A-Roids sorry

[cj's dad]

Sorry he was caught.

When will MLB take a serious look at the records established during the steroid era - say 1991 to 2008 ?

***** Asterisks are cheap; stick one anywhere you feel the need to do so.


And please, no Congressional involvement !!

[Marshall Bennett]

Sorry he was caught.

When will MLB take a serious look at the records established during the steroid era - say 1991 to 2008 ?

***** Asterisks are cheap; stick one anywhere you feel the need to do so.


And please, no Congressional involvement !!
Subtract the major players involved such as Clemens , Bonds , ect. ect. there wouldn't be much of a record book without steriods . Okay by me , I still enjoy looking at the old books .

[cj]

If what he says is true, 2001 to 2003, he averaged 52 home runs over that time compared to 39 in other years. That is a pretty big jump, a 25% increase. Of course, we have no way to know if what he says is true.

If you use that number, 25%, Bonds' 73 HRs would have been 58, McGwire is 56 and Sosa down to 53. Maris is still the KING!

[cj's dad]

If what he says is true, 2001 to 2003, he averaged 52 home runs over that time compared to 39 in other years. That is a pretty big jump, a 25% increase. Of course, we have no way to know if what he says is true.

If you use that number, 25%, Bonds' 73 HRs would have been 58, McGwire is 56 and Sosa down to 53. Maris is still the KING!

#9 & #7 - my childhood heroes

[Marshall Bennett]

Can you just imagine a Frank Howard or Harmon Killabrew on steroids , or the Mick . I shudder the thought . Willie McCovey hit a ball harder than Bonds ever did in his wildest dreams , and Mantle holds distance records for long balls in several parks . Frank Howard hit a ball out of the park in Washington and they never did find the ball . These guys today don't relly need steroids , they're just spoiled and lazy and want a cheap trip to the top. Not only should they be stripped of their stats , most of them should be serving time .

[cj's dad]

Two memories (damn I sound like Streisand) I will never forget - My father took me to Griffith Stadium in about '58 and I saw Mickey Mantle hit a ball into the upper deck that looked like it would never come down.

Saw Frank Howard in Memorial Stadium hit a line drive so hard that when Brooks Robinson caught it it knocked him down-sheer power. The ball hitting the bat sounded like a cannon going off.

Can you just imagine a Frank Howard or Harmon Killabrew on steroids , or the Mick . I shudder the thought . Willie McCovey hit a ball harder than Bonds ever did in his wildest dreams , and Mantle holds distance records for long balls in several parks . Frank Howard hit a ball out of the park in Washington and they never did find the ball . These guys today don't relly need steroids , they're just spoiled and lazy and want a cheap trip to the top. Not only should they be stripped of their stats , most of them should be serving time .

[Marshall Bennett]

Brings to mind growing up in Houston my dad always got tickets when the Giants or Dodgers were in town . McCovey , known for being the most dangerous pull hitter in the game , hit a line drive foul ball into the box seats along the 1st base line and actually broke the back off a seat . A story appeared in the paper the following morning about the ticket holder of that seat , he asked the Dome management if he could keep the broken backrest . They offered it to him , could have been his broken skull . On another occasion the Reds were in town , I was a bit older then and had my nephew with me . George Foster was on deck and we had moved to the left field pavillion in hopes of a home run . Foster drilled a pitch that never rose more than 20 ft. off the ground and pounded the bottom of the fence about 30 ft. from where we stood . I'll never forget it . The entire fence , probably 4" thick actually shook clear out to dead center . He was awarded with a double . Later he hit a game winning home run no where near us , but when interviewed after the game I wasn't surprised when he said the double he'd hit was as hard as he'd ever hit a baseball and couldn't beleive it stayed in the park . Orlando Cepeda once drove a pitch into an air conditioning duct above third base and broke off a panel , was ruled foul which it would have been anyway . Yeah ... lots of memories .

[OTM Al]

Can you just imagine a Frank Howard or Harmon Killabrew on steroids , or the Mick . I shudder the thought . Willie McCovey hit a ball harder than Bonds ever did in his wildest dreams , and Mantle holds distance records for long balls in several parks . Frank Howard hit a ball out of the park in Washington and they never did find the ball . These guys today don't relly need steroids , they're just spoiled and lazy and want a cheap trip to the top. Not only should they be stripped of their stats , most of them should be serving time .

How do you know Mantle didn't? I know it sounds like blasphemy to some, but steroids have been around since the 20s. Mantle was seeing a physician known in the celebrity circles of NY as Dr. Feelgood, a man who's knowledge of drugs I do not doubt extended to such things. Mantle lost the end of the 61 season because of an absess in his hip from one of Dr. Feelgood's "vitamin B12" shots. If such a scene sounds familiar, it should because that's exactly what happened to Roger Clemens. Mantle's liver was also shot at the end of his life. Yes he was a heavy drinker, but those early steroids also caused long term liver damage.

The moral of the story is, think what you will about it and draw your own conclusions about today's players, but it doesn't bother me a bit because "cheating" has been a part of baseball since there was baseball and I guarantee you that had the stuff been readily available back in those halcyon days, they would have all been taking it along with the amphetamines. The stuff has been around in baseball I believe since the 60s, so who was more the cheater, the guy back then who was one of the few using or the guy in the late 90s-early 00s when 80% of the league at least was on the stuff. We act like this is such a scandal, but it has been there all along. No one wanted to see it.

[rastajenk]

I tend to agree with Al, trying to gain an edge over others is nothing new. My first thought was racing-related: people moan and groan over drugs in racing today, wishing back to the days of hay, oats, and water. When were those days? I doubt they ever existed. Competitive people always try to exploit an edge.

Most of the guilt from the current round of scandal regarding the late 90's-early 00's should fall on the Commish and the Union, who conspired to not notice that longstanding home run records were being demolished in the aftermath of the strike in, what, '94, '95? Why is the game going through this now, some years later? I guess you have to respect that due process takes time to run its course, but it's hard to kneel at the altar of due process when the scandals have been fueled by rumors, innuendos, misrememberings, for-profit books, and other non-legal factors.

All in all, as a baseball fan, I don't care. It's still a team game, based more on hand-eye coordination than brute strength. How many extra wins did a 60+ home run season produce? How many extra wins did a juiced pitcher earn? How much was late game strategy altered because a guy with big pop in his bat might come up with men on? I don't remember the games from the Steroid Era being any more or less exciting, or the results any less true. Tell me when Baseball's navel-gazing is over, so we can just Play Ball.

[PaceAdvantage]

I agree completely with Al and Rasta...it's amazing how the players of yesteryear are painted with such a virgin brush...kind of like how trainers of yesteryear are held up as boy scouts compared to guys like Dutrow and Asmussen today. As if cheating was invented in 1990...

The history of steroids makes it entirely possible that baseball players in the 1960s (including Maris and Mantle in 1961) may have been taking them, although we will never know for sure.

An excerpt:


The story of steroids in athletics is now about to begin:

In 1954, a physician named John Ziegler attended the World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna, Austria, as the team's doctor. The Soviets dominated the competition that year, easily breaking several world records and winning gold medals in legions of weight classes. According to anecdotal reports, Ziegler invited the Soviet´s team doctor to a bar and the doctor told him that that his lifters had used testosterone injections as part of their training programs. Whether that story is true or not, ultimately, the Americans returned from the World Championships that year and immediately began their efforts to defeat the Soviets using pharmaceutical enhancement.

As you may have expected, when they returned to the United States, the team doctor began administering straight testosterone to his weightlifters. He also got involved with Ciba, the large pharmaceutical firm, and attempted to synthesize a substance with strength enhancing effects comparable or better than testosterone's. In 1956, Methandrostenolone (http://www.steroid.com/Dianabol.php) was created, and given the name "Dianabol".

In the following years, little pink Dianabol tablets found their way into many weightlifter´s training program, fast forward a few years, and in the early 1960s, there was a clear gap between Ziegler´s weightlifters and the rest of the country, and much less of one between them and the Soviets. It was also in the 1960´s that another anabolic steroid had been developed and used to treat short stature in children with Turner Disease syndrome (13)

At this time, physicians around the United States began to take notice of steroids, and numerous studies were performed on athletes taking them, in an effort to stem the tide of athletes attempting to obtain steroids for use in sports. The early studies on steroids clearly showed that anabolic steroids (http://www.steroid.com/main.php) offered no athletic benefit whatsoever, but in retrospect can be said to have several design flaws. The first issue with those studies, and the most glaring one was that the doses were usually very low, too low to really produce much of an effect at all. In addition, it was neither common for these studies to not be double blind nor to be randomized. A double blind study is one where neither the scientists nor the subjects of the study know if they are getting a real medication or a placebo. A randomized study is where the real medicine is randomly dispersed throughout the test group. Finally, in those early studies, nutrition and exercise was not really controlled or standardized. Not long after those flawed studies were concluded, the Physicians Desk Reference boldly (and wrongly) claimed that anabolic steroids were not useful in enhancing athletic performance. Despite this, in 1967, the International Olympic Council banned the use of anabolic steroids and by the mid 1970´s most major sporting organizations had also banned them.

http://www.steroid.com/main.php

[cj's dad]

for busting my bubble re: the M&M boys- next thing, you all will bve telling me Randy "Macho Man" Savage was on the juice.

[Marshall Bennett]

One problem immediately presents itself . The evidence against current offenders are nearly concrete . Leave our childhood heroes alone , with them its merely speculation . My law school professors would have told us to LAY OFF !! :D

[OTM Al]

Bud Selig just proved that he, despite getting through some good inovations, is over all much more an embarrassment to the game than any player. This feigned shock sounds even more fake than Alex's appology. All you have to do is remember the classic "Chicks Dig the Long Ball" spots that MLB produced to tell you exactly what was up. And Pete Rose has even had comment on him, which is a pure farce. What Rose did was far far worse for the integrity of the game than what Alex did. That idiot still hasn't learned after all these years. (He also is continuing to lie about what he did btw)

Drugs or not, Alex Rodriguez is a top 5 all time player. Nothing changes my mind on that. Its just too bad he doesn't have the emotional stability something like that requires. The jealousy of the sports writers has found a favorite target and they will never let up on him no matter what he does, right or wrong.

[OTM Al]

One problem immediately presents itself . The evidence against current offenders are nearly concrete . Leave our childhood heroes alone , with them its merely speculation . My law school professors would have told us to LAY OFF !! :D

I'm not saying he did or didn't but that there is circumstantial evidence. He was also an alcoholic and took the amphetamines with everyone else back then. Enjoy the legends and the good times you had while watching. In real life these people rarely live up to that.