As the LA Angels stand trial over the pitcher\u2019s death in the quiet shadow of the World Series fanfare across town, a sport confronts a truth practically as old as the game itself<\/p>\n
Before steroids, before amphetamines and before fentanyl, baseball\u2019s first documented chemical dalliance came from monkey testicles. In August 1889, a worn-down pitcher for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys named James Francis \u201cPud\u201d Galvin, so nicknamed for his once-devastating ability to reduce hitters to \u201cpudding\u201d, was in need of a spark. He was 32, his right arm a rubbery relic of nearly 5,000 innings pitched<\/a>, his career on the fade. Then came salvation in a syringe. A French-Mauritian doctor by the name of Charles-\u00c9douard Brown-S\u00e9quard published a paper \u2013 The Effects Produced on Man by the Subcutaneous Injections of a Liquid Obtained from the Testicles of Animals \u2013 in which he claimed<\/a> that a few drops of an extract sourced from dogs and guinea pigs might well make ordinary men stronger and more virile. Galvin, a stocky power pitcher, wasted no time getting jabbed with the so-called Brown-S\u00e9quard elixir in a public demonstration at the Western Pennsylvania Medical College, only four miles east from the team\u2019s home ground. The next day he pitched a five-hit shutout to turn back the Boston Beaneaters, adding a double and a triple at the plate off the great Old Hoss Radbourn for good measure. (Take that, Ohtani<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cIf there still be doubting Thomases who concede no virtue of the elixir, they are respectfully referred to Galvin\u2019s record in yesterday\u2019s Boston-Pittsburg game,\u201d wrote the Washington Post, with proto-advertorial flourish. \u201cIt is the best proof yet furnished of the value of the discovery.\u201d No one thought to call it cheating, even before Brown-S\u00e9quard\u2019s colleagues called cap on the tonic\u2019s efficacy<\/a> in the weeks that followed. Why would they? Good old Pud wasn\u2019t breaking the rules so much as pushing the boundaries of willpower and endurance. In baseball, those things have often been one and the same.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the LA Angels stand trial over the pitcher\u2019s death in the quiet shadow of the World Series fanfare across town, a sport confronts a truth practically as old as the game itself Before steroids, before amphetamines and before fentanyl, baseball\u2019s first documented chemical dalliance came from monkey testicles. In August 1889, a worn-down pitcher … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}