Steroid Symphony
Posted: February 15th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 100 Comments »
This is a very long and winding bit about steroids and baseball. It is not meant to provide any answers. It is an exploration. And if that sounds geeky and Star Trekky, well, that’s probably about right. You know, in the original Star Trek they were going where “no man has gone before,” but in Star Trek: The Next Generation they were going “where no ONE has gone before.” Interesting to see that word change took place sometime between approximately 2065 and 2135.
I’m stalling now.
I’ve made it clear, I hope, that as a fan I find the use of steroids in baseball (and all illegal “performance enhancing” drugs — we’ll call them steroids throughout) to be a mind-twisting puzzle. I can feel moral outrage about the cheating and lying and awful example steroid use sets for children. And I can also wonder why nobody seemed to feel that same moral outrage about amphetamines or steroid use in football. I can feel anger that this game I love is not entirely natural. And I can also wonder: What is natural?
I can spend hours on this conundrum.
Steroids are illegal to obtain without a prescription.
Pain killers are illegal to obtain without a prescription.
Steroids are used, in part, to help an athlete recover quickly and train harder.
Pain killers are used, in part, to help an athlete to recover quickly and play more.
Steroids can have devastating side effects, short and long term.
Pain killers can have devastating side effects, short and long term.
Players on steroids have been chemically enhanced.
Players on pain killers have been chemically enhanced.
Steroid use is cheating.
Pain killers are part of the game.
Of course, you can punch holes in the puzzle, talk about how teams DO get prescriptions for pain killers, and steroids leads to athletes becoming stronger and faster than is natural. You can say that they’re not the same thing at all, certainly not on a moral level. I don’t disagree with that. I’m not sure I agree with it either. I don’t know.
So here’s what follows: Snippets of thought, questions, opinions, doubts from some of the smartest people I know along with a few of my own ideas thrown in the middle. Maybe at the end there will be something closer to clarity. Or maybe it will be more confusing than before. I’m better on the latter. But I hope that somewhere in here, you will find a bit of yourself.
* * *
Overture
Baseball is a great game, but not a great sport. (Columbus Dispatch writer Todd Jones)
Baseball is bigger than all its messes to me. (Mechelle Voepel)
Baseball is, always will be, my fourth favorite sport (Tony Posnanski)
Fair play is a big big thing for me, personally. (Baseball writer Ed Price)
As for my feelings, the entire story has reaffirmed my faith in the ignorance and pettiness of about 90% of the people who cover the game for a living. (ESPN’s Keith Law)
Baseball is supposed to be a regular game played by regular folk with extraordinary talent (New York Post’s Mike Vaccaro).
Baseball is the eternal game where we obsess for hours, days, months, years in trying to measure players’ success over the decades. (Washington Post’s Les Carpenter).
“The baseball field is not a stage. It’s a community.“ (Music executive Brian Hay).
”Baseball is so difficult that cheating isn’t just accepted but encouraged.” (Kansas City Star writer Blair Kerkhoff).
”I love baseball, but in a way it has turned into wrestling for me. I’m always wondering if what I saw was real,“ (Tommy Tomlinson).
”Am I outraged? No. Sometimes I am a little bit, but overall I would say no.” (Alex Belth).
* * *
Curtain
Something feels very wrong about steroids, something that goes beyond the words and arguments. For instance, you will hear people say: “Steroids have terrible, debilitating side effects.” I have no doubt they can have those. But if tomorrow someone invented a Performance Enhancing Drug that was perfectly safe — or more to the point, if someone has ALREADY invented a perfectly safe and powerful PED that had no ill side effects at all — I cannot imagine feeling any better about them.
Anyway, we are a side-effects nation, aren’t we? There are endless commercials on television about performance enhancing drugs with debilitating side effects. Viagra is not only A performance enhancing drug, it is THE performance enhancing drug. It truly enhances performance.
Side effects for Viagra may include (many of these in very rare cases — and the company insists that it is uncertain if these were side effects were directly related to Viagra use):
Headaches
Facial flushing
Upset stomach
Nasal congestion
Photophobia
Blurred vision
Blindness
Severe hypotension
Heart attacks
Stroke
Sudden loss or decrease in hearing
Irregular heartbeat
Death
The last one is particularly harsh. And of course, there are those famous four-hour erections. Call a doctor immediately.
Well, there are legal ramifications with steroids, right? Buying steroids without a prescription is illegal. But I don’t think legality is the larger issue either. Buying Viagra without a prescription is illegal too — ask Rush Limbaugh. Also, steroid use is not illegal in other countries. And, once again, if tomorrow there was a steroid that helped baseball players get much stronger, and it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, I don’t think we would feel any better about it.
So, what is this about? It’s about cheating the game. Now, we’re getting closer to the heart of this thing. Using steroids is cheating. As I understand anabolic steroids, they can stimulate an athlete to work out much harder. Plus steroids shorten recovery times. There is even supposed to be some light short-term muscle gain for people who don’t work out much, though the big gains are made with a combination of these drugs and supernaturally intense workouts. This is why many athletes who use steroids do not really believe they are cheating. They are, after all, working out extremely hard.
But they are cheating. Few would argue the point. Of course, few would argue that cheating has been a part of baseball for a long time. The game was practically INVENTED by a cheater — Asa Brainard, a pitcher for the original Cincinnati Reds in the 19th Century, began to throw his pitches with spin, so that hitters had trouble hitting it. Up to that point, pitchers, more or less, were supposed to LET the hitters hit the ball (they pitched the ball, like horseshoes, which is why they were called “pitchers”). It wasn’t until after Brainard and others cheated that people realized the game should build around the pitcher vs. the hitter.
So when does cheating cross our lines? Throwing a spitball is cheating, but most people laugh that off. Corking a bat is cheating, but it’s usually forgotten pretty quickly — there are those who believe that Babe Ruth may have corked his bat. Throwing a baseball at someone’s head on purpose is cheating and extremely dangerous, but it happens and life goes on. Stealing signals is cheating, but it’s viewed as part of the game. It now appears — thanks to the exhaustive reporting by Joshua Prager for his book “The Echoing Green,” — that in 1951 — when the Giants came back from oblivion and caught the Dodgers and beat them on the famous Bobby Thompson “The Giants Win the Pennant” homer — that a large part of that amazing story had to do with the Giants stealing signs using an exhaustive cheating system. That has not shaken the game to its foundation, and Congress has not investigated.
I’m not saying any of these are cheating on the level of steroid use. I’m saying that, as a baseball society, we can be awfully casual about cheating, until it comes to steroids when suddenly we become prosecutor, judge and jury all in one.
Steroid use is unnatural. There is that. We see these steroid users — or at least the ones who we suspect of steroid use — and we see the extra muscle, we see the receding hairline, we see pop-ups carry over fences. It’s unnatural. It FEELS different from stealing signs and throwing spitballs and corking bats. Then again, there are numerous things players do that are unnatural and perfectly acceptable. Laser eye surgery is unnatural. Tommy John surgery is unnatural. Taking pain killers are unnatural. Many of these legal supplements you get at GNC are not exactly unnatural — they usually say “natural” on the label — but cthey can provide at least some of the benefits of steroid use. And of course, there are amphetamines, which are illegal and unnatural and have played a big role in baseball for a very long time.
But, please, don’t get get me wrong: I’m not disagreeing with the overall point. I’m trying to make it. There IS something about steroid use that seems to transcend all of these individual things, something that hits closer to the gut. It is something harder to explain, at least for me, something that goes beyond the individual arguments. Maybe it’s the combination of things. Maybe it’s because steroid use is illegal AND unnatural AND cheating AND a bad example for children AND against the spirit of baseball. Maybe steroid use overloads our circuits.
Maybe it’s because I’m scared of needles.
* * *
Lights
“Everyone looks for that edge. The only reason we didn’t use ‘em is because we didn’t have ‘em,” the late Buck O’Neil.
“Apparently baseball was too stupid and stubborn to admit they had a problem.” (Charleston columnist Ken Burger).
“This is cheating on the history of the game, sort of like Flo Jo setting women’s world sprinting records 20 years earlier than it should have been possible.” (AP columnist Jim Litke).
“If PEDs were, at one point, NOT against the rules, why didn’t guys shoot up in the dugout? Because THEY KNEW THEY WERE CHEATING. ” (Ed Price).
“Yes, ballplayers have cheated the game even though baseball didn’t have a drug-testing system. They cheated the game because they had no appreciation for what makes baseball different than other sports: that link to its own past.“ (Todd Jones)
“The real loser, however, for baseball and all its fans, is in the tarnish to the record book. Major League Baseball’s career home runs leader is arguably THE iconic record of all sports, but now it’s gone the way of the heavyweight title. No one really owns it.” (Cincinnati Bengals Public Relations Director Jack Brennan).
“On one hand, I am disappointed and turned off by players using PEDS. But the other part of me shrugs my shoulders, understands why competitive people with raging egos would be seduced by the allure of PEDS, and figures this is just the way of the world.” (Alex Belth).
“Baseball records from this period will have asterisks in people’s minds forever, and that’s the price this sport will pay.” (Mechelle Voepel)
“In a moral sense, sure, they cheated the game. In the real world though, if everyone else is doing it, you’d better do it, too. Complicated.” (Author Leigh Montville)
“Every writer who talks about HGH as a PED is a moron – the available studies say it doesn’t enhance athletic performance. People write about steroids as if they turn the pre-deal Roy Hobbs into the post-deal Roy Hobbs, but the evidence simply isn’t there to support it.” (Keith Law)
“Maybe it shouldn’t bother me but to see the top six spots on the single season home run leaders list filled with the names of players that we are certain used steroids (Bonds, McGwire, Sosa) it breaks my heart. I literally feel a pang in my stomach when I come across that list.” (Les Carpenter)
* * *
Football and Baseball
“Football is a game of DOWNS. What DOWN is it? Baseball is a game of ups? Who’s up? Are you up? No, he’s up.” (the late George Carlin)
One of the arguments that never seems to end is why people seem so put off by steroid use in baseball while seeming more or less untroubled by steroid use in football. Barry Bonds is a pariah, Shawne Merriman does television commercials. Generally, people will say that this is because baseball is a game of numbers — and the perception is that steroid use has forever skewed the numbers — while football is a game of action. Generally, people will say that football is a game of gladiators which makes us less concerned what they use, while we look to see more of ourselves in baseball.
Tommy Tomlinson brought up a winning point, one I had never really considered but now find persuasive. Point: Generally speaking (and, yes, we are dealing very much in generalities here) people might not be upset about steroids in BASEBALL as a whole. No, what seems to upset most is the steroid use of STARS in baseball.
Consider that for a moment … it took me some thought to come around to it. But it seems true that there was little uproar about some of the minor baseball characters who tested positive for steroids. Juan Rincon? Who cares? In fact, until Roger Clemens got tied up in all this, I never even thought people cared when PITCHERS — the whole breed — were charged with using steroids.
Point is, this steroids-in-baseball story has been driven by the stars — McGwire, Bonds, Giambi and Palmeiro (to a lesser extent), Clemens, A-Rod. They seem to anger people most.
Now, we go to football. And while, yes, I think most people believe that steroid use is pretty well unrestrained in the NFL, well, which players are using? I suspect most people would point to the offensive linemen, probably. Defensive linemen, probably. Linebackers. Maybe some of those hard-hitting safeties. Maybe even cornerbacks and receivers. Maybe even an occasional running back.
And … that means a whole bunch of football Juan Rincons are using steroids. These are not the stars of pro football. Even a great defensive player like Shawne Merriman only stirs up so many emotions in most people*. Football is a game without many stars. The STARS are the quarterbacks. And I don’t think anyone believes that Tom Brady or Peyton Manning or Kurt Warner are using steroids. If it came out that those guys ARE using — especially if one had just broken Dan Marino’s yardage record or something — well, then I believe the situation would change dramatically. The NFL would probably run into the same sort of national anger that baseball is dealing with now. What will we tell the children? All that.
*I’d say Merriman is roughly in the same place on the fame meter as Andy Pettitte, whose confession did not seem to rile people up much either.
But few believe that Brady, Manning, Warner or any of those guys are using steroids. As it is, football is a game played mostly by nameless and faceless warriors … and how they get ready for war does not seem to concern people much. In baseball, some of the biggest stars have been exposed and so, the game has been exposed. In football, people probably do not mind too much if their quarterback is being protected by someone who took steroids to help get stronger.
* * *
Football and baseball II
“The NFL has always exercised much tighter control over its media, going back to Tagliabue. Compare how limited access to players is for NFL writers vs. for you. It’s simply a double standard.” (Keith Law)
“I feel you may be wrong about football having as pronounced a usage. My experience with NFL types, ours and at least a few others, is that they’re all puffed up about having gotten ahead of the steroids thing years ago. As an NFL man, I urge you to check that we may have done a lot better than baseball in getting steroids out of the game.” (Jack Brennan)
“EVERYBODY in football is using (as opposed to maybe 3 out of 4 in baseball is my guess), and anybody who looks at their frames and doesn’t see steroids, HGH, etc., screaming from every pore is in denial.” (Jim Litke)
“Steroids in baseball is a bigger issue than in football because we like to romanticize baseball as the national pastime, as if it’s some pure thing. That’s nonsense, of course. … We like to believe in the fantasy, the father-and-sons playing catch poetry, the Field of Dreams crap. .. Football, on the other hand, is just violence and spectacle. It’s Roman gladiators. We expect people to do what it takes to win in football. We just want blood, gore, noise and big hits. Drugs fit into that whole scene. Baseball is Mickey and the Duke, but football is more Sid and Nancy.” (Todd Jones)
“It has everything to do with how the two sports are judged. Our records are being attacked in baseball, and when you’re dealing with fond memories of heroes past, that’s a touchy thing.” (Sam Mellinger)
“I think the NFL had a long time to learn how to cope with it. In baseball, it seems as if the powers at be, from Bud Selig and Don Fehr down to the club owners, had their collective heads in the sand for years.” (Alex Belth)
“ This may be a flawed analogy, but it reminds me of, say, a person who was cheating on his partner and then admitted it to that person – ‘Hey, I stray, and I know it’s wrong so I’m going to try not to.’ And whether he actually does try to stop cheating, he may get credit just for saying he’ll try to stop. Whereas baseball, for too long, was like the guy who denied, denied, denied and lied … and now isn’t going to get an ounce of sympathy since he’s been nailed.” (Mechelle Voepel)
“I think we forgive football steroids because we know they are in pain and have short careers. We know football players are on a virtual cocktail of injections just to get up on the stage. And if steroids are one of them, so be it.” (Brian Hay)
“Baseball is an individual game. The focus of the action is a continual series of one-on-one battles between a pitcher and hitter that everyone watches and can understand. … Football is different. Football is also a series of one-on-one battles but quite frankly we don’t know what the hell is going on.” (Les Carpenter)
“The sacrosanct records of baseball are the whole deal. The drugs throw them out the window. Drives people crazy. Same with track and field, weightlifting, etc., where everyone runs around in great consternation. (We should kill Marion Jones! Ben Johnson!) Football’s records don’t mean a lot and aren’t really changed by the different bodies and different speeds. The game of football isn’t really changed, just bigger collisions involving bigger people.” (Leigh Montville)
* * *
Steroids and Amphetamines I
Another of the ongoing questions has been why steroid use has created an uproar while the use of amphetamines does not seem to both most fans. Using either one without a prescription is a federal crime. And some of the biggest names in baseball history have been tied to greenies. John Milner said Willie Mays introduced him to them. Willie Stargell was named. Hank Aaron in his book admitted to using amphetamines once but felt like he was going to have a heart attack and never used them again. Pete Rose admitted using them to Playboy. Jim Bouton in Ball Four estimated at least half the players in baseball were using them.
So, why is that different? Some would tell you that steroids are performance ENHANCING (they make you better) while amphetamines are performance ENABLING (they get you out on the field to play). Of course, others would disagree strongly with that. I don’t know, of course, but I was once talking with a scout about a player who had been excellent and promising when he was young but who, for reasons that were not entirely apparent, had become barely playable at the big league level. The conversation went something like this.
Me: I just can’t believe the way this guy fell off the map.
Scout: It’s the greenies.
Me: What?
Scout: He used to play with all kinds of energy. He was always in the game. He was always pumped up. That’s not natural. You can always tell a player who is playing on pep pills. They’re always into it, running out every ground ball. When you see players playing with that sort of energy in late July, in mid-August, they’re probably on something.
Me: So, he stopped using them.
Scout: That would be my guess. He doesn’t play with that same energy or focus. Greenies really keep you in the game. I used them. I played 10 percent better when I used them.
That’s just one opinion, and it isn’t scientific, but again — using amphetamines without a prescription is illegal, it’s cheating, it’s unnatural. One person can say, “Amphetamines don’t help you put on 20 pounds of muscle,” but someone else can counter “Yeah, but steroids don’t give you an instant boost of energy without any work at all.”
They are different drugs. But why are they different crimes in the minds of so many?
* * *
Steroids and Amphetamines II
“Amphetamines seem to be viewed mostly as an amped-up diet cola. And, in a way, they are. They don’t so much improve performance as enable a solid performance. They’re aspirins to clear up a nasty headache, as opposed to a roll of quarters held in the hand underneath the boxing glove.” (Leigh Montville)
“I think amphetamines are relatable — anyone who ever had to stay up all night for a college test knows they took something like greenies to help them out.” (Mike Vaccaro)
“The difference? Ignorance about the effects of these drugs, and the meddling of Congress.” (Keith Law)
“I’ve never seen studies on this, but I would think uppers might actually make your performance worse — your hands more shaky, for example — but they might make you THINK you’re playing better. Steroids clearly make you stronger, and not only that they help you heal faster.” (Tommy Tomlinson)
“Steroids simply became the poster-child drug of convenience. Too much chemistry confuses people.” (Ken Burger)
“Amphetamines improve mental performance, for the most part. Oddly enough, most fans don’t think of that as real enhancement.” (Jim Litke)
“It’s all about the needle. Taking ‘roids is messy. You got to shoot them into your system. Amphetamines are just little pills you slip into your mouth. It’s much easier to think about some ballplayer in the ’70s taking a little pill at his locker than to think about the image of two guys using needles in the bathroom stall.” (Todd Jones)
“In spirit, I think they are awfully similar. Cheating is cheating to me.” (Alex Belth)
“It’s easy to point to the effect of steroids: balls hit further or thrown harder. So they seem more directly ‘performance-enhancing.’” (Ed Price)
“I’m going to take the conservative political approach and blame the media.” (Brian Hay)
* * *
Big Finish
“When you see a home run in a big game, can you simply enjoy it for what it is? Can you simply marvel at the skill and the timing without wondering if the hitter stuck a needle in his butt before the game? … I can’t.” (Tommy Tomlinson)
“I quit rooting for baseball in the early 1990s _ before the super-sized era began _ when Bud and his boys got greedy, made a naked power grab and kicked Fay Vincent to the curb. They rubbed your nose in the idea that baseball was more a business than a game (even though it was always true), so I don’t mind watching them chew on their livers over this stuff, hypocritical as the rest of us are for tsk-tsking over it.” (Jim Litke)
“I’ve had a very specific change of heart about this. I hate that players took them. But for instance I changed my mind about McGwire — I voted for him to go into the Hall of Fame this year because my feeling is thus: if baseball didn’t care enough to legislate this stuff in its own house, why should it fall to me to be some kind of retroactive sheriff?” (Mike Vaccaro)
“Steroids are illegal, period. There is no justification for it. … But I think people are making too big of a deal about it. Barry Bonds would have still had over 700 home runs, and A-Rod would still be a great player. If you are great, you will always be great.” (Tony Posnanski)
“I hate what has happened with steroids but God I can’t wait to smell fresh cut grass and hear the crack of a baseball against a bat.” Les Carpenter.
“(To the question ‘Did players cheat the game?): No. The evidence for major performance enhancements is limited. A-Rod barely benefited during the years he said he used.” (Keith Law).
“A-Rod won’t be getting a Hall of Fame vote from me because he showed a lack of integrity and sportsmanship.” (Ed Price)
“(Steroid use) clearly upsets the game’s balance. When a perfect pitch that otherwise would have coaxed a pop out from Bonds, McGwire or A-Rod goes out of the park, that’s more wrong to me than if a spitball got Mays, Aaron or Clemente swinging.” (Blair Kerkhoff)
“Ultimately this speaks to a time and place in the ’90s and ’00s where America in general lost it’s way morally. Greed and ego ruled the day and now we are seeing where that leads. … It has affected my feelings on baseball only because of the dishonesty in the cover up. If Bud Selig were to be forced to retire along with Donald Fehr, I would look at it as a new day.” (Brian Hay)
“It’s a mess and I’m sad the way this has fouled the record book. … But I’m not at all into all the violins for how this will shake the world of our impressionable youth.” (Jack Brennan)
“Nothing, though, has ever been able to change my love for baseball — not the strike, not the year without a World Series, not gigantic contracts/egos, not PEDs.” (Mechelle Voepel)
“It comes down to this: human nature. I expect people to be corrupted easily.” (Alex Belth)
“I’m not sure it’s changed my feelings toward baseball at all, and I’m not sure if that makes me morally strong or bankrupt.” (Sam Mellinger)
“I always say, flat-out, that both of my bio subjects, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth, would have taken steroids in a moment. Ted especially. He was manic as a young guy trying to get bigger, more powerful. He ate five meals a day, poured down milkshakes, stuffed himself. … If you want to be the best at what you do, I think it’s part of human nature to explore all possibilities. If there was such a thing as an Ernest Hemingway pill I would have taken it years ago, written ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and gone fishing in Key West. I think most of us would.” (Leigh Montville)
“As for baseball, I don’t hate it any less.” (Ken Burger)
* * *
Encore
A few days ago, I got a letter from a father of a baseball player. I will not go into too many specifics, because he asked me not to, but generally speaking his son was a pitcher who had good success in high school and college. He was a borderline prospect … he threw in the high 80s, maybe touching the low 90s now and again. The feeling was that if he could just add a little something to his fastball, just two or three mph, he could make it to the big leagues and make a lot of money and, more than anything, fulfill what had been his dream all his life.
Nobody told him to use steroids. Instead, he was told he had to get stronger. Was that a code? Probably. He worked harder and harder — not that hard work was every his problem. But the fastball stayed right where it had been. And, of course, it was reiterated to him that he HAD to get stronger.
He didn’t use steroids. He knew others were using. He knew that it would have been easy enough to do. He knew that he probably would not get caught. He did not use. And, in a short time, he was released. And he was out of the game.
He would talk to his father sometimes about what might have been. Could steroid use have helped him get stronger and add the extra miles per hour he needed on the fastball? Could he have made it to the big leagues? And, conversely, what if the game had been clean — how would he have competed against all the other pitchers who, naturally, threw fastballs in the high 80s, maybe touching the low 90s now and again? He did not know. There is no way to know.
Maybe he just wasn’t good enough. Maybe he was.
Or maybe, and this is the thing, maybe he was too good.
Loading ...
Great post, Joe. It leads me to think that the “something” about steroids is how it removes us – the “ordinary” fan – even further from the game. I think an extraordinary aspect of the appeal of baseball is / was its pastoral qualities and the sense that these guys were “everyman”. This is why we love the Ecksteins of the world, because we believe we could do it or have done it too, “if only”. Steroids remove “if only”. Steroids remove some of the more subtle pleasures of the game as well – steroids mean money, records, pressure… Perhaps the antithesis of what attracts most of us to the game in the first place.
Would you take that Hemingway pill? I know I would, in an instant. Would it be unnatural? Definitely. Immoral? Maybe. It feels so disturbing for me to hear these athletes using drugs to extend their natural physical limits and reach astounding physical qualities. Yet if there were some pill that allowed us to raise the IQ and achieve creative genius, we’d find it awesome and miraculous. The music that the Beatles created on hallucinogens is wonderful and transcendent, but an otherwordly fast sprint by an juiced-up track star is an abomination. I don’t necessarily think it’s hypocritical, but that quote definitely speaks volumes.
Reading Mechelle Voepel’s comment, it hit me: Baseball is the Pete Rose of sports. Deny, deny, deny, lie, lie, lie until you get caught.
Often these discussions confuse two issues.
On the one hand, the discussion focuses on “why” many people are angry over steroids. There it considers their emotional response, their personal moral codes, their subjective perspectives. It runs along the lines of the comments people sometimes make to defend their racism or homophobia or the like. “Well, that is the way I was brought up. That is what I believe. In my day, things were different. People feel threatened by them or it.” And so on.
On the other hand, the real issue is “should” people be angry. Are they right to be (not feel) disillusioned or betrayed or scared. And on that score, I think Keith Law is exactly right. It is ignorance, mythology, misinformation and hysteria that has led to the attacks on players and the calls for penalties for those who are proved (or suspected?) of being users before 2004.
I am not particularly interested that someone “feels” it was wrong or immoral or cheating to use steroids, or that s/he “feels” that the sacred records have been violated or any of the other arguments that explain why the anger. They are either wrong or exaggerating. If they are saying it as the first step to seeking therapy, like an alcoholic admitting s/he has a problem, good for them. But if they are foisting their irrational fears and loathing on others, then they are the ones acting in an unethical manner.
I actually thought of Eckstein on the part about running out ground balls in July and August. Hey, that’s what it’s come to.
How many of the talking heads on this–or more important subjects–have had plastic surgery to help extend their careers?
Outstanding post, Joe, and the best I’ve seen in trying to make sense of all of this. I can’t make sense of it myself, so I’m just going to go back and watch baseball this season. (This is a particularly dead time of year, isn’t it?)
I think people are angry that baseball players make so much money to play a game (not my opinion, but I hear it from many), and so are more than ready to condemn them for something like PEDs. Football players don’t make a lot of money, comparatively, and do massive harm to their bodies by playing their game, so the ire isn’t there over their use of PEDs.
I think people see football as viscious, performed by meatheads and it just simply doesn’t surprise anybody they would be on steroids which is an extension of your Manning, Brady, Warner point because not only are they stars but they dont play visciously.
I think its amazing that Selig has a job after that mess. I dont even care if it was his fault. it lacks a common sense in a Public Relations kind of way. any other business (not run by the founder or whatever) would have simply said “sorry, bud, we’re going to need you to fall on the sword. enjoy your $18 million, here’s a golf course i think you’d like. we’re bringing in bob costas.”
In ‘94, I was one of those baseball geeks who knew everything from Cobb’s lifetime average to Frank Thomas’ OBP. The players strike that killed the ‘94 World Series took away some of my love for the major leagues here in North America, but didn’t kill my love of the game itself. Then when the steroid junk started being brought up, I felt a little more of my love for MLB dying. It’s really quite low nowadays. My love for baseball though, is still sky high. In my mind, it’s like, “How can MLB ban Shoeless Joe for life but keep no-doubt modern cheaters?”.
Could someone point me to the spot in the rule book where it says that stealing signs is illegal (and therefore cheating)? I’ve just looked through it and can’t find any reference to sign stealing, but I could have missed something. Now, obviously having someone in the stands stealing signs and communicating them to the players is illegal (if for no other reason than that any communication with spectators is illegal), but I always understood that it’s perfectly legal for a runner on second to flash the catcher’s signs to the hitter, if he can. It may get someone plunked for bad etiquette, but I don’t think it’s cheating. Likewise, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing the same thing for signs from the base coaches.
An absolutely fantastic post, even if your Star Trek dates are off by about two centuries.
Great post.
I enjoy Buck’s quote and my own personal opinion falls somewhere near to the gist of his comment.
One thing which is overlooked is how much the game changed in the late 80’s. We were told then that it was the workers in Haiti wrapping the ball tighter, but it now seems that the steroids were becoming more prominent. Or were they. As ridiculous as it it is to make the assertion that is was Haitian unrest which led to tighter baseballs which led to more homeruns, it is and was equally ridiculous to blame the entire era’s faults on nothing more than steroids.
The game changed and several factors caused it.
The fact is that pitching was very diluted, and it was to be further diluted by expansion.
Baseball, which for the longest time had gotten more than its fair share of the best athletes, was losing great athletes to other sports. This was due mostly to the arrogance of baseball, and because baseball in general forgot to promote its game at all levels.
One of the answers baseball used in order to promote the game was to promote offense. The fences were moved in, the mounds were lowered, I know this was in the late sixties, but my point is that everyone in every part of the game was promoting offense.
Anyway, the game changed. Offense exploded, and anything that caused this explosion was looked at fondly.
The fences were in, but also the players were larger. Were the athletes larger because scouts began looking for bigger players, because the bigger athletes took to baseball, or was it because these drugs came about that allowed players to get bigger and also to possess the skills required to hit a baseball. Probably all of the above.
The game changed, People were upset. The wrath has fallen on steroids because it is simple to point to that and to blame it all on that and to feel that it is OK to be upset about that. Which to me has led to the absurd and outrageous concentration on steroids as this be all and end all evil.
The truth is closer to the fact that there were several factors which led to the game changing. But none of the other factors were so black and white and none of the other factors were so easy to be outraged at.
One of the beauties of baseball is that it is measured. It is easy to glance at the stats and see who is having a good year. Nothing in my life is that measured. Do I have good stats in my marriage? What are my stats at work? My stats at work have so much more to do with the politics of the office than they do with my actual performance. In baseball there are stats and no politics. The fact that those stats are not as easy to look at and measure is one of the things people are upset with, but it of course is not that simple.
Michelle Voepel is exactly right that the game is bigger than any of its messes and the game will survive and become stronger. I totally agreed with the comment that one of the first things that should be done is to get rid of both Selig and Fehr.
This was too long, but I felt strongly I had a few points to make. Joe thanks for the blog. It is way too good to be free, but possibly we can keep it free if we sell out on 09/09/09.
You make some great points, Joe. Many great points. I think that needles are key, and that the fact that it is stars is key.
But you also miss an enormous part of this, and by “this” I mean the reaction in the press.
There is a HUGE generational component to this. HUGE. Mondo-huge!
***********************************
Watergate was incredibly important in our history, not just politically, and not just how most people think about it.
First, it obvously emboldened the press. Investigative reporting got a lot more sexy. The press could be good guy, could save the day. This mean that the media started looking at things more closely, and looking at authority figures more closely. And this meant that the people leaned a lot more about public figures than before. Whereas in the past the studios and the ball teams had arrangements with the press, since then it has gotten a lot more adversarial.
That’s good thing, by the way.
Second, the public got a lot more cynical about public figures. If The President could be like that, with the language and hatred and law breaking, what was still sacred. If The President was nto automatically a role model, who was? No one?
That might not be a good thing.
So, people grew up idolizing Ruth and Aaron and May and Mantle and all the rest. These were larger than life heros, people better than you or me or anyone else we would ever know. Larger than life. Idols we could worship.
All of these sacred records are pre-Watergate. (Yes, Aaron actually broke the record after Watergate, but it took a while for the post-Watergate changes to take hold.) Ball Four was seen as sacrilege before Watergate changed things. But if it had come out in 1980, it would not have had the same reaction.
********************************
So, there are a bunch of people who grew up pre-Watergate and had their idols. Idols they worshipped, truly. And now these mortals are breaking their idols’ records.
Not new gods, mind you. Mortals. Human beings whose flaws they know far too much about. And these human beings are flaws in ways that their idols could not have been.
So, they respond as though their gods have been blasphemed.
Do I go too far with the religious language? Maybe. But listen closely and tell me that I’m really off the mark.
I think Joe should be applauded for having the self-awareness to acknowledge the visceral reaction he has against steroid use, while also being able to admit that, after thinking carefully about the issues, it is very hard to come up with any justification for it. I personally do not have any of that sense–to put it in the terms Joe uses, if it were demonstrated tomorrow that steroids did not have debilitating health effects, and were legalized tomorrow, I would have absolutely no problem whatsoever with steroid use, indeed would probably be annoyed at any player on the team I root for who did not use them. So while I cannot empathize with Joe’s position, I can certainly appreciate the effort he goes through here.
As an aside, it seems to me that if the best reason you can come up with for steroids being “different” than any of a myriad other abuses in baseball’s history is an otherwise indefensible feeling, that should not be sufficient grounds for denying hall of fame membership or calling for records to be stripped.
Awesome post. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t going to follow the uproar over A-Rod, but then Selig had the nerve to come out and say Rodriguez shamed the game. As if the “commissioner” hasn’t already, many times over. (I can’t tell you the contempt I feel for that jackass car salesman.)
The biggest thing regarding the steroid issue though is it has War on Drugs written all over it to me. From the time SI ran the Lyle Alzado story (turns out steroids didn’t cause his illness) there’s been nothing but political grandstanding and media hysteria.
I read somewhere that no one has ever — ever — actually studied the effects steroids have on adult males. We know they’re super-harmful to children and women, but never a serious look at the impact to adult males. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do think a serious discussion of this topic is sorely needed. Joe’s post certainly qualifies.
As for that story about the scout talking about the player who used and then quit greenies, I immediately thought of Angel Berroa…
I often questioned this when people brought up Brett Favre’s “streak” considering he was so doped on painkillers for a couple/few of those years and yet, he would be a Manning/Brady/Warner guy for “purity.”
Excellent post but I just don’t see what it is we get all worked up about. Sometimes it REALLY feels like journalists trying to feel way too important and pious.
/hides behind journalism degree
Can we not fill February with ANYTHING else in the future?
” Hank Aaron in his book admitted to using amphetamines once but felt like he was going to have a heart attack and never used them again.”
Notice that Aaron did not say he stopped using them because he thought it was wrong to use them or that it was cheating but because he did not like the feeling he got. Apparently he was perfectly willing to enhance his performance by using an illegal substance, only stopping because he did not think it would.
The rational response to steroids in baseball demands that you get angry a lot, at everyone from the cheating players to the outraged sycophants in the media. However, baseball is the national “pastime”, i.e., “an activity which makes time pass pleasantly” (to quote the first online dictionary I came across). So I choose not to be angry, or sad, or depressed, or any of these things, and instead choose to either enjoy baseball when it makes the time pass pleasantly, or to ignore it and/or take it less seriously when it doesn’t. Hmmm…maybe that’s actually the rational response to all of this nonsense?
The schadenfreude of A-Rod’s “confession” was and is so wonderful because he’s so obviously a great pantomime villain (on a team which is already the great collective villain of baseball) – I’m quite enjoying the thought of his return to Fenway Park, and the other misfortunes that are certain to come his way. That actually makes me enjoy baseball more, in a certain way, not less. Same for Roger Clemens. Barry Bonds I’m more ambivalent about; he seems like a pretty miserable guy, but then, it seems as if he’s been driven into miserableness by the completely over-the-top reaction to everything about him. So I choose not to be bothered by him, one way or the other. I make these choices individually, slotting them into how I perceive baseball as a personal pastime.
I absolutely see where Joe is coming from in this post…but then, baseball is ultimately a form of entertainment. A pastime. A diversion. When I was a teenager, I used to know every stat and record there was, used to immerse myself in the poetry of the game, used to play boardgames like Pursue the Pennant and Statis-Pro Baseball and console games like RBI Baseball, used to watch nearly all of my team’s games on TV and attend a handful of games in person (always keeping score in the program when I went in person). As a teenager, I was prone to obsessing about things like these, so these peripherals entertained me and helped me pass the time pleasantly. Now that I’m an adult, I do these things less and less, and some of them not at all. Is this because I’ve lost my innocence? Because the game has been spoiled relative to how it was 20 years ago? No – it’s because I’ve gained perspective and wisdom as I’ve moved into adulthood, gotten married and had children about how a pastime should fit into the rest of my worldview. Most of the howling about steriods is wailing into the wind to me, sound and fury uttered by many people who can’t move on into maturity like they should and instead remain trapped in an outmoded form of thinking. If I were a teenager now, maybe I’d be taking the whole PED affair more personally, and I could understand why an obsessed teenager might think that way. But for the life of me, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single obsessed teenager speak out about how steroids has ruined his pastime for him – instead, I get told by a great many adults that *I* should be agitated about this. Well, I’m not, and I wish everyone would just leave me alone and let me make my own mind up about what I should and shouldn’t care about. And if you think steroids in baseball is the #1 cause of lost innocence among American teenagers, perhaps it might help you to gain a bit of perspective and wisdom yourself.
I’m pretty much with Keith Law on steroids. I’m not sure they actually do anything to significantly improve performance (especially with hitters AND pitchers using them), so I just can’t get all that worked up about it. There’s a lot more to hitting a baseball a long ways than being strong.
On another note, I wish people wouldn’t talk about corking bats like it somehow ruins the integrity of the game. All the evidence available suggests that it actually reduces power slightly, if it has any effect at all. It’s stupid superstitious bullshit that a bunch of baseball players who don’t understand physics came up with, and really doesn’t need to be against the rules. The whole silly controversy with Sosa was just painful to watch.
Great post Joe, well done as always to put things into perspective.
As a side note, Keith Law is so frustratingly arrogant…even when he writes something I completely agree with, he finds a way to irratate.
Sorry, don’t remember which quote it was, but one of them was all dashed romance about how steroids meant Bonds woulda popped up but instead hit a homer. You guys. Dreamier than dumbass broke voters in industrial states who stick with GOP out of loyalty to the free market system and tax cuts for the rich. Worried about explosive offense? MLB NEEDED explosive offense. And it didn’t take workers in Haiti to supply it — they were replaced by machines that actually did wrap the ball tighter. Real science. You could look it up. Just like you could look up the dearth of evidence supporting a link between steroids and offensive ability in baseball, and evidence supporting the link between steroids and improvement in pitching skills. The steroids issue is all about you (speaking only to those who have feelings about it, 90% of whom are men and 90% of those never excelled at anything physical). The thing I take from Joe’s post is: It’s all about you, you don’t know what you’re talking about other than how you feel about whatever it is. And, you know, I’m pretty used to living in a country that is run by people who function like that. But for the tiny fact-based community, it’s not that fun.
Hello Joe. Another great blog post.
Re how is the steriod cheating different, maybe it’s because of the conscious effort involved in taking them. You have to find a ’shady’ gentleman who has access to them. You have to get someone to inject you while showing them a part of your body which should only be seen by a significant other. And you have to turn a blind eye to the potential long term health impact.
The Hemingway pill analogy is a good one. Another one I heard a while ago which you may want to ask the borderline pitcher is, if you were told you’d have an unhittable pitch if you didn’t have a middle finger on your throwing hand, would you cut it off? It’s not illegal. I don’t think it’s cheating. It may be performance enhancing. And I certainly wouldn’t do it, because it wouldn’t ‘feel’ right to me. But I’m sure there are a few who would cut it off.
Another question to ask is, would we watch baseball as much if these guys weren’t juiced? Would we be saying, well, these guys aren’t as good as Mays, Mantle et al, so obviously baseball is inferior to what it used to be. And I’m not paying to see an inferior product.
Keep up the great writing Joe! And I hope Hall of Fame Jr becomes a reality!
Maybe I came to baseball too late to have a negative reaction to steroids. Maybe I should be upset. Maybe I should have grown up idolizing larger than life players.
But I didn’t. I became a fan of baseball as an adult, and as an adult, knowing the history of the game, I think steroids are absolutely fine.
Baseball, more than any other sport, is a game based on cheating. It’s a game in which, if you can get away with it, you do it. You don’t have to earn second base. You just have to steal it. If you can manage that, more power to you. Did the pitcher throw a wild pitch on strike three? Run! You aren’t out yet!
Heck, I don’t recall his name, but a player in the 1800s semi-famously used to steal third from first. Ken Burns Baseball mentioned him.
More power to all the stats guys out there. Way to go to all of those fellows desperately trying to compare players of different eras. Thing is… that’s not what baseball is about. I would have thought the dead-ball era alone proved that. Baseball is about winning as many games as you possibly can. If you are going to win 50 games and you are going to lose 50 games, then by God make sure those other 50 games mean something.
Do it with better shoes. Do it with better mitts. Cork a bat until somebody notices. Rub pine tar on your helmet to get a better grip. Steal every base you can. Don’t give the other team the only kind of bug spray that works. If your team specializes in ground ball pitchers, make sure the stadium lights screw up the outfielders eyes. Spit on the ball. Throw the ball at the batter. Throw one pitch at 95 mph and the next at 65. Take uppers. Take steroids. Employ the best weightlifting equipment. Slide into second and lead with your cleats. Prevent the double play with any part of your body. Rub shoe polish on your cheeks. Beat up the pitcher who beaned you. Throw second at the umpire who got the call wrong.
This isn’t a game about honesty. It isn’t a game about upstanding gentlemen. This is alcoholics, liars, adulterers, coke heads, steroid freaks, thieves, barroom brawlers, and men who listen to jazz getting together and hitting a ball as hard as they possibly can with a stick that could kill a man.
I like baseball. I like nachos loaded with enough cheese to kill a goat. I like cheering and booing. I like drinking beer, enjoying Gates bbq, and eating one of those giant sausages. I like buying the coolest new baseball cap. And I like it when my team wins.
That’s baseball.
You know who I blame for the uproar over steroids (and the surreal focus on baseball players while the average NFL lineman has grown 35% in size in the 20 years I’ve followed – that ain’t grain feeding, folks): Bud Selig.
Seriously, has a business (never mind a sport) ever had a worse ambassador than Bud Selig? The guy spent most of the 90s talking down the very product he was in charge of (“why would anyone buy a ticket when we all know there are only 8 teams that can afford to compete while another 10 teeter on the edge of bankruptcy”).
Then, the very steroid era (allegedly) that he now decries happened not just under his watch, but *because* of his fecklessness.
Faced with this, there are two approaches: one is to tidily sweep it under the rug (c.f. NFL, specifically Spygate); but because that would require some basic competence, that is entirely beyond Bud Selig’s ability. The second approach is to say – as a commenter (Ryan maybe?) noted the other day, “steroids was an institutional failure, for which I am in large part to blame. While we should recognize these transgressions, it serves no purpose to single out any one player for what was an institutional failing. We owe it to our fans to move forward together with our partners – the players – while preserving the integrity of the game through enhanced testing so that all parties – fans, players, and clubs, can be assured that there is a level playing field”. (there, would that be so hard to say?)
But instead, what we have is a Chinese water torture of sporadic bombshells – Palmeiro, McGwire, Sosa, Neifi Perez (!! Heavens – is nothing sacred?!), Bonds, Clemens, and now ARod. Each disclosure is met with the same confused, incoherent, and *damaging* babble from Selig – about how disappointed he is, how the player alone is to blame, how there should probably be some sort of punishment…Jesus Christ, Bud – would you please, for one fucking minute, STOP THINKING OUT LOUD!
There’s no way you can retroactive (in good conscience) punish an individual player so long after the fact, for a transgression that didn’t carry a penalty at the time, and at a time when for all we know everyone else was doing it too. And we all know this – you think the MLBPA is going to roll over and allow ARod to be suspended, especially when the disclosure was the product of a supposedly anonymous and confidential testing program?
So when people express their (disproportionate) outrage at baseball, no wonder – the MLB commissioner is inviting everyone to hate his players and his game. And he’s been doing it for 20 years.
Some 15 years ago we had a cat who was nearing the end of her life. She’d have been about 17 years old and spent the greater part of each day sleeping, occasionally stirring herself to wander to her food bowl, where she’d nibble a little then trot off in search of another sleeping place. She was living the cat’s equivalent of the life of a rest home’s oldest inhabitant.
I was prevailed upon by my wife to take the moggy to the vet, the understanding being that he’d tell me that her time was up and the best course of action would be to have her euthanased.
The vet did confirm this, saying her kidneys were shot, but offered an alternative — a steroid injection. “It’ll perk her up; she might have a couple more years left in her.”
I okayed the jab and took her home.
When I arrived home and opened her cage, she strode out, went straight to a grapefruit tree and stripped the bark off it, chased a flock of starlings and caught and killed two, ploughed through the hedge to the neighbour’s place and sliced their dog’s ear, came back and ran about three laps of the garden flat out, then emptied her feed bowl and growled for more.
“Where are you off to?” my wife asked me as I grabbed the car keys and headed out the door.
“Down to the vet’s,” I called back, “to see if he’ll put that needle in me.”
And that’s all I know about steroids.
I don’t think I’d take the Hemingway pill. But the Faulkner pill? That’d be a different story.
“Baseball is, always will be, my fourth favorite sport”
I don’t know who this tony posnanski cat is, but he doesn’t know sh*t!!
Hemingway pill? Faulkner pill? c’mon, you guys are aiming way too low. If I’m a writer, I’m going the Shakespeare pill. Is there even a comparison?
As for baseball, and as a Bosox fan, I’d be taking that Ted Williams pill…without ever a hint of doubt entering my mind.
Wow. Just, wow.
“…A-Rod barely benefited during the years he said he used.â€
Is Keith saying that (1) “barely” benefiting is okay, or (2) he somehow knows how those years would have played out for Rodriguez without the steroids? I don’t think either of those is true, but then again, maybe that just makes me one of the petty, ignorant, such-and-suches that believes steroids has had a large effect on the game. But, in all fairness, I guess if I got paid for having an opinion, my opinions might be a little more, um, opinionated (I’m looking at you, talk-radio hosts).
I took the pill. It was a Hemingway pill. I washed it down with Grapa. It felt good in my throat.
The words flowed. First nouns, then verbs. Adverbs and adjectives followed.
I won a Pulitzer Prize. My ego swelled like Barry Bonds’ hat size.
Man, Joe. I love the finish to this post.
As far as I know players using Creatine are not called cheaters because those milkshakes are legal susbtances to enhance performance because is not possible to detect.
However they are doing the same thing that anabolic roids users: increase to unnatural levels some substances in their metabolism for the same goal: reach muscle mass.
Calling cheaters to anabolic roids users but calling hardworkers gym´s athletes to creatine users is hipocresy.
Good post, although I didn’t read it all. Here’s my $.02: I don’t care about steroids at all, not in baseball, football, track, anything. I grew up with baseball, it was the only sport I could actually play at a semi-competitive level. But it doesn’t bother me at all that all these players used steroids, even the stars. I think the reason why is that I would have done the same thing if I were in their situation. That sort of goes with the Bill James 36-words post from a few days ago. I still think Bonds is maybe the most impressive hitter ever; I mean, watching him at the plate from ‘01-’04 was as good as it gets watching baseball, except for maybe watching Maddux pitch.
A couple other things. 1) I’m 24, and I do think there’s some generational gap at work here. I have one friend who’s all about hating on Bonds and, now, A-Rod, but mostly my friends feel the same way I do. The only reason I have any interest in reading about steroids is how upset these baseball writers get about it (another of the reasons your blog is great, you don’t do that). 2) Somewhat related, the idea of “changing the rulebook” is completely, totally stupid. Mostly I hear this from Kornheiser on PTI. I mean, if someone comes along someday and hits 756 homers and isn’t on something (unlikely, by the way), and you want to call him the real home run king — fine. I totally understand. I disagree, but I get it. But to say that Bonds’ homers just shouldn’t count…that’s just crazy (again, thanks for not doing that, Joe).
Thank you Preston (Comment #9). Too often when someone writes these types of “cheating” columns we’re told that “stealing signs is cheating,” which, of course, it’s not. Nothing in the rules states that players or coaches from the same team must be allowed unfettered non-verbal communication with no interference of any kind from the opposing team. The idea of it is absurd.
If an umpire notices a batter sneaking a peek at a catcher’s sign, he doesn’t penalize the batter a strike. (If the pitcher or catcher notice, though, the batter might need to be light on his feet.)
Also, count me as one who hates the obvious rampant steroid use in football. Mostly because the game doesn’t need it. The sport is entirely relative. Two 260 pound men pushing each other around gives the same entertainment value that two 300 pound men do. Not to mention that most of the big hits that the NFL likes to publicize (and fine players for) are made by the smallest guys on the field — the defensive backs.
Brad K: More likely, you’re just irritable.
Fair play? Striking home run records?
Ummm… The pitchers were doing it too. If both sides are doing it, shouldn’t those be mitigating factors?
Count me as someone who doesn’t care anymore. Yes, it’s a big deal if only a few of the top players did it, but that’s just not the case. And cheating is a part of baseball, like it or not. Pitchers spitting on and scuffing balls, stealing signs, the Metrodome air conditioner, etc., etc., etc…
Re: [5]
I actually thought of Eckstein on the part about running out ground balls in July and August. Hey, that’s what it’s come to.
Anyone that watched his perpetual motion act in the on-deck circle had to think he was probably on some kind of serious stimulant.
It’s funny to me how everyone in baseball, and most that follow baseball have read “Ball Four”, but no-one wants to think that 50 percent-plus of the players they’re watching are on speed (or at least were, up until testing for amphetamines was implemented). Amphetamines were my immediate thought when Clemens hurled the bat shard @ Piazza in the 2000 World Series. I still think that it was extreme stimulant intake that helped him become unhinged, even after I heard about the flashy linament-on-the-testes story from the Torre book.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned (haven’t read all the comments yet) re: Football vs. Baseball, is that football is just flat out bad for your health, so making the ever-popular “it’s a bad example for the kids” argument doesn’t get you very far when attacking steroids in football (or boxing).
Keith: Maybe so.
It’s just my personal opinion that the level of certainy with which you write, and your use of platitudes, often mutes what would otherwise be an interesting or insightful point.
Maybe the limited number of studies don’t back it as much of a performance enhancer, and your Roy Hobbs analogy is interesting. I’m not sure how calling other sportswriters helps you make that point.
Calling other sportswriters “morons”.
drsnell (#32): There are two ways of stealing signs. One is to be smart enough to figure out what’s being mimed. The other way is to string wire from a Polo Grounds center field vantage point, get the catcher’s signs with binoculars, and buzz what’s coming in code to the third base coach (see the 1951 Giants’ miracle run to the pennant). Obviously, the first way is not cheating. Maybe people who say “stealing signs is cheating” are thinking about the second, and that’s more problematic.
Thoughtful post. I see two key differences between greenies and spitballs on one hand and steroids on the other.
1. Greenies/spitballs/corked bats/etc may help performance when they are used, but they don’t fundamentally change the person, and if the person stops using, they stop being altered. Steroids (and the more fervent workouts they enable) make you bigger/faster/stronger, and heck, some studies say HGH even helps decrease the rate at which vision worsens with age, and these fundamentally change a person. They are a different person than it was possible to be before.
2. PEDs just seem to help you cheat MORE EFFECTIVELY than anything else has. Pretty convincing evidence suggests that corked bats, at least, don’t help you, and while everyone was using greenies or throwing spitballs, records weren’t falling left and right. While the data may not exist for steroids (especially new generation PEDs), it’s hard for ANYONE to look objectively at Barry Bonds and try to imagine that PEDs didn’t have a large hand in his unprecedented explosion after age 35. One of my favorite quotes above is the one that says they get sad when they look at the list of top HR hitters in a season. If PEDs don’t work, then why would the top of that list have only people who have played in the past 10 years… to say nothing of their proven (McGwire, Bonds) or strongly suspected (Sosa) use of PEDs?
Also, if Todd Jones is one of the smartest people you know, you need smarter friends.
I like Keith Law, by God I REALLY do. But I don’t get how he can say…
“Every writer who talks about HGH as a PED is a moron – the available studies say it doesn’t enhance athletic performance. People write about steroids as if they turn the pre-deal Roy Hobbs into the post-deal Roy Hobbs, but the evidence simply isn’t there to support it.†(Keith Law)
…with 73 and 70 and 66 and so on staring us all in the face. I buy into his analogy, which is self-evident given the Juan Rincons of the world. But isn’t it also self-evident that steroids and the like have turned really, really good players into really, really, REALLY good players?
Certainly there’s no denying that.
Joe, I couldn’t have said it better. Here I am with a gut reaction re: steroids that makes no sense. I know it doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny.
Blackadder made an excellent point. Visceral reactions can’t always align with what we know to be true. The danger lies in allowing oneself to treat irrational feelings as logically defensible.
McKingford’s well supported vilification of Bud Selig was especially fun to read, as well.
great post
The guy who said baseball is (ideally) a sport played by ordinary people with extroadinary ability had it best, I think.
The problem unique to baseball is that steroids destroy the fantasy of the game. Who hasn’t fantasized about hitting the big home run? Who hasn’t looked at a young prospect and dreamed on him a little bit? Projected the magical season where everything came together?
It seems to me that most sports have an organizing fantasy that they sell to the fans as much as the actual product on the field. Boxing may not be hurt by steroids, but it gets rocked whenever people think the fix is in or that the boxers are pulling their punches.
I don’t know what the fantasy of the NFL would be. Maybe toughness?
Very interesting post. Good quotes. Funny comment by Paul.
1) My problem with PEDs is that they’re extremely bad for your health (Caminiti, Alzado), and only people who have a doctor´s order to take them should do so. Also, they’re illegal. If juiced player X doesn’t care about future health consequences or the law, and gets roided up, clean player Y is going to have to roid up, too, and risk his health and break the law, if he wants to compete. That’s totally unfair to Y.
If there were a PED that was absolutely 100% safe, it would certainly be legally available over the counter just like aspirin, so there would be no reason for baseball to ban it since there would be no health risk and taking it wouldn’t be illegal.
2) I love the NFL and feel guilty about it, since it reminds me more and more of Rollerball. These guys take mountains of unhealthy drugs and beat the living hell out of one another, and usually wind up with their physical and often mental health seriously damaged (Webster, Campbell, and dozens of others). Yeah, I know it’s their own free choice, no one’s forced to play in the NFL, but there need to be some major rules changes. Maybe Obama could make like Teddy Roosevelt back in 1905 or whatever.
3) Personal experience. I swim a little, 20-30 laps 5-6 days a week. Several years ago I was prescribed a course of corticosteroids for a (mild, non-contagious) skin condition, needles in the butt and everything. I noticed that I got less tired swimming, and small but significant muscle growth, especially the triceps.
Often, the “blame the media” canard adds little to any discussion. But, in the case of PEDs, I don’t think we can move the discussion forward without acknowledging the traditional media’s specific role. They’re part of the problem right now, not part of the solution.
1. The football/baseball hypocrisy is perpetuated by the media more than fans. The hypocrisy is in media coverage–not fan behavior. Fans are troubled, but not overwrought by PEDs in both sports. Their behavior–consuming both sports in the highest numbers ever–has been perfectly consistent this notion. The hypocrisy is that football columnists are absolutely punked by the NFL in a way that baseball columnists are not. The week the A-Rod story broke, nobody even covered Dana Stubblefield’s lying to the grand jury about PEDs. Sure, A-Rod is THE star, but Stubblefield is certainly big enough to warrant more than a byline. The NFL keeps journalists basically copying its press releases by folding “reporting” into its own corporate PR function. The NFL can always run the official story, and simultaneously keep other journalists in line. Baseball is only more recently getting into creating its own content.
2. Journalists also have a great deal to answer for in refusing to raise the level of discourse, or even allowing it to move past the “gotcha” phase.
Keith Law is one of the few of the talking heads who has had more to say than “cheater, cheater pumpkin eater!” This story has gone on now for years and years, but it’s still stuck in the same place it was on day one. Again, average Joes are way out in front of the writers it seems. We are BEGGING for some intelligent analysis on this issue. How about bringing leading exercise physiologists into the discussion to tell us what–exactly–steroids and HGH really do? And in what dosages.
At this point in the life of the PED issue isn’t it worth asking, what does science tell us about where the line is between raising physical endurance and actually enhancing performance? Are both considered cheating? If we are so morally outraged as to discount the performances from this era, then I want scientists–not self-important sportwriters–setting the discount rate. That discussion is happening to some extent in the blogosphere (present company included). It’s not happening in the traditional outlets. It’s all “gotcha” and moral outrage all the time. Enough. I’ve already read that column.
Hell, that’s where I feel cheated Joe. I already know players will cheat with whatever is at their disposal unless structures that provide clear disincentives for cheating are in place. Present company excluded, many of your colleagues appear to be incapable of moving past this insight. If this is such an important national–will somebody please think of the children!!!–issue then don’t they owe us that? Fans are flocking in droves to blogs like yours and blogs by people unaffiliated with traditional journalism to get this kind of insight. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I heard Mitch Albom on ESPN radio this past Friday lambasting bloggers for refusing to adhere to “standards” and presumably for not having masters degrees from Columbia. Wuh!? AARGH!!!
I am an attorney and if there were a drug that made me more like Clarence Darrow I would take it. Even if it meant early death.
Especially if I knew that 75% of the other attorneys were taking it and that I might not measure up if I didn’t. That I might have to find another line of work if I didn’t.
Sorry, but security for me and my family would come first, even if it meant taking an attorney PED.
What I love most about this post is that you are open about the fact that you are pulled in both directions and offer reasons in support of diverse positions on the issue. As I have been trying to convince my Intro to Lit students, confusion often represents an advanced state of understanding (Blau). Put another way, denial of alternate positions often represents an unhealthy degree of investment in one’s own agenda.
One thing I find myself pondering is why we aren’t more concerned about what happens going forward than how we view the unchangable actions of the past. There’s too much “this is how I feel” at the expense of “this is what we’ve learned.”
Anyway, thanks for yet another web-gem of a post. Joe Poz for the Hall Jr. Writer’s Wing!
“If it came out that [Brady, Manning, and Warner] ARE using — especially if one had just broken Dan Marino’s yardage record or something — well, then I believe the situation would change dramatically.”
I don’t know if it would. People are up in arms over steroids in baseball because its most hallowed record is a power record. People perceive, and are correct to a degree, that you have to be strong to hit home runs. Since steroids improve your strength, steroids therefore help you hit home runs.*
TD passes, however, are not perceived to be a power record. Rather, the QB is the player on the field who has to use his mind more than anyone else. It’s understood you need elite physical gifts to play QB well, but not necessarily strength.
* I won’t speak to the degree that steroids help. I do think Keith Law, as smart a writer as he is, understates their impact on production. The more egregious claim Law makes, however, is that steroids barely helped A-Rod from 2001-03. Why does he choose to believe A-Rod’s story here? If anything, his similar stats for those years could suggest he’s been using his whole career.
73 and 70 and 66 says it all.
73 and 70 and 66 leave no doubt.
Other suspected examples of “cheating” all come with a little wiggle room. Do they help? How much do they help? A percent here and there? I mean, you could stand me up there with a bat made entirely of cork, load me up with enough amphetamines to stay awake through a week of Tim Geithner press conferences and tell me the type, exact speed and location of a Roger Clemens fastball and I still couldn’t lay a bat on it. (And I expect the same could be said of TPJ, Neifi Perez, et al.)
But 73 and 70 and 66. The record books were rewritten… dramatically…right in front of our eyes and we stood and cheered and scratched our heads and cheered some more and wondered about tighter windings and pitching dilution and cheered some more, because hey, it’s exciting to witness something historical and historical it was, 73 and 70 and 66.
73 and 70 and 66 and we find out it was a fraud, a sham. A punch to the gut. It’s like finding out that nice sincere Nigerian gentleman that sent you that e-mail didn’t really have 10 million in a secret bank account that he would share with you. Like finding out your wife married you only for your money and really thinks you’re a toad. Like finding out your upstanding straitlaced dad was leading a secret double life full of drugs and male escorts. Like finding out Bruce has been lip-synching his concerts for years or that the election of Barack Obama was rigged or that Capricorn One had it right all along.
73 and 70 and 66 and we feel duped and ashamed and cheap and dirty, because we saw it coming. We saw the signs. We saw the credit card receipts with their unexplained charges. We wondered about the new found interest in hygiene and fitness. We smelled that fresh too-good-to-be-true scent, but we wanted to believe and so we chose to believe.
73 and 70 and 66 and we chose innocence over skepticism. We rejected the cynics and said to ourselves and perhaps our sons and daughters sitting on the living room couch against us “See, here is one good uncorrupted thing in the world. Men playing a child’s game for the sheer joy of playing and competing and being the best and we are witnesses and we will be able to tell your children and your grandchildren what we saw.” and now?
Our response to steroids is emotional. Of course, our relationship with professional sports is also emotional. Looking for a rational reason to be upset about steroids is likely to be a lost cause, as lost a cause as trying to rationally justify the hours, the dollars and the mental energy (sportswriters and others who make their living from it excepted) we invest in professional athletes and our favorite teams.
73 and 70 and 66. Show me the records rewritten by corked bats, or spitballs, or amphetamines or offensive lineman on steroids, in short take away my ability to believe in their insignificance and I will work up an equivalent response. But so far there’s sufficient gray space for my denial to maneuver without bumping into any hard evidence.
73 and 70 and 66 are all I really need to know and that sick feeling in my gut is its way of telling me that I was a fool for not having always known.
Adam: “But isn’t it also self-evident that steroids and the like have turned really, really good players into really, really, REALLY good players?”
Okay. Why is this a big deal? How many players are we really talking about – five? I can’t get worked up about that. If the mainstream media was talking more sense about PEDs in general, maybe, but right now the issue is a lack of understanding of PEDs on a macro level.
And by the way, 70 and 66 came in an expansion year, when we’d expect to see more extreme performances, so I don’t think you can just point to those numbers and say “steroids!” unless you’re satisfied with, at best, an incomplete explanation.
Got to throw in a couple of thoughts. Regarding steroids and their affect on the HR record books, if you think about the differences between “current†times and the past, it is very reasonable that current players would have many of the top spots in the record book. Everything has aligned to give today’s hitter’s gaudier HR totals, better bats (stronger wood and less weight), better baseballs, better nutrition, better workout regime’s and equipment (how many players had personnel trainers and personnel chefs back in the day, let alone the advanced equipment with which to train), diluted talent pools from expansion, and most importantly smaller ballparks. It makes quite a bit of sense that even without steroids that players would have advanced to superior levels of HR marks.
Also, I think the steroid issue is an example of the issues with journalism we have today, especially with baseball. Its similar to the MSM and their reluctance, and in some cases refusal, to even consider the advanced statistical metrics that are readily available to them. They have their way of seeing the game, built from their experiences and viewpoints from their youth, and don’t like those to be proven false or changed. So Jim Rice is great because of his ave, hr and rbi’s from an inflated Fenway environment, and their childhood heros records cannot be broken without some sort of “cheatingâ€, especially if its by a mean-spirited black man. One wonders why seeing Andro and McGwire’s increased bulk wasn’t viewed as harshly at the time as Bonds and his accomplishments, and if McGwire wasn’t there and Sosa was breaking those records alone, what would the fall out have been. Steroids is just another example of baseball’s MSM not being able to accurately and fairly interpret the new conditions of baseball and the new evolution of the players. Sure, steroids have played a small part but not nearly what has been portrayed in the media, for a number of unfortunate reasons.
I find it interesting that this whole post was made using quotes from…who?? The Media. I have always thought that baseball writers see themselves as the keepers of the game; the ultimate authority on, well, just about everything. They’ll let us know how they think the game should be run, whether we want them to or not. This was (from what I understand and remember) the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to Jason Whitlock v. ESPN and The Sports Reporters re: the Barry Bonds Witch Hunt.
Have you ever seen the South Park where everybody starts driving hybrid cars, and consequently falling in love with the smell of their own farts?? That’s what I think of most (not all) baseball writers…and that’s really who’s been driving the steroid story from day one.
The Vaccaro quote for me is the most telling:
“…if baseball didn’t care enough to legislate this stuff in its own house, why should it fall to me to be some kind of retroactive sheriff?”
I don’t want to use the broad brush to paint all media members and baseball writers (even though I really just have), but it seems to be that putting on the Gold Star and playing Gary Cooper is more the motivation than simply reporting the baseball news of the day.
I find it interesting that you assume Brady/Manning/Warner don’t or haven’t used PRDs. I think QBs would need quick recovery help as much as anybody on the field. And why assume Marino didn’t use anything? According to the ESPN article of a couple weeks back the Chargers were given steroids in the ’60s. I know I had heard of them while I was in high school and I had graduated by the time Marino debuted as a pro.
Still sticking to my position, though: don’t care, not my business, just want to watch baseball and be entertained.
Brent #46 – Though I appreciate your ‘love’ for your family, your attitude is exactly what got us into this financial mess on Wall St. (and Baseball) Too many times we equate material success with happiness, we lose sight of what is enough. worse, we lose sight of right and wrong (and not just morally). To do something you know is harmful that you would willingly accept “early death” for it, is amazing to me. For your family, yet? Because don’t you think your family would rather have YOU as long as they could, over their nice car? I wish the general attitude in this world wasn’t so fear based – oh, they’re doing it so I have to. I can’t compete unless, I can’t be an attorney unless – well, maybe you weren’t cut out to be an attorney? Or if you feel so inferior, perhaps studying harder, working a bit more intensely… To willingly “die early”? Sorry but… wow. Ask your kids about that one.
Picture this:
After another dissapointing year, the Yankees decide to cut their losses, fire Joe Girardi and hire the top assistant from in their own division, Red Sox Bench Coach Brad Mills. This does not make Tito Francona happy. He feels a little betrayed, and when the Yanks spank the Sox in their first meeting of the year, he and Mills have a quick falling out. Tito, though, gets the last laugh.
You see, when they visit New York, Tito (or sometone within the organization…though everyone will place the honus on Tito) strategically places a camera man somewhere within Yankee Staduim and videotapes the third base coach’s signals. The plan backfires, however, when the league confiscates the videotape from the henchman.
The plot thickens further when it’s learned that MLB knew about this, as they found a cameraman taping the third base coach of the Brewers in a game the previous year.
Now, all hell breaks loose in the media and everybody from Katie Couric to Stephen A. Smith start calling for Tito to step down, or at the very least relinquich any credit that he had in building the Championship teams from the past five years. Obviously, the crime of taping signals is unforgivable.
So, here’s a handy-dandy chart for you:
STEROIDS:
-Football -> “MEH”
-Baseball -> HELL NO
STEALING SIGNS:
-Football -> HELL NO
-Baseball -> “MEH”
“Asa Brainard, a pitcher for the original Cincinnati Reds in the 19th Century, began to throw his pitches with spin, so that hitters had trouble hitting it. Up to that point, pitchers, more or less, were supposed to LET the hitters hit the ball…”
Pitchers started trying to get batters out, by spin, changes of pace, etc., as soon as competitive matches proliferated. That would be the period 1855-1860, before Brainard.
It’s about the records. No one would care if it weren’t for the fact that steroids cheated history.
And there is a Hemingway drug. It’s called a quart of whiskey a day (and a little ECT treatment to take the edge off). So, yeah, the Hemingway drug and steroids are on a par with each other, at least in terms of long-term health effects. Would you writers out there still take it?
What a bunch of ignorant, pompous a** writers Joe quoted from the MSM. I’m looking at you Tommy Tomlinson, Ed Price and Todd Jones. How you can explain away the use of amphetamines as not being on the same level as steroids is totally beyond me. With these idiots on the panel, it’s no wonder Jim Rice go into the Hall of Fame and a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better player like Tim Raines was left out. Not to mention these buffoons were complicit in the era because they did nothing to report against the steroid usage when it was happening. Pure BS grandstanding and the primary reason I don’t read newspapers anymore. I’ll stick to my guys like Joe, Keith Law and Pete Abraham thank you very much.
In a way, this discussion of steroids in baseball is very similar to the other favorite hobby-horse of baseball discussions; namely, the Hall of Fame.
Both discussions revolve around the concept of “possibility.” Those of us who make arguments for Jim Rice (Andre Dawson, etc.) don’t care for statistical arguments, because statistics attempt to show us what really happened. But for players like Rice et al, it’s all about what could have happened. Because that’s what baseball is. We watch game after game where nothing terribly interesting happens, nothing out of the ordinary. But we continue to watch, because something breathtaking could happen, any minute now. Jim Rice et al symbolize that possibility. That’s what the “feared” argument boils down to.
Steroids mess with our sense of possibility. Other drugs don’t, because they merely allow the player to play at his full potential. Steroids change our concept of what full potential means. (At this point, I’m talking about the popular conception of steroids rather than the actual drugs themselves. As Keith Law and others point out, we really have no idea what actual steroids do.) Steroids aren’t a big deal in football because those guys are already doing the impossible, putting on body armor so they can slam into each other with the force of minor car wrecks.
Todd Jones is a writer? Well I guess now he’s retired from the game …
Having dealt with the loss of the World Series one year, I’m really not all that upset about steroids. As Dusty Baker would say “it is what it is.” Usage is everywhere so it’s not just a baseball thing. The worst people of all are the Olympic guys on their high horses. They’re not catching everything either … no one can or will.
I think Joe missed a distinction that seperates both PED use in baseball vs football and use of amphetamines vs steroids. baseball is a sport that is played, more or less, by people who look normal. They are not satistical outliers like the monsters in football and the giants in basketball. I think that is a big component in the allure of baseball. A lot of people can think about themselves being on that field (maybe a couple of decades ago) and they fit into the picture very nicely. The idea that baseball is now ruled by muscle bound gargantuans threatens that idea. Amphetamines don’t change the outward appearance of players and who cares if football players get even more oputrageously large? By no means do I think this is the whole difference, but I do think it is an important factor.
Miguel in Caracas: You are way off with your creatine comparison. The two substances are not similar in any way chemically. One is legal while the other is not. One occurs naturally in food and in the body while the other does not. And of course the magnitude of their effect is wildly different. I am a user of creatine and could be described as a supporter of steroids, so I’m not criticial of the use of either by athletes. But you’re wrong to think that they’re even remotely similar substances.
Bellweather Johnson (#55):
Nice chart
And I think it is this way because, despited the size of players, football is thought of as a much more mental/strategic game, while baseball is mostly physical.
Case in point: if you follow football, you know about the Tampa-2 defense, or the wildcat offense, or Dick LeBeau’s zone blitz, or the Bill Walsh offense. In baseball, the most strategic decisions are setting a batting order and pulling a pitcher. In football, those things happen every play.
Therefore, stealing signs in football is a bigger form of cheating than enhancing your body physically, with the opposite effect for baseball.
I guess the question is, if they invent a steroid with no side effects, and the FDA approves it (obviously, this would be years down the line), will they still be illegal in baseball?
I may be wrong, but I think part of the “outrage” about steroids has to do with how people across various generations are viewing the game. I am 33. I grew up reading the backs of baseball cards, playing APBA and Stratomatic, got involved with Rotisserie before it was extremely mainstream. I would watch a Cubs game then do the math to figure out how my favorite player’s statistics changed. Maybe this generation goes back to anyone born in the late 60’s and early 70’s, who grew up on the Bill James Abstract. When we see something that affects the numbers, we lose some of that connection and some of that sense of understanding of the numbers. What, to us, is now the connection?
Go back a generation, or maybe even two. The older baseball fans and writers. The people born in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The ones who grew up playing baseball in the streets, the nation rolling out radios and televisions onto the curbs of their neighborhoods to watch the game together. Communities would gather to see the Yankees, the M&M boys, then watching those dreams change over the years by a lowered pitching mound, a designated hitter, an astroturf, and lights in Wrigley Field. What, to them, is still sacred?
Now, we have a generation growing up in the internet age. They’d need e-trade to follow the multitude of teams their favorite players go to. They pay an extra $20 bucks a ticket to watch a game based on who their home team is facing, what day of the week it is, whether it’s a “classic” game, a “premium” game, or a “value” game. They go to the ballpark planning to spend a week’s worth of play, looking out at the hallowed stadium adorned in advertisements, they get asked in the third inning to applaud for their favorite choice of songs, then hear their winning song get interrupted by an advertisement during the fourth inning. They read about players dicker over a few million here or there, get busted for drinking and driving, and get off with “community service”. Going to a baseball game has become a “thing to do”, which was supposed to be “fun”, but just seems a bit more boring to follow without K-zones and basecams. Somehow, they still go, because the earlier generations told them there was something still worth watching.
What, to them, will they tell their children?
Steroids may be stigmatized because of the connection with communist athletes during 70s and 80s and with wrestling.
As for the effects of steroids, long-term excessive use can really mess up your body, leading to hormonal imbalance, fat problems (high cholesterol) and cardio-vascular problems, and liver damage (if steroids are taken orally). Effects of controlled doses on “normal” (as in not suffering form the disease that steroids help treating) people (specially males) has not been researched sufficiently. Hypothesis exists that using only low doses under medical supervision to return the body to its normal state in the later part of the season (when exhaustion sets in) wouldn’t be any more dangerous than taking any other prescription drug, a it would be helpful in preventing injuries and illnesses that can happen to exhausted body. Of course, nobody would try that now, because of the backlash.
When I look at 73-70-66, I start thinking about Mickey Mantle. Think about it: if he played on today’s surfaces (without that sprinkler that broke his knee ligaments in rookie season), with the benefits of today’s medicine (he played more than 150 games just twice, and was usually banged up, mostly his knees), in today’s parks, with the new bats and balls, would he hit 70+? Probably. Babe would hit 80+.
If Clemens pitched in 70s, his career would last 1 year. He had shoulder injury in 1985. which would be career-ending 10 years earlier. Players who have good genes can stay healthy longer, and power peaks after 30.
People are bigger and stronger, materials are better, and stadiums are smaller. No cheating should be necessary to obliterate all strength-based records in all sports, specially baseball where smaller stadiums also push in that direction. 73-70-66 prove nothing.
I am against cheaters and I believe that every cheater caught from now on should be severely punished. But in the past nobody bothered with what should be banned, PA and owners only tried to slit each other’s throats. Orza and Selig should issue blanked appology together and move on.
It is the last few paragraphs of Joe’s brilliant piece that get to me. As a KC Royals fan, I desperately want them to win. I few years ago Mike Sweeney was a force to be reckoned with. And he is a deeply religious man, and when Mike says he has never used PED’s I believe him. And here is the rub- what if he had used? Would he have healed from all those injuries faster? Come back stronger? Stayed healthier? That is what gets to me. Astros, Yankees, Giants, A’s- these teams had players using and they won. Did my Royals have anybody using? Joe Randa? Beltran? Damon? Dye? How good could they have been? I don’t mind that baseball players used steroids- I mind that some baseball players thought it was cheating and some thought it wasn’t. And both were right. It is cheating, but if there is no way to get caught, then it isn’t cheating. I just want a consistent and level playing field.
Keith: “Okay. Why is this a big deal? How many players are we really talking about – five? I can’t get worked up about that. If the mainstream media was talking more sense about PEDs in general, maybe, but right now the issue is a lack of understanding of PEDs on a macro level.”
Sure, five seems reasonable. But it’s those few who DO become supermen who everyone’s worked up about. Nobody cares about Wilson Delgado or Larry Bigbie. The only point I was trying to make is that there is overwhelming empirical evidence that “the available studies say it doesn’t enhance athletic performance” isn’t true. Sure, it’s not independent the player, but steroids undoubtedly have an effect, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest they sometimes have an OVERWHELMING effect.
I understand that you don’t get a complete explanation by pointing to 70 and 66 and shouting, “steroids!” but you can’t give a complete explanation WITHOUT steroids being included in the discussion.
This is why Joe Posnanski’s stuff is “must-read”. Terrific job.
“The only point I was trying to make is that there is overwhelming empirical evidence that “the available studies say it doesn’t enhance athletic performance†isn’t true.”
That statement is false. The available studies on HGH say it doesn’t enhance athletic performance. If you can find a study on HGH that indicates that it does enhance athletic performance, let’s see it. A handful of cherrypicked players do not constitute data.
“In the year twenty-five, twenty-five…If man is still alive….If woman can survive…
Zager & Evans
I know, WTF? I’m just hallucinating about what baseball might be like in another hundred years…
Why is everyone so sure that Sammy Sosa took steroids?
Blackadder: Because the sun comes up in the morning…every morning.
Babe Ruth, 60
Lou Gehrig, 47
Hornsby, 42
Williams, 39
Walker, 37
Bottomley, 31
Williams, 30
Wilson, 30
Further, Hank Aaron had a HUGE power surge at the end of his career. Was he taking ‘roids?
I’ve never understood how PED’s can be compared to Joe Jackson or Pete Rose. PED’s are cheating to win, isn’t that what we all want and baseball has always encouraged? Betting is cheating to lose. It just feels so much worse to me.
Keith,
Far from an expert on the subject, I was always led to believe that the use of anabolic steroids was done in order to quicken the recovery time between workouts, ie: enable an athelete to complete the workout of a specific muscle goup 2-3 times a week, where without the use of steroids, a muscle goup could only be worked out effectivly once a week.
The drawback, however, would be that the tendons and connective tissue would become strained, as they would not be able to keep up with the explosive increase in muscle mass.
From my understanding, HGH promotes growth and healing of tendons and connective tissue, something that steroids does not do. So while it doesn’t itself enhance athletic performance, there are only two reasons an athelete would use HGH:
1.) To recover more quickly from an injury (a’la Andy Pettite)
2.) To avoid over-exertion and injury in conjunction with a steroid regemin
…but, then again, I might not have any idea what I’m talking about…
Brady Anderson’s age, home run totals, and salary.
1988, 24, 2HR, $62,500
1989, 25, 4, n/a
1990, 26, 3, $120,000
1991, 27, 2, $165,000
1991, 28, 21, $365,000
1993, 29, 13, $1,855,000
1994, 30, 12, $3,083,333
1995, 31, 16, $3,333,333
1996, 32, 50, $3,613,333
1997, 33, 18, $4,050,000
1998, 34, 18, $5,441,843
1999, 35, 24, $5,674,897
2000, 36, 19, $7,127,199
2001, 37, 8, $7,200,000
2002, 38, 1, $200,000
After the 1996 season, when Anderson hit 50 HRs, he signed a 5 year, $31 million contract. (Source: NY Times)
Baseball salary figures came from baseball-almanac.com
The Black Sox scandal broke in 1920. That same year it became illegal to drink alcohol. Think about that – having a beer was against the law. Was there a comparable scandal involving the multitudes of baseball players who undoubtedly continued to drink? If so, history has forgotten
My point is only that different eras beget different scandals. I suspect it has more to do with the prevailing mores of the time than with any objective notions of right and wrong. Greenies, free agency, gambling, lower pitchers’ mounds, HGH – it’s the changing winds, you just gotta roll with it. The moralists among the sportswriter clan just make asses of themselves.
On a side note – I still like to bust out my 1986 NY Mets highlight video, and man guys back then were skinny….
Brendan, that’s just because of all the coke they did.
Seriously though, it’s amazing that only 20 years ago we were so used to watching professional athletes with remarkably unathletic muscle-free physiques. Even though steroids are generally regarded as bad, at least the results they gave helped people realize that muscles, strength, and fitness can improve a baseball player just like they can a football player. Steroids or no steroids, players are now forced to hit the weights and become stronger, and that improves the product on the field.
I am trying. I really am. I am desperately trying to give a crap about this, and it is just not working. Baseball is, essentially, dead to me. I haven’t really cared since about 2003. I mean, I’ll go to a game if someone gives me tickets. I may catch part of a game on TV if there is absolutely nothing else on. I may even own my own Royals jersey, just so I can tell people that I own my own Royals jersey (this is usually followed with that confused/sad look from them as if I have just told them that my wife left me and took the dog).
I just don’t care anymore. I was annoyed when I was watching a KU game last weekend, and they kept having Karl Ravich break into the game with a “Sportscenter In Game” to tell me that A-Rod had admitted to it. Karl, I don’t care. The game has been unfair for as long as I can remember. There is no way that a team like the Royals could ever get back to the playoffs unless they catch the proverbial “lightning in a bottle”. All the players are ridiculously over-paid (as evidenced in the Francour blog). There is no salary cap. I have to assume that all of the players (except the Royals players based on their performance) are on PED’s. It’s completely maddening.
And so, like I said, I am trying to care. But I just can’t. When do the Stanley Cup playoffs start?
Dave
Exactly – all the coke. different era, different vices. that’s why i can’t get too upset over the steroids thing. people act as if it erupted in a vacuum, rather than being an extension of baseball’s lifelong “cheating” culture. i highly doubt coke actually improves a ballplayer’s ability, but guys back then THOUGHT it did, and that’s the point.
Selig keeps reaffirming my belief that he’s one of the dumbest men in sports. There’s a huge article in the Tribune today, out of Newsday, where Selig answers the criticism he’s received since his comments about the A-Rod steroid “scandal.”
Selig says, “I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it. That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.”
I don’t think one bad thing that’s happened in baseball during his ridiculous tenure as commissioner has been his fault.
“The car wasn’t like it when you drove it off the lot.”
Used-car salesman, indeed.
This is all pretty simple, really (which is a sure sign that I’m about to write something stupid).
The rules say “Don’t cheat.” Basically, that’s it. They elaborate on specific crimes and punishments, but in the end the rules are aimed at two people, naked in mind and body, one with a bat and the other with a ball. And pants.
There are two solutions to this mess. Solution #1 is to allow everything legal, and let the judicial system enforce whatever rules are broken. Solution #2 is to allow nothing, and show no mercy on the rule-breakers.
#1 is silly; maybe they both are. But combine #2 with the “no cheating” rule and a kind of “if you have to ask…” interpretation of cheating, and you’ll quickly eliminate just about everything we’re talking about here. Do you want to take steroids? Go ahead — but if your dealer yaks, you’re done. One chance and gone, kaput, finished, out. No Hall of Fame, no record books, you’re expunged completely from the history of the game.
I guess you could call it the Shoeless Joe Treatment, and though I have lots of sympathy for Joe I have to say, betting on baseball and throwing games don’t seem to be much of an issue these days. Baseball is not society — these guys enter into a tight little compact by stepping on that field, and they don’t need any mercy, certainly no more than normal people living normal lives, and probably a lot less.
Joe P., you’re my favorite regular writer on these here internets these days, and I can’t thank you enough for the (approx.) 20 minutes per day I get out of you. Cheers!
Things I’ve lerned from this piece and the comments:
Steroids are okay in football because the players don’t “look normal.” There’s no relationship between the 30 years of PEDs and the players not “looking normal” either. The important thing is the fact that the players are cheating with illegal PEDs doesn’t matter in football for some reason. The cheating and illegality are hugely important in baseball though.
Also, steroids are no big deal in football because the quarterbacks surely aren’t using them. Punter Todd Sauerbrun was caught using them– the PUNTER was on steroids– but surely no quarterbacks would use them. Just because they need to be fast and take a ferocious pounding the whole game and play on teams where everyone down to the punter is taking something, surely these quarterbacks never would. Just everyone else on the team is cheating with illegal PEDs, so it’s no big deal.
Also, baseball is different because fans imagine themselves as baseball players. No one ever tosses a football around or plays touch football and imagines themselves as an NFL player. No one ever buys an NFL jersey with a player’s name on it or anything.
Amphetamines are okay in baseball because some people can’t understand how they would help performance. Batters needing to make split-second decisions, needing their reflexes at their peak day after day for the long season can’t be helped by amphetamines. Of course they are illegal and cheating, but this kind of illegal cheating is nothing to be bothered by, because some people feel it’s not AS effective as cheating by using steroids. The different kinds of cheating deserve different reactions: fury and disgust for the steroid cheating, no reaction at all to the amphetamine cheating. It’s quite clear, cheating is cheating, period, as long as it’s one kind but not another.
It’s similar to corking bats and scuffing the ball– that kind of cheating is probably less effective than steroid cheating– everyone just knows this– so therefore that kind of cheating is okay. No records need to be changed, no disgust needs to be spewed, no cheaters of this kind need to be pulled from the Hall of Fame, because this kind of intentional, premeditated breaking of the rules to gain an advantage is no big deal.
That’s as far as I got, I am getting pretty sick of the hypocrisy and double standards.
The league is about money. There are only a few owners who care more about winning than making more money or gaining the status of this sign of wealth. At least the game is played by the players – I’m not paying to watch an owner talk about drugs. That’s why Selig is still CEO really, not a “commissioner”. Whether or not it’s a good stategy to denigrate player issues in the long run, the recent ledger sheet shows increased value of the franchises to the point where no one is talking about contraction much anymore. It’s pretty clear that the extension of the competitive nature in athletes, along with the realization that muscle mass in hitters and recovery time in pitchers improve the odds of success made this inevitable. Competitive people do what will give them an edge until the threat of punishment or public condemnation restrains them. Hell, it doesn’t take much to run a red light or drive drunk, and look at the fatalites linking to that behavior, and you’re talking about nothing more than convenience. And every driver’s ed class gives you the gory details about this, unlike what most athletes probably know about a particular PED. It’s more like a dope user, you gain some trust in people who use it, the safety of the supplier, and see the effects, if you are of that frame of mind to alter your reality. And who’s to say the attitude isn’t just as important in these players? Do they need to fit in as a team player, like dirty cops or the cool group at school?
The best performers at anything are usually sphincters. The thing that drives them to excel, often drives them to take advantage of whatever they can unless checked. Those checks are just as likely to make them WORSE than they could have been for the sake whatever legal, moral, or personal reasons they had to eschew the unsavory act in question. Do we really think Cobb, Hornsby, Ruth, Williams, Lefty Grove, John McGraw, etc, would have succeeded without that overweening drive that made them self-absorbed dicks? As Joe notes at the end, the unblemished heroes stick out more, but haven’t they always? The first number retired was Gehrig’s, not Ruth’s.
Dave
Is Manuel, not Miguel.
I am agree that Creatine is legal and has not important secondary effects. However, why are called cheaters those who rake roids? Anabolic Steroids are illegal by the FDA because they can hurt you body and not because they can enhance your perfomance.
I think I’ll put myself in the not enraged group. I completely understand someone being upset about “cheating”. The problem I have is that people usually take some selective moral high ground on PED’s in baseball (or Track & Fild, Cycling) right before writing off football (or basketball which is never mentioned for that matter) as a part of the sport. It really is no different regardless of the sport or the level of athlete. Also, shouldn’t people be even more enraged if someone in any sport gets a cortisone shot in their injured arm or leg and then trotting out to give a “heroic” effort. And isn’t it two NFL quarterbacks in the Myoplex commercials using something to recover from their workout (what most any PED does)? Just saying.
Hilarie #20 – Funny and ironic – but what is the tiny fact community?
Graphite #24 – Very funny.
Steroids are polarizing. Isn’t it great fun.
As to the idea, maybe, that players from 1985 and beyond use steroids, why don’t the stats people come up with discounted stats, like they do for Coors field (just an example) … for that era of players. League Adj. ERA, ROIDS ADJ era, ROIDS adj batting avg, ROIDS adj. HR’s …
Like many other polarities, steroids tends to demonize some and humanize others.
My understanding of HGH is that it makes everything bigger (like, including organs) so it doesn’t really help anybody (because of the significant health problems it can cause, while not really helping you).
Link: http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2007/04/i-dont-worry-about-hgh-in-baseball-and-neither-should-you/
Also, when examining an outlier year and trying to look at it as a “steroid-fueled” year or whatever, could we all please consider the fact that it just MIGHT be, you know, a muddatruckin fluke year?!!!
Gee whiz, flukes happen people. If you’re trying to implicate someone based on an unexpected surge one year, please consider the following before you make an accusations:
1. Park (every park that player played in, using 10-year, or as many as possible if the park isn’t that old, park factors regressed toward the mean, adjusted for RH and LH batting/pitching and types of outcomes, e.g. line drives, home runs, doubles, etc.)
2. Quality of pitching faced (in terms of true-talent, 3-5 year regression on each pitcher/player in the matchup, not any of that partial-year crap)
3. Avg. distance of HR/velocity off the bat, plus standard deviations (such as the data that hittrackeronline.com provides)
If you’ve gone through all this, you’re ok to start lobbing steroid allegations based on statistics. And not a second earlier.
“A-Rod barely benefited during the years he said he used.†— Keith Law
Really?
A-Rod averaged approx. 42 HR in his last 3 seasons in Seattle, 52 in his confirmed steroid years in Texas, and 40 in his first 3 years in NY.
So when he went on steroids, his HRs increased 25% over the previous 3 year average. And when he went off steroids, his HRs dropped by about 24%.
That’s not a benefit?
And FYI, the numbers work out about the same if you take his neutralized stats.
Look, Keith, I know that you’ll never actually listen to another human being’s opinion about anything, but what exactly is your point? Even if steroids didn’t appreciably or even measurably enhance an athlete’s performance, that doesn’t change the fact that:
A. Maybe of the substances used were illegally obtained/used according to US Law, regardless of how the baseball rulebooks happened to treat said substances.
B. These athletes obviously thought they were getting a performance enhancement, or else they wouldn’t have used said substances. They also thought that what they were doing was, if not downright illegal, shady enough that they went to fairly great lengths to hide these occurrences.
I understand that sometimes the acrimony and grandstanding from the MSM and some particular former players (I’m looking at you, Dale Murphy) gets ridiculous, especially given the double-standard when it comes to the use of amphetamines. But to say that steroids, HGH and the like don’t matter, that their use simply be glosses over, that we should rubber stamp it just because it may not have actually enhanced the players who used them…well, that’s as dumb a statement as any made by the stone-agers like Murray Chass and his ham-handed compatriots.
I’d love to see someone tell the SEC that it was perfectly fine that they traded using insider information because they still ended up losing money.
If you point a loaded gun in someone’s face, pull the trigger and the gun just happens to jam, that doesn’t mean your hands are clean. It changes the circumstances of the crime, certainly, but it doesn’t absolve you of wrongdoing. The players who uses PEDs are, were and always will be cheaters. How one adapts that to his worldview is entirely a personal decision. For example, I would still vote for Clemens, Bonds, A-Rod and etc. to be 1st ballot HoFers, and though I look at 73 with a bit of acquired cynicism, I still consider it a “legit” record, as long as you consider the context.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t cheat, it just means I’m not quite as hard-line as many of the folks in the MSM.
That should say “Many of the substances,” not “Maybe of the substances.”
“”1) My problem with PEDs is that they’re extremely bad for your health (Caminiti, Alzado)”"
Those two guys were doing a lot worse chemicals than steroids, and it’s not been proven that steroids caused either death. The fact of the matter is that very heavy steroid use may actually make you an action-movie star, get you married into an American political dynasty, leading to millions of dollars of personal wealth and governorship of the largest state in the union.
As far as the football/baseball comparison, nobody cares about football players, even though they love the game. For instance, if Stan Musial had walked around St. Louis the last few decades crippled, drooling, and broke, the folks in that city would be in an uproar. Conrad Dobler, Earl Campbell, Mike Webster? Not so much.
Broocks, Hank Aaron, at the age of 32, moved into The Launching Pad, Fulton County Stadium. In Fulton, even being in decline phase, his OPS was .992. He set new career highs in homers and OPS. In County Stadium Milwaukee, his OPS was .912. If the Braves had moved to Atlanta earlier, Aaron would still hold the home run record.
As for Tony Posnanski’s opinion of Barry Bonds, he’s wrong. Bonds would definitely have hit 500 homers without steroids and probably hit 600, but no would he have reached 700. In 1999, at the age of 35, he had had four straight seasons with declining home run totals. If he averaged 34 homers per season for the next five years (matching what he hit in 1999) he would have hit 84 fewer home runs, or well under 700, and almost certainly would not have lasted long enough to hit the 54 he got his last two seasons. Instead he twice set new career highs in single season homers, and his other three seasons (at ages 37-39) tied or were within one of his previous career high in home runs, despite having moved into a ballpark that for everybody else in baseball acted like a pitcher’s park.
Bonds deserves to go into the HOF; his pre-steroid records convince me. Until all the ARod news comes out, I suspect he too deserves his day in the HOF. But the downside of steroids will be if a guy who juices from the start hits like Bonds without establishing a HOF career level first.
As I’ve said before, I think steroids should be handled like prostitutes in Nevada. At the brothels they are legal, they get medical tests, and they are stopped from practicing their trade if they have a contagious disease. I think steroid use should be the same way. After all, every drug store in America has weak steroids on their over the counter shelves and stronger ones behind the pharmacist’s counter for prescription use only. Let the players juice, let them be monitored with monthly blood tests for organ damage and if they start acting strangely on the field, no more steroids. Since pitchers and batters both will use, no competitive advantage accrues (overall). Steroids are just as legal (with a doctor’s supervision) as is the Tommy John surgery. How many games have been won thanks to that doctor’s intervention? Hundreds if not thousands by now. So why is Tommy John performance enhancing medical intervention legal but corticosteroid performance enhancing medical intervention illegal? I see no good reason. So lets make it legal, same as the super skintight swim suits and track suits, and lets monitor the usage to make sure that nobody who chooses to use gets sick from it: first, do no harm. And then lets vote in Bonds and Sosa and Clemens and Palmeiro and ARod like they deserve. And give Bonds a shot at a DH job. If he can still hit at his age while passing drug tests, then it’s a travesty to baseball that he’s not being given that chance. His last season had an OPS over 1.000 and an OPS+ of 170. How many teams in baseball have a DH that good?
To any budding baseball historians reading this blog – just print out this conversation after it gets to about 200 posts, you’ll have the primary material to write a summary of the fans opinions on PEDs in baseball, as it was first discovered (I know it’s taken 5 years, but 5 years isn’t much in the history of baseball.)
This conversation means more to the history of baseball than all of the A-Rod press conferences and Bud Selig…whatever the hell he does.
Nice job everyone. This is one of the most thoughtful blog conversations I’ve read – ever. Maybe I should tune in more often, and forget the local newspaper stuff.
Hope I don’t sound like a moralistic bleeding-heart up on a high horse, but I care (at least a little) about football players and I don’t like the idea of their dying young or being crippled or going punch-drunk. For example, Terry Bradshaw, he was never very smart and now look at him, after fifteen concussions or whatever.
My uneducated guess is that sometime within the next five or ten years somebody who’s now got brain damage will win a judgment against the NFL on the grounds that they knew there was a risk of, say, smashing up their knees or breaking their collarbones five times, but not that they’d end up quivering like gelatin sitting in a wheelchair.
I’d suggest some rule changes: No leading with your head ever, no blows to the opponent’s head ever, no blocking below the waist ever, pad helmets on the outside as well, eliminate kickoffs and give them the ball at the 20, and permit the ref to penalize legal but unnecessarily dangerous hits as a judgement call. (That means Hines Ward.)
Also, of course, they need to test for roids and do so very strictly, since one reason these guys are all getting hurt is they should weigh 240 based on their frames, but they’re pumped up to 310.
Just in case Keith Law or like-minded folks are still reading, here’s one more attempt at defending the viewpoint that steroids might help more than he thinks, or at least that a rational person could still hold that view:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Nobody has ever tried anything close to a controlled study of these substances, for obvious reasons. So to stand up and say “there is no evidence that PEDs work, therefore PEDs don’t work” at this stage is NOT the rigorous, scientific-minded claim that people seem to want to claim it is. It’s more head-in-the-sand than level-headed.
Heck, look at pictures of bodybuilders from the 50s and from today, or compare bodybuilders in “clean” comps vs “anything goes” comps and it is pretty difficult to hold a rational opinion that steroids/HGH/whatever-they-put-in-their-bodies do not help build muscle mass. So the “absence of evidence” crowd then has to try to make the claim that building muscle mass will NOT help transform one of the best hitters that ever lived into an even better hitter. Is it possible that muscle mass makes no difference to a hitter, given the available data? Sure. Is it likely? I don’t think so, and I think that’s a rational stance, even if it’s not yet firmly rooted in evidence.
I certainly wouldn’t call someone who believes steroids or HGH might give a player a competitive advantage a “moron”.
I think a lot of the problem is that most of us know we could never play professional football, even against players who were not using PEDs, because they are physically far beyond normal. Whereas baseball players are seen to be normal — Dustin Pedroia is 5-6, Joe Morgan was 5-7, and height is actually a detriment at some positions — and so we can relate to them.
But what we DON’T see is that baseball players are anything but normal in terms of their reflexes. Most of us couldn’t hit a fair ball against a journeyman major league pitcher throwing 80, let alone 90. These guys eat 80 for lunch and hold their own against 90. They are, in those terms, the equivalent of a 6-6, 240 pound linebacker coming at you. We can see that the linebacker is a freak of nature, but Pedroia looks like the kid next door.
He ain’t, but because that’s not easy to see, baseball PED users get grief that football users don’t.
Yes, as already noted this is an excellent article. I find both Joe Keith Law to be a voice of reason in this quagmire. So much of what is written is overly moralistic and without any logical basis in fact. Thank you Keith and Joe.
I don’t think the media as a whole has grasped the difference between a systemic problem and an individual problem. Every time we find out that a certain player used steroids, we vilify that player.
Consider the fact that over 100 players tested positive for steroids in a year when they knew they would be tested. How many more would have tested positive in 1999 or 2000? Having 1/4 of the league on steroids indicates a systemic problem, not 150 bad individuals.
As you have touched on previously, it isn’t that coaches or managers were literally telling players to use steroids, but they were telling players who had obviously reached the natural ceilings of their abilities that they had to get stronger or faster in order to stay employed (wink, wink).
I’m a lawyer, and it would be similar to the big-wigs at my firm telling me that I have to bill more hours on x deal or I will lose my job (wink, wink). I’m pretty sure I would do the right thing if that happened, but I consider myself lucky to have never been faced with that choice. Ask yourself, how much harder would the decision be if I knew all of the successful lawyers in my firm were overbilling without consequence? Also consider that even if that happened to the common person, most of us could switch jobs, or even careers, without taking a giant pay cut. For baseball players, the choice is between making tens (or even hundreds) of millions to play a game or getting a 50-150K job somewhere.
I would like to think a majority of people have a strong enough moral compass to avoid making poor ethical decisions, even in the face of such pressure. Having said that, if a person does choose to make the wrong choice in order to save his or her job, I think the blame falls at least as much (if not more) on the management applying the pressure as it does on the individual. That is what makes me so mad at Bud Selig and MLB in general. It couldn’t be more hypocritical for him to chastise a player for taking steroids in an effort to make more money, when his organization made billions by creating an environment that encouraged the player to do it in the first place.
Bud Selig and MLB should be held responsible for their role in this mess. It wouldn’t even be that painful for him. All he would have to do is acknowledge that it happened on his watch and apologize for his failure to do more to stop it from happening. Inexcusable.