogs come flying off the grill at Warp Seven and the pie sort of jitters and sweats slightly as it is removed from the oven. They've been together for a long, untouted while, is the thing. ...

But the mere fact of amphetamines' inclusion in this new drug policy is news. Why? Because, from a letter Selig sent to Fehr in April asking that amphetamines be banned to Tuesday's announcement, this marks the first time in the history of the sport that its leaders have actually acknowledged the grizzly bear in the kitchen....

But amphetamines are so old school that many observers just assumed they'd never be addressed. Baseball people have long declared that most fans don't care what a player uses to get himself "ready" to play, and the notion that guys have been popping wide-awake pills for decades, going back well into the Willie Mays say-heyday, carries with it some implied grandfathering in of greenies as an accepted form of game preparedness. ..."

As I said, I think the amphetamine issue is going to surprise a lot of players and fans.