When the moment is right …
Posted: August 13th, 2009 | Filed under: Pop Culture | 82 Comments »
I wasn’t entirely sure about posting the following … because I don’t know what it is. This is not an essay. It’s not a complete thought. It’s not something I have spent a lot of time considering. It’s merely a stream of consciousness about … something I was spurred to start writing. I just started writing it, and then I wrote it, and then I wasn’t really quite sure what I had. If I was writing a real essay, then this would be my starting point — my notes, I guess. But I’m not writing an essay and so I’m stuck with these notes and nothing to do with them. No, I wasn’t going to post it. Then I remembered that the point of this blog has always been to stretch the boundaries and put up whatever happens to be going on in my confused mind. Plus, it’s 3,000 bleeping words.
So I will post it, but with the advance warning.
So, the other day, I was flipping channels and caught a discussion about steroids in baseball. The discussion seemed to be between men who probably were not involved baseball fans because they talked in a stilted way about the game and the stuff they said seemed quaint and a bit out of date. That is, their outrage seemed unusually fresh and raw; their anger about steroids in baseball did not seem numbed by the repeated stories and admissions and accusations and sketchy apologies of the last few years. They talked like this was all brand new. These athletes should be ashamed of themselves for what they are doing. Imagine! Taking steroids to be better at baseball! Imagine! Baseball is supposed to be about fair competition! And these drugs are dangerous! And won’t anyone think about the children! What of the example these men were setting? And so on.
When they were finished, a commercial came on. It was a commercial for Cialis.
Thursday, I was surfing the Internet and reading a commentary about the Rick Pitino mess, which as you know involves the coach’s admission to police that he had consensual sex on a restaurant floor with a woman who was not his wife (but now the wife of his equipment manager — sordid stuff going on there in the big Lou). He then paid her $3,000 either to have an abortion (what Pitino reportedly told the police) or for health insurance (what Pitino’s lawyers say now). One of the columns I read was by an acquaintance, USA Today’s Christine Brennan, who wondered if Pitino is the “deeply religious Catholic husband and father of five who brings along a priest on road trips,” or the man who admitted to having consensual sex with a woman, not his wife. I read a few columns along these lines throughout the day — when trumpets were mellow/and every gal only had one fellow.
On the same page, there was an advertisement. It was an advertisement for Viagra.
* * *
A quick Internet search indicates that three million Americans use Viagra. More than eight million men worldwide use Cialis. A bunch more use Levitra. The advertising budget for these three drugs (which more or less promise the same thing) is more than a quarter billion dollars annually and probably closer to a half billion. These drugs are absolutely illegal without a prescription. They can have harsh side effects if used properly (contact a doctor immediately if you have an erection lasting more than four hours!) and potentially deadly side effects if used improperly. These drugs have one expressed purpose: To treat ED — Erectile Dysfunction. These drugs are, in the truest sense of the word, performance enhancers. They medically inspire men — generally, older men — to have sex.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bill James wrote a fascinating essay — his best shot at saying what he wants to say about steroids in baseball. The essay comes down to several solid arguments backing his prediction that, over the long view of history, steroid use will not have any effect at all on who goes into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The one part of the essay I want to talk about here — the part that I have seen too many people mock — is Bill’s idea that steroid use in baseball is nothing more than a precursor to a massive drug revolution we are only beginning to comprehend. He makes the general point that steroids (I’m using “steroids” here but I really mean to include any and all performance enhancing drugs) help a baseball player stay young. Most people would probably agree with that. There is much rambling debate about how much steroids do for a baseball player, but I think we can reasonably assume that using steroids can:
(1) Help a player maintain his peak longer.
(2) Make a player’s peak better.
You surely realize that if you replaced the word “peak” with another word — numerous word options, there — you would have Viagra.
Bill believes that these drugs that help people to stay younger will only become more prominent over the next 50 to 100 years. He believes that “once that happens, people will start living to age 200 or 300 or 1,000,” and that doctors will routinely prescribe drugs that allow people to do so. Some have latched on to this part of the essay and called Bill’s prediction “science fiction.” But those people need to look around. Science fiction? It’s happening right now. After all, what does Viagra do? Cialis? These plainly help a man regain his youthful ability to have sex. At the core of things is this: “Get younger.”
* * *
Why is Viagra on this side of the pop-culture divide, and steroids on that side? Why is Cialis allowed to advertise CONSTANTLY (kids watch TV!) while steroids are viewed as one of the the devil’s tools? Why are Levitra’s side effects the stuff of comedians and steroid’s side effects the stuff of outraged lectures? And before you start to say that these drugs are totally different, you might want to read the quote from Victor Conte to the New York Daily News after the paper broke the story that Clemens used Viagra:
All my athletes took it,” BALCO founder Victor Conte. “It’s bigger than creatine. It’s the biggest product in nutritional supplements.”
He was talking about an over-the-counter version of Viagra. Some players, apparently, used the real thing too to improve baseball performance. Nobody seems entirely sure of the benefits. Supposedly it especially can help athletes in high altitudes … but some say no. Viagra is not yet banned but apparently the World Anti Doping Agency is reviewing the drug. You might recall that Viagra was an official sponsor of Major League Baseball not too long ago. Rafael Palmeiro was the pitchman. As one brilliant reader points out, Viagra is still an official sponsor. Confusing, yes.
* * *
And speaking of confusing: You see the guys and women in the Cialis ads … each in their own bathtub, holding hands, so romantic.
How are we supposed to know that they’re married? It hasn’t gone unnoticed that the women in these ads tend to look quite a lot younger than the men? How are we supposed to know that he isn’t a basketball coach, she isn’t the wife of an equipment manager, and this whole commercial isn’t leading to a $3,000 payment and a few angry columns in the morning paper?
* * *
On the front page of the Viagra Web site, there is Important safety information.
Don’t take VIAGRA if you take nitrates, often prescribed for chest pain, as this may cause a sudden, unsafe drop in blood pressure.
What does this mean? What is a sudden, unsafe drop in blood pressure? Well, I’m no doctor obviously, but according to the Mayo Clinic Web site, a sudden drop in blood pressure — as a result of dehydration, for instance — can cause hypovolemic shock, which — if untreated — “can cause death within a few minutes or hours.” Web MD describes the dangers of a blood pressure drop. The brain is “deprived of an adequate blood supply.” It says simply that a sudden drop in blood pressure can be “life threatening.”
As with any ED tablet, in the rare event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury.
I don’t know how it is for you — but that word “injury” sort of stands out for me. I started to read this Slate article about how four hour erections are handled but, frankly, I could not make it a certain part without cringing in agony, and I stopped reading it and, frankly, I hope I will be able to forget that I ever read it. I want one of those memory erasing flashlights they had in “Men in Black.”
In rare instances, men taking PDE5 inhibitors (oral erectile dysfunction medicines, including VIAGRA) reported a sudden decrease or loss of vision. It is not possible to determine whether these events are related directly to these medicines or to other factors. If you experience sudden decrease or loss of vision, stop taking PDE5 inhibitors, including VIAGRA, and call a doctor right away.
Good to know that going blind might not be directly related to the drug … you might have gone blind anyway.
Sudden decrease or loss of hearing has been rarely reported in people taking PDE5 inhibitors, including VIAGRA. It is not possible to determine whether these events are related directly to the PDE5 inhibitors or to other factors. If you experience sudden decrease or loss of hearing, stop taking VIAGRA and contact a doctor right away.
Or deaf.
If you have prostate problems or high blood pressure for which you take medicines called alpha blockers, your doctor may start you on a lower dose of VIAGRA.
Well, sure. You don’t want to get someone already dealing with health issues on the full dose right away.
The most common side effects of VIAGRA are headache, facial flushing, and upset stomach. Less commonly, bluish vision, blurred vision, or sensitivity to light may briefly occur.
These are the “Good News” side effects, apparently. Maybe it’s a nice tint of bluish vision.
* * *
I’ve often asked but rarely gotten a satisfying answer to this question: How would you feel about steroids in baseball if it was legal and not against the rules? This seems a logical question to me but the answers I’ve generally gotten have been built around this subtext: “Well, it’s NOT legal and it IS against the rules.”
Maybe. But consider the question for a moment.
Legal: Is it that big a leap to think that doctors could prescribe steroids to players to allow them to play the game better and longer? After all, using steroids with a prescription (like using Viagra with a prescription) is perfectly “legal.” Is it that big a leap? In a world where doctors will prescribe potentially harmful drugs to allow people to have sex, is it crazy to think that doctors (in only a slightly different environment) might prescribe steroids to help an athlete overcome an injury or play the game at a high level longer or give an athlete a chance to fulfill dreams? After all, we all know doctors will perform surgeries on athletes to accomplish those same goals.
And anyway … the legalities are pretty bewildering right now. Many vitamins and supplements are perfectly legal … and the difference between them and the illegal drugs is only technical and entirely baffling. Many of the “illegal” steroids in the United States might not be illegal in other countries, and baseball has become much more of a world game. We might prefer a world — might even prefer to BELIEVE in a world — where it’s all black and white, right and wrong, steroids and fair play, but that world just doesn’t exist.
As far as steroids being demonstrably against the rules … well, of course, that’s a pretty new thing. Before the recent outrage, the rules against performance enhancing drugs were nebulous at best and emboldening at worst.
Sure, it was always cheating — everyone knew that, which is why steroids were taken in dark rooms and injected by sleazy trainers — but the problem is: Cheating who? Cheating the other players? Well, damn, a lot of them were already doing it. Cheating the fans? Maybe, but you sure didn’t hear too many people complaining about seeing longer home runs and watching 95 mph fastballs. Cheating your team? You think your teammates or manager cared what you were doing as long as you got people out in the eighth inning or drove 10 more home runs out of the yard? Cheating baseball? Well, hell, if those baseball people cared so much they would have started testing 20 years earlier.
So … cheating who? Well, people would say: Cheating history. That’s what they were doing. And baseball is the one game that relies deeply on history. Tennis, golf … there’s a titanium and graphite wall between those games and their history. Oh, everyone likes golf history. But it’s only that: History. After all, what would a golfer using today’s equipment shoot on the 1986 version of Augusta National? Every Par 5 would be laughably easy. Every Par 4 would be a drive and a pitch. Would 25-under be possible? Thirty-under? You better believe it.
Basketball? It is beyond imagination to think of LeBron James playing on a court in the 1950s against Bob Cousy and the guys with the set shots and long hook shots.
Football? The rules change all the time in football. Kickers are too good? Move the kickoff five yards back. The passing game needs to be opened up? Don’t let those defensive backs touch the receivers down the field and let offensive linemen block. The referee and officials aren’t quick enough to follow the fast pace of the game? Give the coaches a chance to challenge the play so we can all watch it on the big screen. Football constantly evolves because it has to evolve, because the players grow too fast, because the game changes before our eyes.
Look: Every so often you will hear a dreamer talk about how the 1972 Miami Dolphins would beat today’s best teams. And that was a great team in its time … one of the greatest. And you want to judge a team against its time. But pluck that team out of 1972, drop them down in 2009 and … are you kidding? The no-name defense star linebacker Nick Buoniconti was 5-foot-11, 220 pounds and as for speed: He was almost 32 years old and a former tackle in college. The Steelers star linebacker, James Harrison, is 6-foot-0, 242 pounds, and closes in like a Hummer. The Dolphins star best guard was probably Bob Kuechenberg, who was 6-foot-2, 253 pounds. The Steelers tight end Heath Miller is bigger than that … the Steelers left guard Chris Kemoeatu is 6-foot-3, 344 pounds. And so on. It’s a different game now, and most people know it and accept it.
Not with baseball, though. Ask a moderate baseball fan who holds the record for most victories in a career, and that fan will tell you: Cy Young with 511. But think about how absurd that is. Cy Young won nine games in 1890 when the mound was 50 feet away from home plate. He won 72 games before 1893, when the rules first outlawed flat-sided bats. He won 379 games before the height of the pitcher’s mound was regulated. He won all but 11 of his games before the baseball was cork-centered. And of course, the spitball was legal the entire time. He never pitched after the Deadball Era. He was playing a whole different game with different rules and different values, and he was playing it against farmers and factory workers, none of them African American or dark-skinned players from Latin America naturally.
And this is the pitcher we say holds “the record” for most victories. A record that will never be broken. It’s the way we want it. Heck, I’m not complaining: It’s the way I want it too. I want that sense of timelessness. I need baseball’s connection to the past. But that doesn’t make it real. That doesn’t change the fact that Walter Johnson did not face Oscar Charleston in a big league game or that Sandy Koufax threw off a mound so high that explorers planted flags in them or that there were big bowls of greenies in clubhouses to give players a little “pep” for the long season.
The trouble is, so many of us want clarity and we want definitive choices — and instead we are bombarded by blurred standards and lines drawn in shifting sands. I would not blame anyone in Louisville — more, I would respect anyone in Louisville — who would say, “Look, the job of a basketball coach is more than to win games. It is to represent the University in a proper way and, sure, naive as it may sound, it is also to set an example for the college kids who go there. And because of that, Rick Pitino should no longer be coach.” I would applaud people if they said that … but I don’t think many people ARE saying that. Reality. There’s a classic line in Woody Allen’s movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” where, essentially, Woody tells Martin Landau, who had his lover killed, that the right ending of the story is for him to admit his guilt and face the consequences. Landau says: “But that’s fiction. That’s movies. I mean, you see too many movies. I’m talking about reality.”
No, I don’t respect Rick Pitino for what he did … but I never exactly held Rick Pitino up as a paragon of virtue in the first place. He’s a good and exciting college basketball coach. And, if that’s all people want from him (and I suspect that, yes, that’s all people want from him) then I have little doubt he will be continue to be a good and exciting college basketball coach.
I don’t like that players took steroids and some certainly still do; but again … reality. Many elite athletes in an effort to succeed will push the boundaries of fair play. As Buck O’Neil always said: “The reason we didn’t do them is because we didn’t have them.” Or as Leo Durocher wrote on the very first page of his autobiography: “I don’t call that cheating. I call that heads up baseball. Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it.”
Truth is, I have a hard time summoning moral outrage in today’s day and age. It’s probably because I have a hard time keeping up with what’s morally outrageous. Congress investigates steroids but Bob Dole advertises Viagra. Rick Pitino cheats on his wife and bizarrely invokes 9/11 in his apology, and if I click on this pop-up ad I can “meet married women eager for a change in their lives right now!” I don’t know. I really don’t. The only thing I do know, and know for sure, is that if you have an erection lasting more than four hours, seek immediate medical help.
Loading ...
And that’s how you tell history; with a clear-eyed view of the impurities all eras have, rather than a whitewashing. Nicely done, Joe. Perhaps a version of this post can make it to SI so that it becomes more central to the discussion? (Or would that be a conflict with the ED drug ads in that magazine?)
I feel exactly the same way. I’m sure Cold Pizza (does that still exist?) or Around the Horn will be banging down the door for you to calmly explain this opinion…
…and so on.
And probably some of the TV folks who have outrage about steroids have had cosmetic surgery to keep their careers going.
Great essay. SI needs you.
Valid points Joe. Hypocrisy and double standards seem to run rampant in our society. Why is it that I cannot choose to smoke marijuana but I can purchase alcohol or tobacco more or less anywhere?
Why do people care so much about baseball players using PEDs but seem to care so little when football players use them? We could spend all day listing similar quandaries.
There seems to be a certain amount of cultural inertia in most of these matters, and until a critical mass of people decide otherwise, we will always have to deal with this type of nonsense. I am not holding my breath for it to happen.
Agree with #1…it’d be great if you could publish a more polished version of this in SI, since their readership is probably sort of old-timey and moralistic and I don’t think the sort of perspective you’re coming from is ever represented in SI.
It’d be interesting to hear your thoughts on Bronson Arroyo’s comments…seems like he’s the first MLBer who’s trying to be completely forthright about the steroid era.
Not to get all academic and researchy on you, but….
You might might interested in the work of Robert Kegan. He examines why some people really need those rules and a black and white view of the world. As he explains it, that was a decent way of looking at the world for a very long time. However, the demands of the modern world call for a different view, one capable of seeing more nuance and less absolutes. Of course, people are no more naturally inclined to such a view than they ever were. The demands of “this day and age” — as you put it — encourage the development of such a view, but rarely provides the support needed to develop it.
This is why he titled one of his books “In Over Our Heads.” The world currently demands capabilities that most people do not have, so life can seem really really hard.
And perhaps that is why the black and white of sports is so treasured by so many people. The world makes less and less sense to them — especially those who grew is somewhat different times — so sports is refuge, an arena they can understand.
It’s no accident or coincidence that that the sport with all the outrage is the one that used to be the most popular. It’s no accident or coincidence that the folks who are so outraged tend to be a bit older.
[...] This post was Twitted by kansas_city_mo [...]
I think Bill James has it right, this is part of a revolution we won’t fully understand for many years. When you get right down to it, something as innocuous as food itself is a performance enhancer, if you don’t have enough of it your performance suffers. Just because something helps your performance, doesn’t mean it is bad for you.
The war on drugs is affecting the way we think. Jose Canseco may end up being the Galileo of Baseball…
Thank you so much Joe. You’re the best.
I know people hat e them some Vernon Wells, but get a clue, the Gary Matthews contract is much, much worse. He’s not even a starter.
Thanks for sharing, Joe. I’m not sure how it fits into a narrative–and some of it is about how we try to fit things into a narrative that we can’t–but it is important nonetheless.
At this point I have a hard time thinking you’d write anything not worth posting.
Great exploration of ideas. Seems like the only people making any sense these days are the ones admitting they can’t make much sense of it all.
great column – nice to read one about the subject with some actual intelligence in it.
First, “Sandy Koufax threw off a mound so high that explorers planted flags” made me laugh out loud. Well, no kidding.
I have not read Bill James’ article, but the general point, that this is only the very very beginning, is going to reverberate throughout society in the coming years. It’s way bigger than baseball, and “the horror” will soon seem like nothing – at least in relative terms.
And, what you’re ultimately talking about here is a sort of Christian Science attitude that athletes are supposedly supposed to espouse. What about Tommy John surgery? What about any kind of surgery that goes beyond restoring normal human function? Is that more or less “unnatural”?
If I’m in construction, and steroids mean I can work, I doubt very few people see that as wrong. So athletes have a different vocation. Big deal.
It’s celebrity piling-on, that’s all. Our appointed saints.
Poz,
Interesting take, and I’m with you on Pitino – there’s definitely a double standard for drug companies and college basketball coaches (but maybe that’s to be expected.)
In any event – and I’m not sure whether this counterpoint to James’ article is anywhere else on the net – the fundamental flaw with your case and with his is that steroids available today (anabolic steroids, not catabolic) don’t reverse aging. They induce a lot of serious health problems when not used to treat a very small group of conditions (most of which now have treatments preferred to anabolic steroids).
They’re not magic – in otherwise healthy human beings, they create physical problems. They’re not Viagra, which does its job (however sordid) without causing anywhere near as much collateral damage as steroids do.
When the anti-aging pills come around, the baseball players and civilians alike can have at them – but for now, getting a nation of delusional high school boys hooked on anabolic steroids in hopes of becoming David Ortiz… that’s a big mistake.
Love the article Joe. To me performance enhancers are ANYTHING that enhances performance. That includes lifting weights, eating correctly, practicing the damn game. I’m just sick and tired of the double standards. Working out is ok, but taking a pill or injection, coupled with exercise that makes you better, that’s wrong? Whatever. I was so happy to see Bill James come out with this stance. It almost makes me feel vindicated that I don’t give 2 craps about steroid use. If people were given a choice to take a drug and double the time they spent feeling like they were in their 20’s, everybody would take it. That’s essentially what steroids do. That take that peak 27 year old season, and extend it with the athletic peak and steroids to age 37. That my friends is the fountain of youth.
By the way, how many of you drink caffeine every day? PERFORMANCE ENHANCER!! GODDAMN HYPOCRITES!!!
Sorry, but Viagra-enabled erections does not allow one to live to 1000, or even anything like that at all. Nice, false analogy in defense of your buddy’s stupid, stupid point. Stick with sports.
Awesome.
Thank you, Joe.
@ #17: He’s not saying it allows one to live to be 1000, he’s saying it’s one of the first signs of drugs/medication that enable us to behave and act younger than we are. It’s just a prediction–and frankly, it’s pretty well-supported. Not that Poz or Bill James is a doctor, but I doubt you have any idea what you’re talking about, either.
MD in CT, I thought it was pretty obvious that Joe wasn’t talking about reversing aging, he was talking about postponing it. It’s not the Fountain of Youth, it’s the Picture of Dorian Gray.
Joe, thanks for the level-headed contrarian view. The moralizing has always struck me as a bit out of place; this post helped bring it more into focus.
the only reason it is a “debate” in baseball is because old people (read: sportswriters) want to continue their romanticized version of the game “when it was pure”. I sell insurance. If there was a drug that I could take that wouldn’t get me fired and would signifcantly enhance my income potential I’m pretty confident I would be at the front of the line to take it.
Okay, well I agree and disagree.
Yes, steroids are just “performance enhancers”. They help you play the game right. Just like musicians who use technology to enhance the sound of their music, athletes use steroids to enhance their ability to play the game.
They help you win. Yes, they are illegal, but so are other drugs like marijuana, and I know there are plenty of athletes who do that.
So it makes sense to defend the use of steroids, because all they are doing is helping you win, and helping your team.
But I also agree with MD in CT (#15). You gotta think about MORALITY. I could never bring myself to use steroids. It is just morally wrong, and I would rather quit then inject myself with illegal drugs that can kill me or tear my body up for the rest of my life.
So all those people like me, who morally will NEVER do any type of drug, but are great baseball players, have to sit and play with a bunch of guys who are cheating and using performance enhancing drugs.
If and when I have a son one day, I would love for him to grow up and be an outstanding baseball player. But if he had to grow up in an era where the only way he could succeed and hang with the big boys is to inject himself with illegal and lethal drugs, then I would be an unhappy father.
Now it’s $3,000.00 for her health insurance?….Why is it that it is now currently ALL ABOUT HEALTH INSURANCE!? I’m sick of hearing about health insurance/healthcare reform and I don’t care if the Louisville restaurant floor in question was made of linoleum or rich mahagony. Enough about health insurance! PLEASE!!
Oh, this story about slick Rick comes of no surprise to me. He’s been made a GOD in Kentucky and especially now in Louisville. This to me is almost a dog bites man story…
[...] http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/08/13/when-the-moment-is-right/ [...]
The older I get, the less I believe in absolutes. Perception is reality, and we all have different perspectives. Some people look to the Founding Fathers and the past as the ideal. Some see the same time period as an unjust and evil. The truth is some where in the middle, no? To some things are getting worse, but in reality when was it ever good? That would depend on the perspective of the one judging on what is good and evil?
I don’t think people realize who’s getting cheated more than anyone in this steroid saga. What do you say when you find out Jim Brown was a monster on the field because of Steroids? How about O.J. Simpson? Reggie Jackson? Bo Jackson? See, all these guys used roids and fans of opposing teams suffered because of it.
Very few people want to admit that roids is cheating at the ultimate level. That it’s unfair and wrong. But it is. Thanks Reggie, A-hole!
Great post Joe. It goes along well with your article a while back for SI about the double standard of steriods=bad but extra strength, super-fast medicine=good.
I’ve always loved the irony in the fact that the spokesman for the biggest selling performing enhancing drug in the country perjured himself with such bravado in front of Congress.
To Wes (#22)… I really don’t want to start a philosophical argument here, but on what grounds do you establish your morality? You state that steroids are “just morally wrong” as though it’s a tried and true fact that everyone agrees on. I think a large point of this post is that just about everything has become a moral gray area. You make think PEDs are wrong no matter what but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are right.
Don’t get me wrong – I agree 100% that they give some an unfair advantage, but where is it written down that life must be fair and that everyone has to play by the rules?
argh… may* not make.
@Nate(CA)
I understand your point. All I am saying is that people like me, who believe steroid use is wrong, are the ones being cheated.
If it gets to the point to where only the steroid users are the ones who succeed, then where is room for people who choose not to juice themselves, because they believe it is wrong?
I don’t know if this makes sense or not to anybody else, because it is real late at night and I may not be explaining myself the way I would like.
This is the second time in as many days that I have read here that Bo Jackson used steroids. Where is the evidence that confirms this “fact”? From what I have read before, Bo wasn’t that into weightlifting in the first place. Sounds like HATERISM to me, but what do I know…..?
Wow…that was one of the best things I’ve ever read. Thank you.
First of all, great post.
Second, I take (minor) issue with Bill’s comment that people will begin to live to 300. While average age at death has been steadily rising, the *maximum* age has not. No one lives much past 120. We may get to a point where most people live to 100, but I doubt we’ll see 300 year old people in the next few generations.
I agree with his larger point though — the “steroid era” will shrink in significance over time.
PS: I thought/hoped this article would be about cheating in baseball vs. cheating on your wife, and the public reaction to both.
As a physician, I see this debate all too often. Some patients will take any medicine that I prescribe them and some will want to know all possible side effects. The funny thing is that, no matter how much we think we know about a drug, something new always pops up. Take the ED drugs for instance. Viagra is now used for patients with pulmonary hypertension — it helps open up the pulmonary arteries and lowers the pressures in the lungs. But of course, they change the name and charge 5 times the price for this. The statin medicines (Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, etc) were designed to lower cholesterol, but we have found that they also reduce inflammation in the arterial bed and actually reduce all cause mortality (not just from a reduction in heart attacks and strokes). So, is it possible that medicines that are used for one issue actually can help with others? Definitely yes.
Foolishly, I followed the link and read the article at Slate. Five minutes later, I’m thinking that’s probably more information than I really needed.
I keep thinking that the right analogy is the unprescribed and untested use of alleged brain enhancers by both students and workers. The New Yorker had a fantastic article about it a few months back (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot) and I was struck by how frequently the rhetoric, both by users and those choosing not to use, mirrored the steroid debates. Only here it was about doing better on tests at Harvard, rather than something important, like baseball.
Very nice (article? mini-essay?) Joe. On a related note, I’d be really interested to hear opinions or see a good poll on why some known or assumed steroid users are viewed so differently than others. For instance, is the comparatively light treatment Giambi received really the result of the fact that he apologized? Or does it have more to do with the fact that he wasn’t widely viewed as an asshole before the revelation, like Bonds or Clemens? McGwire and Palmeiro have been handled pretty roughly, but so far it looks like David Ortiz is being given some fairly broad benefit of the doubt. Is that solely because Papi seems like a big teddy bear and McGwire and Palmeiro are less cuddly, or is something else at work here, like simple fatigue on the part of fans about this issue? I have no clue, but it would be interesting to hear some views on it.
Dave referenced the same article that I was going to reference. That New Yorker article makes it quite clear that we are already in the midst of a medical performance and longevity revolution.
I don’t particularly like it, since those drugs allow people with less natural talent to do well while not particularly helping those of already high intellectual gifts. But it’s the world we live in, and will continue to live in.
Joe, I can’t help but slightly disagree. It all comes down to a matter of choice. Yes, steroids and other medicines will probably advance with society and eventually they will flourish regularly. Yes, the Cy Young era and Babe Ruth era’s were tainted themselves, what with the Cy Young rules and the lack of black players when the Babe was playing. But the Babe didn’t CHOOSE to play with no black players. Cy Young didn’t CHOOSE to have the mound 50 feet away.
Meanwhile, you have a player like Derek Jeter, who for all we know, never did it. He was surrounded by it, he knew it was going on, he had a dozen or so teammates shooting themselves with steroids every day, and yet he CHOSE not to take them, b/c he knew it was cheating, just like all the players who took the steroids knew.
You can say everyone was doing it, you can say there’s science behind the good side of steroids, and you can say everyone turned a blind eye… but what can you say about the guy who saw it all, and yet CHOSE not to take any steroids, b/c he respected the game and had the gall to stand up and not take steroids. I’ve read your steroids articles, and your collection of articles on steroids in baseball generally leans towards letting all those cheaters get away with a pass, while the 100’s of players NOT cheating, who CHOSE to do the right thing, you essentially minimalize their accomplishments and say that they probably should have just cheated anyway.. so like i say, i slightly disagree…
Joe, are you suggesting that Pitino uses Viagra?
Wes (#22):
But I also agree with MD in CT (#15). You gotta think about MORALITY. I could never bring myself to use steroids. It is just morally wrong, and I would rather quit then inject myself with illegal drugs that can kill me or tear my body up for the rest of my life.
But the thing is, Wes, while you consider steroids immoral, not everyone* does. We live in a world where some people believe it’s immoral to not go to church on Sundays. Some people believe having sex with someone before marriage is immoral. Some people believe that having sex with someone who is not your wife is immoral, that you should stick to one woman, while others have no problem having multiple wives.
I got that one of Joe’s points was that the whole world is one big gray area, including morality.
* While I don’t feel steroids are immoral, I don’t think I’d take them. Frankly, I don’t feel I have the discipline to go on a steroid regimen, and taking them sporadically seems like it wouldn’t have a worthwhile benefit.
I understand the points Joe, but there is something simply not logical about the way so many people, including myself, view sports. Perhaps it’s seeing them as a vision or an extension of our youth, which we so desperately want to be pure, innocent and straight-forward, as nothing in this world seems to truly fit that description. Perhaps seeing one’s childhood heroes reduced to mere humans with flaws, problems and failures diminishes the view of our own childhood.
#38. I’m asking this here because this is a basic question to the debate. Why is refusing steroids “respecting the game of baseball?” Did Ted Williams not respect the game of baseball when he came home from the war and (likely, as a lot of his fellow pilots did) use greenies to stay alert during games? What’s the difference between him doing that and Roger Clemens using steroids to remain effective in his late thirties?
Further, do we deplore Gaylord Perry for using the illegal spitter to advance his career? The man’s a Hall of Famer, and a caught cheater who celebrated his reputation with a memoir entitled Me and the Spitter. What does his legacy do to baseball? Is he disrespecting the game, or merely a hard-nosed competitor getting the most out of his talent?
Maybe the phony moral outrage stems from the historical hypocrisy that America exhibits over EVERYTHING – Puritan values at the base which lead to, i.e. condemning drug use while having one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world and inventing cigarettes; condemning having our “freedoms taken away” when it comes to guns yet have one of the highest murder rates in the world; cries of injustice in China, Iraq and Iran while (according to an HBO documentary) it was only in 200-freakin-9 did a high school in Mississippi have an *integrated* prom; and imbeciles with phony moral outrage against steroids and Rick Pitino take Viagra, or go to the doctor for other medication, or even drink coffee to “wake up” (doesn’t that seem like speed to everyone????), in a country with billions of dollars going to pharmaceutical company CEOs every year.
It’s stupid to get worked up, to hold anyone to a level of moral accountability. Just live and be as happy as you can be. Everything else just gets in the way.
Rambling done.
Is it just me or do the majority of people who post here not give a rat’s fadoo about whether or not someone twittered the posts?
Why not just do it and not worry about it?
Do people get a pat on the back or something?
We’re already here and reading the post, why do we care if you sent it to other people?
Dang, long reply eaten by the intertubes. Oh well.
Joe, great piece. I’m with Bill James. As time goes on, so does medicine’s ability to help us live longer, healthier lives. Once they have drugs that help us all stay in better shape w/o side effects, we’ll all be taking them. Once they have brain drugs that really help us be smarter, we’ll all take them. And, those people alive at that time, will have silly moral outrage over athletes using some other thing that makes them better, just like we do today with all of our advantages over 50-100 years ago.
As for Pitino, more than 50% of people cheat on their spouse. Should half of the population be excluded from having public jobs? That’s just silly.
You know, the thing many of us always liked about baseball is that normal guys could play it. Frank White and Freddie Patek would barely be noticed standing in line to get into a restaurant. Couple of smallish guys…..But basketball or football players are all freaks and monsters, standing out like a T-rex at a dairy farm.
So when “everyone” takes steroids, then the guys who don’t want to damage their livers or God knows what else are effectively denied access to this game as well. They cannot work hard enough to overcome the drug-induced gains the drug users get. (I watched one steroid user go from a 160 wafer thin weakling to a 220 pound mass of muscle in 5 months. That can’t be done honestly, no matter how much you work.) And the normal guy is pushed aside while those willing to sacrifice not only their youth, their families and their education, but also their health and longevity can thrive.
That doesn’t seem right. Baseball has been a game played by humans, not mutants. Hate to see that go away.
Jim C just made about the only point that seems to even remotely allow one to be outraged (though I don’t agree it is only about baseball).
Steroid users do take jobs from those that don’t want to potentially damage their long term health. However, I’m not certain that is evil/bad/wrong. I think it might be, but I’m not certain it is.
Lots of people are willing to work harder, longer, do more ass kissing, do “whatever it takes” to get ahead in my company, when I choose instead to spend more time with my family, and volunteer, and whatever instead of put in 60 hours. Does that mean that somehow I’ve been cheated, or just that I’ve made different choices, choices who’s consequence I need to live with. Should I blame others for their willingness to “do what it takes” and my lack of promotion, or should I remember that I’ve made choices to take vacations, eat dinner with my family, and otherwise de-prioritize time in the office over time outside it?
Every person makes choices every day. Some people choose to emphasize things that help them get ahead at work, some to emphasize other things. Those choices have consequences, and I’m not certain that other people are wrong/bad, just that they’ve made different choices than I have.
@Grant, #37:
Re: brain-enhancing drugs, you said:
“I don’t particularly like it, since those drugs allow people with less natural talent to do well while not particularly helping those of already high intellectual gifts. But it’s the world we live in, and will continue to live in.”
So this drug allegedly helps some people that need help, and doesn’t really affect the ones that don’t need it. And you see this as a bad thing? How do you feel about, say, allergy medicine, which, to paraphrase you … allows people with allergies to do well while not particularly helping those with already perfectly functioning immune systems.
Or, for that matter, what do you think of footstools?
The only reasons I can see to oppose these drugs (assuming they are not harmful) is a belief that people born with “high intellectual gifts” somehow deserve them. Or, more likely, you are one of the luckily naturally intelligent, and fear losing some of your privileged advantage over the less gifted.
Sorry if this sounds a little strident. I’m not trying to attack you, just to point out why I see your view as (probably unintentionally) harsh.
I never thought I’d type the following sentence, but: Bryan Adams makes a good point (#32). Bill James’ piece reminds me of what we sometimes sound like when we venture out of our areas of expertise. Most of the extension of longevity that we’ve seen in modern societies comes actually from public health measures that decrease rates of death in infancy and childhood, thus extending _average_ lifespans. It’s really hard to show that any medicines actually extend life in any adults, and essentially the ones that do, do so in groups of people with diseases that would otherwise kill them early (coronary artery disease, cancer). Making people routinely live until 130 would take a breakthrough the likes of which we’ve never seen, to say nothing of “200, 300, or 1000″. (There’s an interesting observation/theory in the aging field that no species on earth lives longer than twice the reproductive age of the female.)
I know this is only tangentially relevant, I really just wanted to say that for the first time in my life, I agree with Bryan Adams. Well, “Summer of 69″ wasn’t bad either.
Everyone commenting on here should see the documentary Bigger Stronger Faster. It’s available on Netflix Live. I honestly had a very different view of steroids before I watched the movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1151309/
@Jim C, #46
Okay so steroids took jobs away from small normal looking guys like David Eckstein, Adam Everett, Marco Scutaro and Dustin Pedroia, oh wait…
Joe, I think you’re exactly right to question why we find ourselves morally outraged over steroid use when we use and accept so many drugs to improve our own lives on a day-to-day basis. Personally, I’ve never been all that upset over the steroid issue–I think the rules serve a function, and that as a player, your role is to figure out the best way to win with the hand your dealt. If the rules say you can’t take a drug, but you know that drug will help you win and you know you won’t get caught, then you take the drug and win. It’s the responsibility of the policy architects to create an environment where it is not in the players’ best interest to use drugs. If we as fans feel wronged by events that transpired, our anger should be directed at the people who created an environment where the rewards for taking drugs far exceeded the reprecussions–not at the people who simply played the hands they were dealt.
Now if we can put aside our righteous anger at people who made reasonable–if not morally upstanding–decisions that many of us would make in the same situation, we can move on to the more interesting question of where do you go from here in creating a drug policy that will respect the integrity of the game, eliminate pressure on athletes to put potentially harmful substances in their bodies, and set a good example for the young fans of the game. I think, ultimately, you need to focus on banning any substance or procedure that meets the following two qualifications:
(1) is sufficiently beneficial that a player might feel pressure to use the substance or procedure,
and (2) has any substantially negative side-effects.
I think in this case, steroids fit the bill, while the jury is still out on whether Viagra is sufficiently beneficial to entice players to use the substance. Of course, Advil might fall on the other side of the fence if you think it has substantially negative side-effects.
I don’t remember the comedian, but he had an amusing bit about how “on steroids” or “with an attitude” were easy jokes to make.
Steroids are vitamins with an attitude.
An attitude is an opinion on steroids.
Tony Kornheiser has been talking on PTI about how PEDs will be legal (lawwise and rulewise) in the future. Don’t know if he picked up the thought from Bill James but he is at least on the bandwagon and PTI is treating the issue with less histrionics than most of the media (and most PTI topics for that matter).
Could be that acceptance is making slow inroads.
“Meanwhile, you have a player like Derek Jeter, who for all we know, never did it.”
Why? Why does he get a pass from the suspicion that every other player gets? For all we know maybe he did use PEDs and is still now using them. For all we know. Which is nothing.
“He was surrounded by it, he knew it was going on, he had a dozen or so teammates shooting themselves with steroids every day, and yet he CHOSE not to take them, b/c he knew it was cheating, just like all the players who took the steroids knew.”
So if he knows it’s cheating, and he knows his teammates are cheating, why doesn’t he SAY SOMETHING about it? Apparently, he didn’t care that much about cheating, even as a “clean” player, because he knew about it going on and probably could’ve brought the cheating of his teammates to a stop by going public about it. But he didn’t. Apparently he was okay with his many teammates cheating.
“but what can you say about the guy who saw it all, and yet CHOSE not to take any steroids, b/c he respected the game and had the gall to stand up and not take steroids.”
How does ignoring the cheating of your teammates respect the game? How did he “stand up” by keeping quiet about it? You’re saying he’s some kind of hero because he knew his teammates were cheating but he chose not to tell anyone about that? He chose to benefit from the cheating of his teammates, as they helped win multiple championships that make Derek Jeter’s record that much more impressive. Four rings!
The captain of the team knows that his teammates are cheating and chooses to keep quiet about it and gets the glory of his cheating team winning those championships, and this is supposed to be heroic and admirable and respects the game?
OK–Part 2
Right now, the little guys can still play. In the future, the David Ecksteins, Adam Everetts, Marco Scutaros and Dustin Pedroias will be locked out. When everyone looks like Barry Bonds, then anyone looking like Eckstein will never see the door.
At your job, sure, choices are made. I too have never been very ambitious because I was not willing to sacrifice to get what those other guys were after. But I can still be happy where i am, doing a good job. Once baseball becomes a game of giants, there will be no place for the norms. And unlike ambition, if I try steroids for a year or two to make the big leagues, I can’t quite scale back without harm, can I? If I’ve given up a family and then say, “Hey, it ain’t worth it” then I can rearrange my life and move on. So, the analogy is flawed.
For me the fundamental case against steroids, as opposed to other kinds of training, surgery or whatever is this: If we assume that they do aid performance, and that they do so for everybody, then once permitted their use will become mandatory. Oh, there will be holdouts at first, but since they would be allowable, there would be a huge amount of pressure, from teams, fans, coaches, and fellow players to use them. They’re just like lifting weights, right?
And this will inevitably percolate down. To the minor leagues, then colleges, then high schools. If you are a marginal AAAer, or a high school player hoping for a high draft position, why wouldn’t you take them? It would seem foolish not to.
I’m not ready for a world in which steroid use is mandatory.
Idea for a commercial:
Open on a small fishing boat in the middle of a very big lake. Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens sit in the boat, fishing poles in hand, waiting for a nibble. Palmeiro sighs deeply. Clemens starts to nod off. Palmeiro reaches into a cooler, moves the frozen head of Ted Williams and grabs a beer. Clemens is now asleep.
Suddenly, a speed boat races by nearly capsizing the small boat. Clemens is startled awake; Palmeiro spills the beer on his shirt.
The speed boat circles back around. It’s filled with hot, 40-year old women in bikinis and a man in a white business suit and captain’s hat—it’s Rick Pitino!
He waves.
Palmeiro and Clemens stare blankly.
Announcer: When was the last time you pulled out a really big one and had it mounted?
Logo: Viagra
[...] explaining why I don’t care about steroids in Baseball, and Joe Posnanski went a wrote an awesome post not just about steroids, but America, hypocrisy, Rick Pitino, Viagra, and everything else. [...]
I don’t want to get in a big back and forth, Jim. But why can’t you take steroids for a year or two and then stop? There really isn’t evidence that it will surely hurt you.
I’m not sure you got my point (and I think Joe’s):
It’s not clear that there is really a right and wrong here (at least in the moral, absolute sense). The “right and wrong” only likely exists in some peoples’ minds (which is why this is an ethical issue, not a moral issue).
Great post and lots of great comments. I have nothing to add other than I am tired of the media having a circus when most fans really care little about all of it. I think I am somewhere around where Eric (#52) is on the thing.
And the boner commercials are driving me insane. That bit with the two bath tubs? How is that romantic and who thinks of such stupid stuff? Now one bathtub with both people in it? That would be better. But those silly bath tubs show up in the weirdest places. How do they get water in them?
The only thing those commercials have done is to give my wife a nice measure of satisfaction when she says, “My man doesn’t need that stuff!”
Pardon me while I put down my computer and applaud.
………
…and we’re back. All of this indignation about steroids is really starting to bother me. At first, I confess, I was a bit peeved about it all. But then the evidence began to start piling up that this was not a few bad apples, this was a barrel that made the apples rotten. I should have known better, seeing as how I am familiar with Zimbardo’s research on the impact of situations on behavior, but I did come around eventually. Now, I’ve pretty much decided that the steroid issue in baseball has become something for hack writers to yell and scream about. The nadir of this may have been Rick Reilly’s piece where he “took away” all of the awards perceived ‘roiders have won and “gave” them to the “deserving” players. What a joke.
As a society we have no problem with people wearing contacts or getting Lasik to see better, lifting weights to get stronger, hell even taking little pills “for when the moment is right…” But guys who take steroids to, oh god, be better at baseball? That’s just different somehow, I guess…And I know, I know these guys are greedy and get more money and cheat and all that, but…
…We as fans often sit in the stands and yell and scream about so and so being a bum or whatever. We blog and write letters-to-newspapers and call into talk radio about how so-and-so stinks and should be cut. We make moral judgements, even, calling people we’ve never met spoiled and greedy and wimpy because of the way they PLAY A GAME. Then, when they take something to make themselves better and get caught, we ride them about that too. I can’t be the only one who sees a problem here, am I? It’s like some of these guys can’t win for losing.
Cheating Who?…….
Cheating the spirit of fairplay in sport. I don’t want to sound old fashioned, and I’m not yet old, and I love science fiction; BUT, I want my athletes to be the creations of nature and hard work….not the creations of mad scientists. Just because many do it, does not mean we shouldn’t try to eliminate it. The fact that a battle may be a losing one, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be fought. I think we should fight for clean athletes, and leave the sci-fi to Hollywood.
I’ll answer your question (How would you feel about steroids in baseball if it was legal and not against the rules?) My answer: I’d hate them. I don’t have a problem with them because they’re a blight on society or because they’re dangerous to people who take them. I don’t have any opinion on whether they should be legal.
I don’t like them becasue they mess up my game. They screw up my stats, they screw up my comparisons of players, they screw up my appreciation of what it takes to succeed at the game, they screw up the goggle-eyed wonder with which I follow the sport.
Remember Tug McGraw’s “Frozen Ice-Ball Theory of Pitching”? McGraw used to say that if, for example, he came into a game with the bases loaded and Willie Stargell at the plate, he remembers that in a billion years or so the sun will burn out and the earth will become a frozen ice ball hurtling space. And when that happens, no one will care what Willie Stargell did with the bases loaded.
Well, even at the time, well more than 99% of the people in the world don’t care what anyone does with the bases loaded. But I do. It makes no sense, but it leaves me thrilled or depressed, excited, breathless, frustrated, angry, and all sorts of other things. I love it and I revel in it. And PEDs make it harder for me to revel in it. It devalues what happens. It throws it off balance.
If I didn’t, I would feel completely different about it. If it didn’t leave home run records crumbling, if it didn’t wipe clean the basic balances of the sport that I took for granted, I wouldn’t care.
But it did, and I do.
And really, why else do they play baseball, except because we care?
Lawrence (#65),
So what about greenies? What about Tommy John surgery? Lasik? What about weight lifting, eating right, EVERYTHING – everything “throws [baseball] ‘off balance’.” I put “off balance” in quotes because there was never any “balance.” Babe Ruth drank horse semen and played only day games against only white people. Is that balance?
You are lying if you say that the legality doesn’t influence your line of thinking. That’s Joe’s entire point – for some reason, people have gotten this notion that steroids is “off balance” but Cialis, or weight lifting, or surgery, or the myth-of-the-Mick-I-go-out-boozing-and-hit-homeruns-and-don’t-do-steroids is “in balance.”
It’s nonsense.
I must take a different tack. Where does the acceptance of cheating end? The players knew they were cheating. They kept it in secrecy and lied to Congress (Tejada, Palmeiro), owners, fans and the public. Why? Because they were embarrassed if it were known. This is the truest measure of doing wrong. Joe, what do you tell your daughters about “performance enhancing’ behaviors in their classroom? And recalling the boy in your high school business class at East Mecklenburg High who would not cheat and would not collude, even though the temptation was great and the risk near zero, why was he so different from you and the others? Our human nature makes it difficult to think that we are weaker and morally compromised than our peers. But there are some times when it is apparent.
These modern PED users can be described by the single comment from which all men should shrink: He was at his best only when the going was good.
The only people who care about stats are historians and older fans. Historians need them for perspective and older fans just don’t want their heroes’ records broken.
And stats are only important in baseball, so PEDs are only important in baseball. Most people I know under thirty just accept steroids as part of reality. It doesn’t stop them from watching, and never will.
@tarhoosier, #66:
“They kept it in secrecy and lied to Congress (Tejada, Palmeiro), owners, fans and the public. Why? Because they were embarrassed if it were known. This is the truest measure of doing wrong.”
1) Maybe they weren’t embarrassed, they just didn’t want to get in trouble.
Imagine you moved to a country where ice cream was illegal, but you really liked ice cream and so continued to buy it from underground dealers. Would you come clean and tell the government, owners, fans, and public about your ice cream usage?
2) Embarrassment is by NO means an indication that something is wrong. People get embarrassed when they know that OTHERS will judge them for their action, not when they themselves think their action is wrong. I’d be embarrassed if I listened to the music of the Jonas Brothers, but I wouldn’t be doing anything WRONG.
I suffered from Lymphomatoid Papulomatosa Type B. I broke out in huge angry red bleeding spots all over my body. This is an extremely rare disease that most doctors will confuse with Type A, i.e. lymphatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, and sooner rather than later. But it’s an immune system stress disease (get more sleep, doof!) without cancer.
The treatment (there’s not really a cure yet, because the disease is so rare it’s not well understood; however, eliminate the underlying assaults on the immune system and the spots stop showing up) is steroids. Lots of lots of steroids. “Hold still while we give you a steroid injection in this spot on your back, now this one on your eyelid, now this one on your penis.” No fun at all, but it did cure me forever of my aversion to needles.
If Albert Pujols develops this disease, I *want* him to get steroids. And I also still want him to be able to go into the Hall of Fame. And for my money, is there that much difference from using steroids to be able to exercise more and using ice to protect balky joints to be able to exercise more? What about whirlpools, ultrasounds, aspirin, advil?
Bill James’ post on the topic does not reflect the true genius of Bill James. Bill James and his fellow sabermetricians have given us the tools to enable a reasonable comparison between dead ball era pitchers and Pedro Martinez, between Ty Cobb and Rickey Henderson. And those same tools, tools like ERA+ and OPS+, can enable us to compare everybody from a steroid era and those from an earlier time.
Is it fair to (say) Will Clark? Perhaps, perhaps not. There is a line in the sand that he refused to cross. He was not going to use these drugs to be a better ball player. He used ice and whirlpools and aspirin, sure. But he wouldn’t use steroids. What would be fair would be to compare everybody who uses only to those who use. Lets not penalize Will Clark for either an ethical choice or (perhaps) a steroid allergy.
Is this going to happen? I doubt it. There are still idiots who think Jack Morris was a better pitcher than Bert Blyleven, even though Blyleven won loads more games, pitched for much worse teams in general, and outpitched Morris in the regular season and in the postseason. Jose Cruz played 19 seasons with speed, defense, and some power, and was on the MVP list five times. But he played mostly in the worst hitter’s park in baseball, so his career OPS+ of 120 won’t get him into the HOF. Jim Rice had a much shorter career without Cruz’s speed or defense, but is in the Hall of Fame. So we’re still having major trouble comparing apples to apples.
But I’d love to live in a world where the presumption was that ballplayers will do everything legal to win, be it training methods or drug use, and where we could compare players and just acknowledge the great ones.
Got to comment on the poll. I realize that your poll is probably limited in the same way your article on SI limited selection: only those players whose contract will still run next year. But you don’t say so. Given the lack of specification, imagine paying $16M/year for a pitcher who will give you (on average) three (3!) starts a year, four (4!) innings per start, with an ERA+ in the low 70s. Not horrific enough? The Dodgers are paying Jason Schmidt over a million dollars an inning and getting an ERA of just under 6 for their largesse.
A million dollars an inning for a three year contract. Think about that. Now I know that injuries happen. And I know that the season before Schmidt signed the contract, he posted an ERA+ of 125 in over 200 innings. But he also faded badly in 2006, that last season. As per the link below, after June (when he’d been badly overused already, including a 132 pitch start in May) Schmidt didn’t post a single month with an ERA under four the rest of the year. His September was almost 5. The Dodgers saw Schmidt pitch ineffectively in the pennant race in 2006. And they signed him anyway. The link: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2008/08/28/lincecums-132-pitch-outing-if-jason-schmidt-in-2006-is-the-giants-model-you-wont-like-the-after-effects/
So I argue that this contract is beyond bad. The Giants would not have let Schmidt go free agent and sign Zito instead (losing whatever good will Schmidt had earned in pitching his arm off for the Giants, earning two high CYA finishes) if they hadn’t known Schmidt might have been damaged goods. The league would not have bashed Schmidt for half a season if he was healthy. And the Dodgers didn’t bother with any of the rudiments of signing a 34 year old pitcher (Zito is five years younger) with over 1900 innings on his arm, and just have some tests run, just in case.
I don’t blame Schmidt for signing the contract. For one thing, there’s always the assumption that several months of rest will restore the big arm to health. For another, he’s worked hard to come back and give the Dodgers one good start this year (and one mediocre start and two terrible starts). But this deserves substantial consideration as being the worst contract ever signed. One million dollars an inning. Almost five million dollars a start. Sixteen million dollars per victory. One million six hundred thousand dollars per strikeout, from a strikeout pitcher. This makes Kevin Brown’s much maligned two years with the Yankees seem brilliant. Heck, even Carl Pavano’s sojourn in pinstripes excels compared to Schmidt’s time in blue. It deserves to be on your list.
I do agree with Bill James. I mean, I’d expect some ballplayers to be getting laser eye surgery corrections to 20:10 (reportedly Ted Williams’ eyesight was 20:10) to pick up the rotation that much sooner to hit that much better. Cheating? Lasix is legal, no? And there’s some suggestion that statin drugs (which I take) help protect against Alzheimer’s and memory loss by keeping blood vessels more flexible. Well gee, that could also lead to less bruising, better weight training. If that becomes common use, do we need to stop players from living longer lives to keep them cleaner as players?
I say every player is trying really hard to win, pitchers, catchers, and fielders. You think Bobby Cox doesn’t check his blood pressure, use some medicines that might have kept FDR alive longer? So it’s managers, too. The only rule that keeps you out of the HOF is betting on baseball. That one rule is enough.
Conrad,
1) Greenies, Tommy John surgery, lasik, weight lifting, and eating right simply did not change the game the way steroids did. They didn’t make home run records fall, they didn’t change the game so drastically that teams had to use pitchers differently, that rosters had to be built differently, that the statistics we knew became meaningless, that runs became worth significantly less each. Yes, you can compare PEDs and,eg, greenies on moral and legal grounds, but my point is that moral and legal grounds don’t matter to me; the baseball matters to me, and I don’t like it.
2) I am NOT lying. If the only way you can deal with people telling you how they feel about PEDs is by calling them liars, then maybe you need to open your mind a little. It is conceivable that people feel differently about things than you do, or even different that you think they should feel. Whether or not what Joe thinks about how people are reacting is true, it’s not how I react, and whether you think I’m lying is your own baggage.
3) People have sex for their own personal gratification. Baseball is played to make money off fans who are interested in seeing it. To me, that’s a pretty big difference.
I realize it is expected to worship you as the greatest writer in the history of man and you are the SABR darling but this article was beyond ridiculous. I believe you are a talented sports writer. You have written some of the best pieces I’ve read in sports but as someone who lives in Kansas City I’ve always resented your desire to make sure everyone likes you and never take a real stand on anything. The Star’s refusal to hold sports franchises accountable with hard questions and legitimate criticism enabled decades of bad sports franchises. You make say it on a BP round table or Hardball Times interview but in your own newspaper I frequently considered you a coward. Make the well orchestrated cute reference- never offend-always be the good guy. You enabled-
The Royals and Chiefs are not lovable losers they are/were inept embarrassing franchises who took advantage of their city. This article is a perfect example -what are you saying? Spit it out-stand for something for once-pick your point -is it everyone was doing it so let it go? Is it too big to legislate? Steroids are the same as a corked bat? wtf- quit hemming and hawing and say what you think. Comparing this to Viagra and Rick Pitino-huh – Pitino wins basketball games more due to affairs and Viagra-
I can’t imagine how someone can maintain that greenies, Tommy John surgery, and lasix don’t profoundly affect the game.
Greenies, if one is to believe contemporary accounts, were used almost daily by the majority of players. And have been common for (at least) half of the entire history of modern baseball. Uh, a nice hefty dose of methamphetamines each day is better than steroids? Really?
Pitchers who have Tommy John surgery otherwise would not be able to pitch at all. Yes vs no. That doesn’t have an effect?
Being able to see is a bit important for a hitter (and every player). That’s not significant?
I’m not really sure what hallowed era people are comparing things to. Steroids were around (at least) 40 year ago and some players took them. You cannot take McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds and make three players the entire story of baseball of the last (actually) 25 years. Scoring did NOT increase, for godsakes. Bonds did not hit 150 home runs in one year, nobody hit .450, nothing extremely statistically significant happened.
Pitching and batting styles changed due to the rise of the stolen base in the 80s, use of aluminum bats in amateur ball, change of design in bats to thinner handles, the increase in the pool of players, and that chicks (and the media) focus on home runs.
Pitching has now adjusted. You learn in Little League that constantly swinging for the fences doesn’t help your stats, or your team. Baseball has come to value OBP much more. Ricky Henderson stole an incredible number of bases. Why? Because he was always running. However, his baserunning was worth approximately 1-2 wins to his teams each year because he also got caught a lot. So teams don’t steal as much anymore. A lot of guys swung for the fences since the mid 80s because they could reach balls they couldn’t before, and pitchers’ motions had shortened because of the stolen base. People realized that wasn’t a good strategy. And breaking balls became much more prevalent. The pitchers adjusted.
It’s just the ebbs and flows of the game. No-one is investigating Bob Gibson or looking for a conspiracy because the AL batted .230ish in 1968. That’s a bigger aberration. 1930 is a bigger aberration. Babe Ruth’s 1920 is a bigger aberration. No-one is pointing fingers at Cal Ripken for breaking Lou Gehrig’s mark.
It might just be that records don’t last forever. Great players do come along, you know. I am always amazed at this debate and the ace in the hole of “the numbers have become meaningless”. No team broke the record for runs scored. Nobody hit 150 home runs. No pitcher won 40 games. Nobody hit over .400. Where is this wild aberration in the game? Okay, so there’s 6 more guys that have more than 500 career homeruns than there would have been proportionally. Overall, were they “better” because of that one isolated stat? No.
You can’t claim that there was/is madness because everyone decided to be Dave Kingman instead of Tony Gwynn for a while. And you can’t call something that was entirely legal (and sabremetrically marginal or thusfar indefinable) “cheating”. It’s silly.
Marc,
The way I perceived it, Tommy John surgery, lasix, and amphetamines haven’t affected the game the way steroids have. Tommy John surgery can’t make you any better than you were before you hurt your arm. Sure, the guy who had the surgery might not be pitching, but after the surgery he isn’t any better than some other guy who hasn’t had surgery. Same with lasix, which is less effective at fixing your vision than glasses (but much more convenient). If you’ve got some evidence that those things did affect the game in ways I’m not perceiving them–stats, not “come on, it had to,” I’ll look at them and revise my opinions accordingly.
As for amphetamines being “better” than steroids, I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that steroids bug me because they changed the game in a way that was obvious to me whereas greenies didn’t. Morally, I’m not making any judgement at all. I said that in my original response. I’m not saying steroids are worse morally, only that I personally don’t like what they did to the game and that’s why I’m against them.
I mean, I don’t like free agency because I don’t like what it’s done to the game. That doesn’t mean I’m against it. Morally, I can’t justify screwing ballplayers out of the right to sign with whoever they want. But I still don’t like it, even though I would be against taking it away.
As for the argument that scoring did not increase, you’ll have to show me some stats. I went over to baseball-reference.com and looked at the runs per game and HRs per game totals for the last 30 years and it sure seems like they increased. Bonds didn’t hit 150 home runs, but why is that the magic number? He did hit more than 20% more than anyone had ever hit before the steroid era, and 60-homer seasons became a lot more common.
\
I agree with you that there are a lot of ebbs and flows to the game, some good, some bad. Probably some of that scoring increase is due to that, too. But I can’t imagine not attributing a good deal of it to steroids. We can see the effect in the stats of players who took them.
Here’s an interesting page of home run records (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_hr7.shtml). Of the 30 major league clubs, 23 of them have set their teams’s single-season home run record since 1996. League records for most home runs, most home runs at home, most home runs on the road, and most consecutive walk-off homers, have all been set since 1996.
Nobody was looking at Bob Gibson for a conspiracy in 1968–there was none to look for–but baseball did decide it didn’t like what was happening and changed the rules to try to fix it. They didn’t have a moral issue with it, but they didn’t like it, so they changed it.
Hey, if what happened didn’t bug you, or if you really loved it, that’s cool. As you say, home run hitters get the chicks. But to convince me of the rest of your arguments, you need to do a little more work.
Lawrence, I’m confused. You don’t like free agency, but you wouldn’t change it. You don’t make moral judgments about greenies or steroids, but you don’t like them. Oh, wait…it’s just steroids you don’t like, greenies were okay because they ‘didn’t change the game’.
Amphetamines were against the law to use without a prescription. They conferred a physical advantage to a player taking them. There were serious negative side effects associated with their continued use. There was no consequence attached to a player using them. How is this different from steroids?
Hey, Karyn. You aren’t confused. You’ve got my position right. I don’t like steroids because they changed the game and the stats in ways I didn’t like. I didn’t care about greenies at the time because I didn’t notice them changing the game. That’s how greenies are different from steroids.
I do make moral judgements. Using both of them was illegal and and people who do illegal things should face the consequences, although this particular crime, outside of baseball, doesn’t really get me riled up. If people decided to make steroids in general legal, it wouldn’t faze me. But that has nothing to do with how I feel about how they affected baseball. And it’s the effect on baseball that moves me to feel strongly about it. Maybe that’s nuts, but that’s how it is. If steroids were legal, I’d still want them out of baseball. That’s what Joe asked and that’s what I said originally.
As far as greenies conferring a physical advantage–maybe they did, but not enough to make records fall or to make stars out of guys who were lousy. At least, I don’t think so–in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four there were some lousy players taking greenies. On the other hand, it would be interesting if we could find out who did greenies and whether it improved their games. I’d like to see it, although I doubt it’s possible to collect that info now. If someone really looked into the issue and found out that greenies really did change a lot, I’d probably be all up in arms about them, and arguing that players who took greenies shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame. All right, no one said being a baseball fan was rational.
What’s your position? I take it you have the same attitude about both greenies and steroids, but didn’t say which. You accept both or you don’t like both? You think ballplayers should face the consequences of their illegal actions, or you think we should ignore both? I’m not trying to make a point, just interested in your take.
Touching on the ‘in ways we don’t understand’ part of this argument…what, then, happens when the inevitable consequences of these drugs start to manifest themselves en masse? (Or, for that matter, when we start to find out the unpredictable long-term effects of frequent Viagra or Cialis use?)
I’m not a medical doctor, so I certainly won’t try to predict what those effects may be. But if Barry Bonds ends up with some sort of virulent brain cancer I don’t want to hear about it. If Manny Ramirez ends up with his testicles shriveled up to pinhead size he needs to shut the hell up about it. I don’t want to hear about these players ten or twenty years from now reaping whatever they’ve sown with this mass experimentation. None of this ‘poor me’ garbage. Go live in some sort of modern-day leper colony and die without anyone noticing. If all-drug baseball is how you want to play it, then damn you if you aren’t willing to take the consequences. Presumably you steroid defenders will be happy with that one too. You get your big massive home runs and don’t have to hear about the price paid for them. So, deal?
Lawrence, I’m not sure what my position is on PED’s. There are a lot of shades of gray here for me. I think, five years ago, I was much more firmly anti-steroid user. But with some distance, and reading people like Joe, I’m coming back to the center. I will say that if a player gets busted by the feds for steroids OR amphetamines, he gets what he gets.
What’s interesting to me is inconsistency. Owners who cry poverty and then offer stupid contracts to marginal players. Players who say they’re only full of rice turn out to be full of beans. From what you have said, it sounds to me as if, because you personally could not perceive a difference in performance regarding greenies, they are okay. Their use does not fire you up the way steroids do. To me, that is inconsistent. The only difference is *your* perception.
Maybe greenies didn’t make schlubs into Hall of Famers…but neither did steroids. Both make it possible for a player to perform somewhat above his natural ability, in some manner. Steroids helped players heal faster, get bigger, and hit the ball farther. It doesn’t help the batting eye. Greenies help players keep their energy up and their focus strong. It doesn’t give you a four-seam breaking ball.
You also stated you didn’t like free agency, but you wouldn’t change it. What about it don’t you like, and how would you fix that–in a way that wouldn’t constitute a change? Me, I like free agency. It hasn’t ruined the game–dumb owners and GM’s have tried, but nothing’s ruined the game yet.
Lawrence–
If you’re still reading this, I agree with nearly all of what you say. Except:
People have sex for their own personal gratification. Baseball is played to make money off fans who are interested in seeing it.
Well, lots of folks get paid to have sex….and lots more pay to watch it than pay to watch baseball.
I hate steroids. OK guys, all you “Hey, whatever” apologists. Sometime in the near future, it will be possible to replace human parts with superior mechanical ones. A computer controlled robotic arm on a human torso. What do you think about that?
As was said, all those things like greenies and nutrition do not fundamentally alter the ability of the user. Steroids do. Huge difference.
Karyn,
I agree with most of what you said. Owners and players being hypocritical bugs me, too, and, yeah, nothing has ruined baseball to the point where I don’t follow it. Still, I don’t think it’s only my perception about greenies. I really think the evidence shows their effect is different from steroids. Right, steroids won’t turn, oh say me into a major leaguer, or even a single A ballplayer. But they did turn guys who weren’t even stars into potential Hall of famers, like McGwire and Palmeiro.
I think free agency overvalues ballplayers. It makes mediocre talents get overpaid because there’s a fight over who gets the small boost they give you. it also means ballplayers can’t be forced to develop their talents better, and that no one will bother to learn anything that won’t help his stats. But al that is nebulous and there are counterarguments. I wouldn’t change it. I just learn to live with it.
Jim C,
OK, I admit there is a business side to sex as well as to baseball. I wonder if the thought that performers are on Cialis bugs people who watch sex shows.
And while I’m admitting things, I’ll go this far. If baseball worked the same way as sex–if ballplayers hung around corners and called out, “He, Big Boy, wanna see a baseball game?”–and if I couldn’t help myself and there were no cops around so I followed one into a park to see a game–and if as we were walking he leaned in toward me and whispered, “For a few bucks more, I know some guys who take PEDs–they’ll REALLY hit the ball!”–well, who knows if I would have the strength to say no.
[...] since virtually everything people do nowadays is in some way “performance-enhancing.” As Joe Posnanski pointed out a few weeks ago, Viagra and Cialis are “performance-enhancing,” and those are two of the most successful drugs [...]
[...] S defended steroids the other day. Joe Posnanski offered a similar defense a few weeks ago, and Bill James, of course, doesn’t think the Hall of Fame can keep out steroid users. John S [...]