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Spilling the Greens: Ron Darling Book Talk

Edgy MD Apr 06 2016 12:35 PM

Big story coming out is the surprising-to-no-one revelations by Ron Darling in his new book about the rampant, egregious, and in-game drug use by his 1986-era team. It should lead to some lazy moral leverage and bad parallels — if the Mets were all on drugs, why shouldn't Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?! — but the main news is that the highly educated and highly employed Darling is spilling the beans and not some broken down-and-outer like Lenny. http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-drugs-and-alcohol-fueled-the-1986-mets-1459795793?mod=e2fb When I first came up, there was a jar of pills that was kept in a prominent place—prominent, that is, if you knew where to look for it. It was called the jar because, come on, baseball players weren’t the most creative bunch. It became part of our language, our shorthand. If someone was scrambling, trying to mask an ache or a pain, or maybe to recover from an injury, he’d say, “I’m in the jar today.” Each pill had its own name. The five-milligram amphetamines were known as white crosses—and these were passed around like candy, if that was your bag. The heavier doses were black beauties. Remember, this was well before the common use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs; in many ways, you could make an argument that the drugs of choice in our clubhouse were more performance reducing than anything else. But most starting pitchers were loath to mess with any chemicals that might mess with their mind-set—anyway, I was. You’ve got all that time between starts, the last thing you want is to be anxious and on the edge for four days; if anything, you want something to take the edge off. It should be something good for broadcast yammering about for a few days, which suggests maybe opening day wan't the best time for a release.

cooby classic Apr 06 2016 01:07 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

Being pretty naive about drugs myself, could these be Tylenols w/ codeine?

Edgy MD Apr 06 2016 01:31 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

I'm sure there was a lot of that, but he's mostly describing abuse of amphetamines, something far more black market. Baseball players have largely replaced them with abuse of ADD medications and hammering energy drinks.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Apr 06 2016 02:05 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

This is just my own personal suspicions but I'll bet Ron is suddenly forthcoming on greenie use in part as a means to NOT say what else might have been used. It seems like the world is more or less ready to accept the truth that ballplayers used those than it is to confront that coke remained a thing, or that roids were probably also coming into at least some use, in that era.

A Boy Named Seo Jul 20 2016 07:16 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

Is this the only Darling book thread? or is there another?

Frayed Knot Jul 20 2016 08:12 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

As far as I know it's the only one. I haven't gotten around to this book yet.

Zvon Jul 20 2016 08:17 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

cripes:wrong thread

A Boy Named Seo Jul 20 2016 08:57 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

Frayed Knot wrote: As far as I know it's the only one. I haven't gotten around to this book yet. Thx, dude.

d'Kong76 Jul 20 2016 10:27 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

Generally speaking, it sounds so far like stuff that's not really all that newsworthy. Pill poppin' ain't exactly something that hasn't been gone over time and time again. Until someone says that Doc had cocaine in his rosin bag and used to snort it off his fingers on the mound I think there really isn't much more ground that can be covered on the 80's drug front. I do like the, "I'm in the jar today" lingo. It's like jock speak that a Dead head might use instead of, "I'm on the bus," or "I need a miracle."

A Boy Named Seo Jul 20 2016 10:55 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

I got the impression from reviews and what-not that it was more about Ronnie going shit in Game 7 of the WS than 86 rumor stuff. Was curious if anybody here has read it yet?

d'Kong76 Jul 20 2016 10:59 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

Yes, I believe that's what the book is really about. After all, he's not Lenny!!

A Boy Named Seo Jul 20 2016 11:19 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

d'Kong76 wrote: After all, he's not Lenny!! Poor Ronnie must lament that truth every day.

Frayed Knot Jul 20 2016 11:21 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

I got the impression from reviews and what-not that it was more about Ronnie going shit in Game 7 of the WS than 86 rumor stuff. Yeah that's pretty much it, as the subtitle: 'Failure & Triumph in the Biggest Game of my Life' indicates. Ronnie has a tendency to be a negative guy at times. I personally feel he overdoes the 'I wasn't all that good when I played' angle whenever he refers back to his own career, something that's often a go-to move for ex-player talking heads which I'd prefer he not follow, but that's just my take on it. In any case, he's definitely talked before about how while fans always want to bring up his best games ever his mind is much more liable to revert back to his worst outings and, while he didn't exactly fail in Game 7 of '86, he did need to be relieved by Sid early on after serving up back-to-back HRs and it plainly bugs him even given the eventual outcome. He's also talked/written about Game 7 1988 NLCS vs-Dodgers where he totally laid an egg. I think for the athlete -- and certainly for This athlete -- those kind of games linger longer than the good times and he's described this book as a kind of catharsis for him to hopefully get it out of his system all these years later. So, yeah, more self-analysis and less gossip than we've come to expect from tales of the NYM of '86. And I suspect turning down a big advance from the publisher was incentive as well. As an ex-athlete with both a NYC gig and national network exposure he's probably about as 'hot' as he's going to be right now so it's a good time to cash in.

seawolf17 Jul 21 2016 01:25 PM Re: Spilling the Greens

I got the impression from reviews and what-not that it was more about Ronnie going shit in Game 7 of the WS than 86 rumor stuff. Yeah that's pretty much it, as the subtitle: 'Failure & Triumph in the Biggest Game of my Life' indicates. Ronnie has a tendency to be a negative guy at times. I personally feel he overdoes the 'I wasn't all that good when I played' angle whenever he refers back to his own career, something that's often a go-to move for ex-player talking heads which I'd prefer he not follow, but that's just my take on it. In any case, he's definitely talked before about how while fans always want to bring up his best games ever his mind is much more liable to revert back to his worst outings and, while he didn't exactly fail in Game 7 of '86, he did need to be relieved by Sid early on after serving up back-to-back HRs and it plainly bugs him even given the eventual outcome. He's also talked/written about Game 7 1988 NLCS vs-Dodgers where he totally laid an egg. I think for the athlete -- and certainly for This athlete -- those kind of games linger longer than the good times and he's described this book as a kind of catharsis for him to hopefully get it out of his system all these years later. So, yeah, more self-analysis and less gossip than we've come to expect from tales of the NYM of '86. And I suspect turning down a big advance from the publisher was incentive as well. As an ex-athlete with both a NYC gig and national network exposure he's probably about as 'hot' as he's going to be right now so it's a good time to cash in. This is all pretty spot on. I enjoyed the book, all things considered. I don't know that popping pills is any sort of revelation, though. It's been in baseball books for years.

Frayed Knot Jul 21 2016 01:58 PM Re: Spilling the Greens: Ron Darling Book Talk

Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR talked openly about 'Greenies' and the release of that book was now 46 years ago and was about a season 17 years prior to '86 so, yeah, nothing really new about that. Oddly the subject of pills seemed to cause the least concern at the time of BF's publication as Commissioner Kuhn and other fuddy-duddies of that era seemed more concerned about the 'revelations' that players sometimes stayed out late at night drinking and -- GASP! -- maybe even had sex with women who were not necessarily their wives. Not that anyone actually believed, even way back then, that players all went back to their hotel after road games with a copy of 'Field and Stream' and wrote letters home to Mary Sue while drinking a milkshake, but it seemed important to those who were slow realize that 1969 wasn't exactly 1959 that the image that they did stay intact.