Freddy Garcia pitches badly in day games
DMZ · May 1, 2006 at 12:02 am · Filed Under Mariners
…in order to be taken out before 4:20.
Former Mariner and sometimes lamented trade victim Freddy Garcia tested positive for marijuana at the WBC. Not that MLB.com is like Pravda back in the day, but if it’s running there, you know it’s trouble.
We ran our share of posts mocking Freddy-as-partyhead back in the day (okay, I ran posts…) but forget that for a second — if nothing else, if he’s still smoking, it means that married life hasn’t straightened him entirely out.
Anyway, Freddy’s in good company, though I’ll spare everyone a long digression about the insanity of dope-paranoia.
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The ban on marijuana by WADA and other international bodies is silly. It’s legal in some of the governed countries (the Dutch play a reasonable game of baseball, by European standards), and it’s performance enhancing in exactly the same way alcohol isn’t.
Uh, I think you mean “alcohol is”
No. Well, literally, yes, but I was channeling the Douglas Adams “hung in the air exactly the way bricks don’t” line.
PS : Only two ‘A’s in Pravda.
Reefer Madness!
“…in order to be taken out by 4:20.” – hil-ar-i-ous
There’s a comedian, whose name escapes me, has a bit about screening for pot as a performance enhancing drug. The punch line is something along the lines of, “Sure, pot’s a performance enhancing drug…if there’s a pile of Twinkies at the end of the race.”
Robin Williams
I can only assume that Freddy uses that marijuana for strictly medicinal purposes.
I’ve heard rumors that even married people light up from time to time, but that was probably just from liberals who hate marriage.
I don’t think the illegality should be the focus. MJ may not be performance-enhancing, but it is “motivation and concentration-killing” for many people, depending on personality. For a guy that pitches with marginal intensity, and never has truly performed up to the level of his stuff consistently, I don’t think he needs anything else to add to focus (and work ethic) problems. I see some troubling things in Felix that remind me of Garcia (and it doesn’t help that Garcia is his idol). Let’s hope the similarities down the road stop at the jersey number, and Felix doesn’t decide to party with/like Freddy and toke up in his down time. It may not be performance-enhancing, or take a toll on his body in a serious way, but I’d rather he was watching game film, taking stock of upcoming pitchers and getting pitching tips from Jamie Moyer or Roger Clemens rather than watching Bevis and Butthead re-runs all night and making 2 am trips to Taco Bell (2 things I enjoyed very much, but don’t think help a young kid who has the weight of the franchise on his shoulders).
**Nothing in this post is even remotely close to an accusation that Felix does anything but work hard, and in no way do I believe he is currently using drugs. I do nothing more than observe that he idolizes Freddy, and carries himself similarly on the mound, and is bound to get together with him in the future from time to time.
Being twenty is movitation and concentration-killing for many people. Especially in the spring!
#10. True enough. Throw in groupies wherever you go, more money than you could have ever imagined, and everyone telling you you are already the man, and an MJ habit would be even more of a problem. At least Freddy could get happy in relative mediocrity, and mid-level visibility. Felix would be everyday news, and a huge distraction for all invovled. And yes, people would care enough to write about it for many many years. All stuff I hope we never have to deal with.
So when will the Mariners’ brass be suspended for its ruinous addiction to Meche-amphetamine?
Great post; very humorously written!
#9 – It’s Be[a]vis and Butthead!
hung in the air exactly the way bricks don’t
Yes, but the Vogon ships actually did hang in the air.
I don’t see why you’d expect married life to get him off pot. My perception may be influenced somewhat by living in Vancouver (source of most of the pot you’ve ever seen in your life), but it’s not exactly the sort of drug one hides from one’s family.
#14 – “it’s not exactly the sort of drug one hides from one’s family.”
Unless, of course, your uncle is also now your manager by virture of the marriage. I suspect he would at least stop taking the bong to extended-family Thanksgiving get-togethers. Probably not a secret from the wifey, though.
I meant “her” uncle is also now your manager . .
Well, we all know Carlos Guillen was scoring the good stuff for Freddy. That’s why he had to be dumped for nothing.
Was the reference to Freddy wanting to be out of games by 4:20 a reference to the old Steve Martin routine of never smoking at dusk, or have I just really dated myself?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4:20
My Gawd. It’s all explained.
The slouching.
The disheveled look on the mound.
The deer in the headlights look.
The inability some nights to do anything but groove the ball.
The occasional shots of him in the dugout shoveling Doritos into his mouth.
OK, that last one’s not true.
My perception may be influenced somewhat by living in Vancouver (source of most of the pot you’ve ever seen in your life)
Actually, having grown up in Oklahoma and gone to school in Colorado, most of the weed I’ve ever seen has either come from Ozark foothills around Tahlequah or from New Mexico.
Not that I ever smoked it, mind you. But I was in Boulder, where the entire student body lives with a perpetual contact high.
I do get the impression in Vancouver that if I meet 10 people in a day, 7 of them are at least occasional users.
Then there’s Ross Rebagliati, the Canadian snowboarder who briefly had his gold medal at Nagano taken away for testing positve. Given what THC does to your reaction time, it seemed to me he deserved another medal (for the biathalon, perhaps?)
Who knows, maybe it helps Freddy. I used to know a guy who was so nervous when he first learned to drive that he was actually a better driver after a drink or two (beyond that, of course, he was much worse and we wouldn’t let him drive). I wonder if a mellowing agent would help, say, Eddie. Well, at the very least it would help those of us watching him in the 9th.
And source of the best ever Winter Olympic tee shirt:
“Spliff up a fatty for Rebagliati”
I wonder if a mellowing agent would help, say, Eddie. Well, at the very least it would help those of us watching him in the 9th.
I don’t see how THC is going to reverse the effects of long-term shoulder damage.
And here I thought “firing up a fatty” referred to the M’s efforts to get Eddie Guardado on track.
I certainly could use something to keep from puking when Eddie’s on the mound.
Ross Rebagliati
If he’d been from anywhere else other than Vancouver and Whistler, his story about “second-hand toke” would have been laughable. Here? You can get that just going to the mall.
Maybe he’s being unjustly punished for being a habitual viewer of the Chroic(what)cles of Narnia back in December. That stuff stays in your system for a long time, doesn’t it?
DMZ- THC can stay in your system from 30-60 days depending on your usage.
Dosage or usage? Both would seem to — never mind.
Maybe a certain former 1996 first round draft choice can try marijuana to see if it enhances his performance. “DUDE! Look at that base on balls! And that homer! COOL!”
THC can be out of your systme in under a week depending on the type of person you are. The easiest way to get it out is sweating and antioxidents (cranberry juice). The one thing that worries me with young people and $$ isn’t pot, its cocaine.
Marijuana isn’t a dangerous drug if you use it correctly, for lazy people with poor work ethics pot isn’t for you. For athletes the side effects of laziness is pretty much squased b/c they sweat out the lingering THC which is usually the cause of a “weed hangover” or that lazy feeling you get the next day. My guess is Freddy like to smoke when he’s done pitching b/c marijuana is one of the oldest natural pain killers on the market. However if Freddy is using it before games to zone him in then that is a different story, this can be argued many ways but personally I think weed is a peformance enhancing drug, it calms the nerves and proivdes hightened focus if the user is profficient in concentrating while “hopped up”. This is a fun thread, I always thought Freddy was a pot-head, my guess is Lincoln wasn’t too found of the movie Easy Rider so he shipped the CHEEF out of town.
ST4L
Maybe this now frees Freddy to start experimenting with a spliff-fingered fastball.
How can anyone have a discussion about weed and athletes and never once mention the NBA? Or, more specifically, the Blazers.
Somehow, they managed to play basketballs and fill a Hummer with a Cheech and Chong cloud of smoke on a regular basis. Maybe it’s simply a matter of not getting high before the game.
So that’s why Vancouver lost its basketball team…
If it makes anyone feel better, a close personal friend of mine is next door neighbots and friends with Freddy’s old dealer.
Pro-Tip: He wasn’t just smoking pot. Well at least he wasn’t just buying pot. Anyway, I don’t want to make rndom accusations it’s just what I hear from a friend I implicitly trust.
Honestly even if he’s just smoking pot, I’d say the percentage of kids his age who do is really really high so given that he ‘only works every fifth day’ and has a ton of cash I’m not shocked.
Jim Thomsen- With not one, but TWO hilarious comments. I love it.
Well, starters PLAY every fifth day. But if you’ve ever been in the clubhouse during FanFest, you’ll see the schedule that pitchers are required to follow on their “off-days.”
26 – That’s just beautiful.
DMZ with a quality 4:20 line, AND a Lazy Sunday reference in the same thread!
I need to stop by here more often…