Cheating and CHEATING
Posted: March 1st, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 98 Comments »
“Above all, the story of Willie Mays reminds us of a time when the only performance-enhancing drug was joy.”
– Pete Hamill
The above sentence — which concluded Pete Hamill’s New York Times review of James Hirsch’s excellent Willie Mays book — has been batted around a bit on the Internet the last few days. It has been batted around mainly because, well, with all due respect, it’s ridiculous. As more than one person cynically has written, and more than a few hundred cynically have thought: “I didn’t know that joy was another word for amphetamines.”
Up front, I should say that I love Pete Hammill. He’s another writing hero of mine. He, more than almost anyone else I’ve read, has a knack for capturing the whiff of smoke and black-and-white charm of a certain time and place and occasion — New York in the 1960s, a rainy night out with Frank Sinatra, the violence and beauty of a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. A Pete Hamilll essay on Willie Mays was exactly what I wanted to read on a cold Sunday morning as the days begin to lengthen.
And, sure, I expected romance. That’s Hamill. That’s Mays. This was going to be a love story, the author never hid from that. He hits you square between the eyes with the first sentence: “A long time ago in America, there was a beautiful game called baseball.” Yes. Well. This time was, of course, when men were men, when pitchers finished what they started, when the World Series ended before the chill of autumn turned harsh, when the good teams were all in New York and none were in that vast wasteland West of St. Louis. This was that time, Hamill writes, “long before the innocence of game was permanently stained by the filthy deception of steroids.”
And then: “In that vanished time, there was a ballplayer named Willie Mays.”
Right. Romance. Well, I think Mays is one of those players worthy of myth — he really could do everything. Bill James called him the third greatest player ever — behind only Ruth and Wagner, who played in an era that is hard to compare to our own. Mays’ era feels much closer. He could crush long home runs, he could run, he could throw, he could hit, he could field. It’s hard to pick one favorite Mays season. It certainly could be 1954, just after he returned from the army, when he led the league in hitting (.345) and slugging (.667 — the highest slugging percentage of his career), won the MVP award, and made the most famous catch in World Series history.
But, then again, it could be 1956 when he became the second player — the first since Ken Williams in 1922 — to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. Thirty-thirty wasn’t even a thing then (Mays has often said that if he had known people would have made a big deal out of 40-40, he would have done it a few times), but it came natural to Mays. Then, the best year could be 1957 when Mays hit .333, banged 26 doubles, 20 triples, 35 home runs, stole 38 bases and won the first center field Gold Glove award. Or , the year could involve the slightly older Mays of 1965 — he was 34 that year — and he hit 52 home runs (nobody else hit even 40), led the league in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, total bases and runs created. He won the Gold Glove again that year, the ninth time in a row.
The point is, that throughout his career, Willie Mays shook the imagination. I have little doubt that if I had grown up to the baseball music of Willie Mays, he would be have been a hero. I have little doubt that if I was 20 or 25 years older, I might have written an essay with the sentence “In that vanished time, there was a ballplayer named Willie Mays.”
So, no, it wasn’t the goo-goo-eyed romance of the essay that got me. I wanted that. No, it was the willful self-deception. Surely, Pete Hamill knows that baseball was never innocent, that America was never innocent, that innocence itself was never innocent.
Baseball in Willie Mays time, like baseball in every time, was rife with cheating and racism and alcoholism and small-mindedness. You know, people love to talk about the players of the steroid era cheating the game. But did anyone in baseball history more willfully and brashly cheat the game than Leo Durocher*and the 1951 Giants, who rigged an elaborate sign-stealing system that undoubtedly helped the Giants catch the Dodgers and win the pennant, win the pennant, win the pennant.
*Pete Hammil loves Hirsch’s “delightfully raffish” portrait of Durocher in the Mays book. I wonder if there’s a way to make Barry Bonds sound delightfully raffish.
In Hirsch’s book, Mays explains away this organized and premeditated bit of cheating by saying that stealing signs was “always part of the game — everyone did it.” And that if he did steal signs that “they sure didn’t help me.”
Everyone did it. The cheating didn’t help me. Wow, does that sound familiar?
Then there’s amphetamines. I have never understood why many people are so outraged about baseball players’ steroid use and so unperturbed by amphetamine use. I guess it makes some sense on a gut level — injecting yourself with steroids seems so much more villainous than popping a couple of greenies to get a boost. Steroids seemed much more in our faces as fans. The players unapologetically got bigger. A few of them hit an unnatural number of home runs. There seemed a much more direct cause and effect … steroids = bigger muscles = more home runs. And maybe the cause and effect did not seem quite as obvious with the widespread use of amphetamines.
BUT … is any of that true? Best I can tell, amphetamines (like steroids) were illegal without prescription in American society but were just a part of the baseball culture. Best I can tell, amphetamines are performance enhancing drugs that, many people feel, sharpen focus and increase energy levels and help an athlete overcome exhaustion. Best I can tell, amphetamines can have terrible side effects and can be difficult to quit (and can be extremely dangerous to quit).
In other words, it seems more or less the same level of cheating and more or less the same level of wrong. As far as whether amphetamines had a huge effect on the game … I don’t know. I don’t want to throw names out there, but there are records and performances — consecutive games played and huge stolen bases totals just as a for instance — that you could logically connect to amphetamine use. I remember having a conversation with a baseball insider about a player who was quite good for one year and then descended into an abyss.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He stopped taking greenies,” he said. “He just doesn’t have the same spark.”
In 1985, John Milner testified that there was some sort of “red juice” in Willie Mays locker when they both played for the Mets. Milner said that was a liquid amphetamine. Mays would say he got it from a doctor, and the doctor said it was actually cough syrup. There really isn’t any more clarity on that issue, but Mays does not deny that he may have used amphetamines as a player. In the book, his quote is as follows:
“My problem was if I could stay on the field. I would go to the doctor and would say to the doctor, ‘Hey, I need something to keep me going. Could you give me some sort of vitamin?’ I don’t know what they put in there, and I never asked a question about anything.”
Well … there you go. I don’t think there’s much question based on that quote that Mays used amphetamines in his day. Shoot, just about every player did. Pete Rose did. Hank Aaron admitted trying it. Hirsch, in his own words, believes there’s a big difference between steroids and amphetamines — the former, he says, builds muscle mass and enhances performance while the latter “restores energy and allows someone to perform at full strength.” That seems to be the argument.
But I think there’s a much bigger difference: Steroids were not readily available when Willie Mays played ball.
This is not meant in any way to diminish the great Willie Mays or cheapen the wonderful time when he played baseball. Mays was wonderful. Baseball was wonderful. But they weren’t playing baseball on a higher plane of morality in the 1950s or the 1930s or the 1910s. Players were always looking for an edge and more money. Owners were always trying to milk the fans for whatever they could get. There was always a “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,” vibe in baseball.
And there have always been players who lift us higher. Honus Wagner did, Ty Cobb did, Pete Alexander did, Joe Jackson did, Rogers Hornsby did, Babe Ruth did, Lefty Grove did, Joe DiMaggio did, Ted Williams did, Stan Musial did, Bob Feller did, Jackie Robinson did, Willie Mays did, Sandy Koufax did, Mickey Mantle did, Hank Aaron did, Pete Rose did, Reggie Jackson did, George Brett did, Ozzie Smith did, Greg Maddux did, Barry Bonds did, Mark McGwire did, Roger Clemens did, Pedro Martinez did, Albert Pujols did. They used different bits of motivation. They took advantage of their specific time and place. Some plainly cheated. Some quietly pushed the edge. Some were self destructive. Some played it as square as they could.
But when it comes down to it, I guess my big issue with Pete Hamill’s romantic essay is there never really was a long-ago time in America when there was a beautiful game called baseball. The game, for better and worse, is as beautiful now as it ever was.
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Truer words have never been typed.
I love this site. And, among all of your entries ever, this might be my favorite serious one ever. Not likely to be topped, frankly. And, I bet you get lots of backlash from the “purists” over it….
Third? Arrrgghh! Circle me foiled again!
In 1951, Willie came to Swayne Field to play against the Mud Hens with the Minneapolis Millers. It was (obviously) prior to the callup that came with his AAA batting average sitting at .477 (71 for 149).
What sticks is that when he went around first on his way to an extra-base hit, the basepath seemed somehow to be banked.
This piece is beautiful. I’ve always been perturbed by the hypocrisy between people that are bothered by steroids but unperturbed by amphetamines, but I don’t think anybody could discuss this issue with the same amount of lyricism as you did.
Hit this one wayyy out of the park, Joe. Nice.
Well, no, it is not a beautiful now as it ever was. It used to be Pittsburgh (or KC, basically all teams) had resources that allowed them to compete. Now teams like KC & Pittsburgh shouldn’t realy be playing MLB.
And I think that greenies, while they were cheating, had the same result caffeence on, well, steriods. I think steriods is definately worse and players ike McGwire and Bonds deserve the redicule they receive.
Loss if innocence is a pervasive element of life, and particularly so in this day and age.
In a baseball sense, you can see it as early as Little League. Games, practices, player drafts (yes, I said DRAFTS), pre-season parades and participation trophies all illustrate that adults too bent upon trying to control their kids’ present and future have drastically altered the innocent, blissful game “we” knew as kids.
Corporate and governmental malfeasance is headline fodder every day, and with better, quicker access to news resources, kids these days are learning to become skeptical and distrustful of these organizations at an early age.
Scores of people abandon their faith because it’s just too difficult to have FAITH in anything when all else that you see and hear in this modern world has been proven to be a pile of crap – religious institutions included.
On those occasions when you attempt to escape all these worldly sources of pessimism and enjoy a bucolic day at the ballpark, you realize yet again … dammit, I’m just a Royals fan.
I frankly do not equate the cheating of the 80s, 90s etc as much the same as drugs given to Children to make them concentrate and 8 to 10% of current ball players for AHAD! i.e. We can all draw good and bad parallels. Selling a phantom tag, Cheating! Claiming a catch on a bump ball Cheating Pine tar on the hand Cheating Too high up the bat handle No longer cheating etc.
The reason amphetamine usage was able to go on was basically you could not tell just by looking at players they were doing it. Indeed you can fail a drug test for caffeine if you have enough (or could once as a Russian fencer discovered) so maybe some people drank too much Coffee as well.
However I agree with this article that there was no golden era of players playing for the sheer joy of it all in any sport. No era where people were too high and mighty not to take short cuts on offer.
It’s clear that the personalities of the past would be on HGH, 3 types of steroids, drugs to reignite their sex organs because of the steroids, Drugs to prevent the Moobs caused by the steroids, Drugs to prevent their foreheads growing etc etc My only point is that the kind of multi drug cheating of the 90s is not the same level as amphetamines. Cheating = Cheating is a truism but it does have levels.
In the 70s in Olympic sports when drug testing came in amphetamines and stimulants was a 3 month ban the other 2 and then 4 years (and the latter would be longer/life if there was a 100% guarantee that false positives or bad luck could not cause a failure).
I think there is a middle way between the sanctimony of some journalists and the denial of others. To equate dangerous pill popping with the kind of multi drug cocktails of the 90s is wrong. I am sure 60s players could have lived without Greenies without much discernible difference in performance not sure one can say the same about many in the 90s.
One should not judge people harshly for cheating it’s what humans do when a short cut is on offer. Think of all the creeps who get on at work. Sports are just reflective of other lives.
Beautifully said, as usual. Reading the review yesterday morning, I felt like writing a letter to the editor to say some of the things you said so much better than I could.
One line in particular really stood out: “Here I must plead guilty to nostalgia, but not to sentimentality, which is always a lie about the past.” No, Pete Hamill, the whole opening paragraph and much of the rest is dripping with sentimentality, as you define it.
I think that Joe makes a very good point as usual but….. there is a difference with the steroid era.
Nobody on greenies blew away previous records like the players of the steroid era did which is why I think the NFL gets a pass. There are no 3,000 yard rushing seasons and the record book still seems to stand for something as opposed to Sosa going over 60 HRs three times.
Matt Welch had a great piece on that same Pete Hamill article:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/28/enough-about-canada-lets-shoot
@ schooner
Joe mentioned 2 possible examples of records being broken.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to throw names out there, but there are records and performances — consecutive games played and huge stolen bases totals just as a for instance —”
I bought a cool book over the weekend called “The Way We Never Were” that just methodically destroys one myth after another about the American family and the way it supposedly used to be.
Somebody needs to write a similar book about baseball.
What I find interesting is that people think that steroids are much worse than amphetamines (in the cheating sense). However it seems like the opposite is true. Amphetamines are a “free” performance enhancer meaning that you don’t have do any work at all for them to help you out. You pop a pill and you get better. Steroids on the other hand are just a workout aid. You don’t get stronger by just taking steroids, you still have to do the hard work of lifting weights. But taking steroids is the greatest evil ever (at least in baseball, no one really gives a damn that all football players take them) but taking amphetamines isn’t really that big of a deal.
Nobody blew away previous records???
How about most career hits?
Most career stolen bases?
No, baseball was never innocent, but there is a quantum difference between the enhanced performance possible with steroids and amphetamines, as a glance at the record books will show.
Between Mays 1965 season, and Cecil Fielder’s 1990 season, 50 homers were topped only once, by George Foster in 1977.
Between 1995 and 2002, 50 homers were topped 17 times, with a few 60 and 70 homer seasons thrown in to boot.
The problem I have with that is not so much with the records, but with the way they warped the game itself, a game that was designed for athletes of ordinary human dimensions. With the introduction steroids, ballparks could no longer contain these muscle-bound mashers. Suddenly, the games greatest sluggers became so dangerous, you couldn’t pitch to them. Barry Bonds would walk 200 times a year, and never be allowed to swing the bat in a critical situation. The very fabric of competition was being destroyed. It was as if basketball players suddenly became 10 feet tall.
So yes, greenies made it possible to stay alert over a long season, but you could still pitch to Willie Mays.
@ schooner
You say that with an impossible amount of certainty.
Hank Aaron for one.
The fact is that the steroid era seems worse because we live in the age of information. You have the media hitting you from every angle telling you how terrible these steroid users are and how they ruined what used to be a perfect sport. But isn’t it possible, maybe even likely, that steroids really aren’t any worse than amphetamines or cortisone?
@ Utek
Pitchers took steroids too.
But to play your game
between 1965 and 1990
Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Andre Dawson and Mark McGwire hit 49 HR
Willie Stargell, Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman hit 48 HR
Arbitrary numbers are arbitrary.
And then HR numbers spiked in 1995. Right at the point of league expansion. Weird timing? Adding 22-24 pitchers, many that in prior years would be minor leaguers?
I’m not saying it’s one thing or another. I’m just saying pointing at your numbers and saying “Look what steroids did!!” is misleading. Advancements are being made everyday in strength training. Ball parks got smaller. And sure, hitters took steroids.
But so did pitchers. And if any study has been done which clearly points to steroids benefiting only hitters, I haven’t seen it.
@ Greg: If you think every team used to be able to compete evenly, then you don’t know your baseball history. Go back and look at teams like the K.C. Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Senators, Boston Braves and St. Louis Browns (among others). For large spans of time, these teams were beyond futile. The current competitive balance not only compares favorably with every major sport, it is much more equitable than the golden era of Mays.
@Utek: That’s nonsense. You are defining the game by one stat…the HR, and in the process, ignoring a myriad of other factors that may have influenced this one variable. Every era has seen fluctuations in performance. Simply attributing a few broken records to steroids and then claiming that has destroyed the fabric of competition undermines any credibility of your argument.
Yup. Agreed, and I think your sentiments will become the norm in a few years Joe. One thing though: while I find the steroid hysteria silly, the idea that steroids weren’t available when Mays played is not necessarily true. Soviet athletes were injecting testosterone in the early 50′s, Dianabol is born in 56 and American athletes are quickly on board, and by the mid 70′s the problem is such that the IOC has to ban steroids. We have some testimony that baseball players were using steroids in the early 70′s: Tom House admitted to their use in the Braves clubhouse. I bring this up not as a counter to your argument, but to further it. This stuff goes back further than the typical steroid narrative accounts for.
Ted Williams was a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea. Those pilots had to maintain tremendous levels of concentration and visual acuity to do their jobs. Pilots were given amphetamines to aid them in their work.
Do you really think, when Ted came home from the wars, that he left these drugs behind? That his fellow players, when they came back from the wars, left these drugs behind? Do you really think that Mickey Mantle was too pure to use them? That Willie Mays was above crossing the line to use them? Just because reporters didn’t discuss these things in the 1950s does not mean they weren’t happening.
I don’t know if Pete Hamill’s glasses are rose-colored or sepia toned. Either way, he could use a new prescription.
The “everything’s going to hell in a handbasket” mentality, or the narrative of decline as the academics call it, is an interesting phenomena. You can find the ancient Greeks bitching about how nothing was as good anymore. Regarding the good ol’ USA I like James Ellroy’s quote best: “America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can’t lose what you lacked at conception.”
And kudos to #21 for pointing out that steroids have been around a while. It gets irritating listening to people talk as though they were invented in the mid-nineties.
The worst thing about the Hamill article is that it is supposed to be a review of a new Mays biography, yet after reading it I have no idea why I should read the book, other than “Mays is sunshine, lollipops and rainbows sprinkled with awesome sauce.” How does this new biography tell us more than previous ones? No idea. But Hamill learned a lot about Mays from the book, because after the Giants left NY he stopped paying attention. Great. Isn’t the NYT supposed to pick reviewers based on knowledge of subject?
I understand the general point, but let’s not confuse “greenies” with steroids as if they were on par. For one, the chemical strength of the “greenies” is akin to a couple of Red Bulls before a game. Steroids (and HGH, specifically) have made this guys human monsters. Sure, maybe an amphetamine (or another drug, like adderal) might help a player focus or stay energetic, but is that the same as adding 30 pounds of muscle? Let’s not lose perspective.
As a longtime baseball writer, I found this to be an interesting argument, mostly done in a fair and rational way. Whether or you agree with it, it’s worthy of consideration — although it’s certainly not exactly a novel concept.
But from a trust and legitimacy standpoint, I did have a real objection to the part about the short conversation with the “baseball insider” talking about the guy whose performance suddenly dropped off. It was a totally worthless inclusion. For one, the baseball insider could have been a beat writer for all we know, and that “insider” may not have known for sure that the player (who isn’t even identified) did greenies. So what’s the point of including that passage? There’s so much vagueness in it that it comes off as the author trying too hard to have a quote that bolsters his argument. As a copy editor, I would delete that conversation from the story, or fight hard to do so. Let the compelling argument stand on its own — minus the “Mystery Man A, who may not have known anything for sure, said this about Mystery Man B.” As far as real journalism goes, that’s crap.
And the “Yes. Well.” What does that mean? Is that a clever literary device? It looks like something Mitch Albom would write.
Good job overall, even with the trying too hard on a couple of counts.
Nomar is right. And the proof of the silliness of comparing greenies to steroids is right in front of us. Greenies didn’t produce of HR spike in the ’60s and ’70s; quite the opposite, it was a depressed hitting era. But steroids sent HRs through the roof in the ’90s.
Players never achieved a new, sustained and unprecedented peak in their late 30′s and early 40′s by taking greenies. No one miraculously and suddenly improved their offensive production by 45% in their late ’30s, and no pitcher suddenly rediscovered his dominance in his ’40s like Clemens did.
There is no evidence at all that greenies improved performance. The evidence that steroids profoundly distorted performance, and the record books, is overwhelming.
Yeah, the Matt Welch article referenced above got at what I hated about the Hamill article much more than the steroids stuff. Hamill builds yet another monument to the titanic glory of postwar New York baseball. It’s an era that’s so overblown and overpraised that even complaints about how overblown and overpraised it is feel old and tired. The move of the Dodgers and Giants was not Auschwitz.
To be fair though, this wasn’t as bad as Stephen Jay Gould’s lament in the Burns miniseries: how terribly it hurt when Bill Mazeroski beat the Yankees in 1960.
Bravo, JoePo!
Tommy in CT:
“Greenies didn’t produce of HR spike in the ’60s and ’70s; quite the opposite, it was a depressed hitting era. ”
No one’s saying greenies produced more home runs. Joe specifically suggests, in fact, that they enabled players to play more games and steal more bases than they would have (owing to having more energy and stamina than they would have had).
I don’t know those things for a fact, though, which is why I don’t judge players who took them very harshly. Just like you don’t know that steroids directly causes homers to spike in the 90′s.
I saw the head on that essay (which I know Hamill did not write, but it mentioned the whole non-performance-enhanced character of that era) and refused to read it. Obviously people were jacked up on greenies back then, and there’s no point in denying it.
On a more abstract level, I’m 23 years old and I have little use for Baby Boomers and their parents telling me how much better things were when they were kids in the 60s and 70s. I’m perfectly happy with things now, thanks. The baseball I watched in the 90s was pretty damn beautiful, even looking back and realizing that McGwire and Sosa and whoever were on roids. Ugh, the whole thing just makes me angry.
The difference between the two eras in question, in terms of cultural mythology, is that gradually reporters stopped covering up for ballplayers and started exposing them.
Now, some of this is due to a broader shift in cultural norms (compare what we knew about JFK’s sexual indiscretions, at the time, to what we knew about Clinton’s).
But I’ll propose one more specific factor: when ballplayer salaries were comparable to the salaries of normal men, reporters admired and shielded ballplayers; when ballplayers began to become immensely wealthy, reporters turned on them.
Tommy @27
What you describe isn’t proof, at least in any serious scientific way. For instance, Ty Cobb, at the age of 38 established a career high for OPS at 1.066 (and tied his career high of 12 HRs). Is that proof that steroids existed in 1925? Obviously not, what it probably proves is that something changed between 1915 and 1925 about baseball that was skewing statistics (if my example is repeatable for the era, which it is, if it wasn’t repeatable then it would probably be an anolmaly).
For real scientific evidence of your theory, we must establish definitely that there are no other possible reasons for the offensive explosion. As shown by the Cobb example, there are definitely other factors that could influence offensive statistics that do not involve steroids. In the nineties era, we can identify a number of possible other suspects: 1) Watered down pitching (and hitting); 2) Bouncier baseballs (which has always been the presumed candidate for the 1920s offensive explosion); 3) increasingly smaller strike zones; 4) increasingly smaller ballparks; 5) Weight training by the athletes (baseball players before 1980 never lifted weights, heck they never worked out at all in the off season); 6) Better nutrition. To prove your theory, you must prove that none of these factors, independent of the ‘roids, had anything to do with the offensive explosion. If you cannot, then your theory fails.
If we are going to indict these athletes, in my opinion, we must use fair, objective and tested scientific methods in doing so, not naive, uninformed guesswork.
@ Tommy in CT:
So if someone hits more HRs than steroids are the only reason? If so, why to HR/game fluctuate over seasons? Do the players decide to do steroids one season and then not the next? Don’t you think it’s a little more complicated than just steroids? Home runs per game went like this from 1985-1990: 0.86, 0.91, 1.06, 0.76, 0.73, 0.79. Do you think a lot of the batters just decided to not do steroids after 1987? Or do you think that it’s possible that other changes (strike zone, the ball, stadium sizes) explained that rather large jump and then decrease?
The most beautiful part of baseball 2010 is that “The Royals have mad the executive decision to work on pitching, defense, and hitting this spring….and they will not deviate from that”….brilliant….
Great piece. I just wish you’d change the ending to replace “my big issue … there never really was a long-ago time in America when there was a beautiful game called baseball … ” with “my big issue … the beautiful game called baseball is as beautiful today as it ever was. And it’s a shame that people can’t appreciate the present because they’re busy whitewashing the past.” Which seems to be what you meant. But without the “there never was … a beautiful game called baseball.”
The title reminds me of a Homer Simpson quote. It was something like, “There are drugs, and then there are DRUGS.”
Joe, you touched on something pretty salient, but didn’t press the button.
“My problem was if I could stay on the field. I would go to the doctor and would say to the doctor, ‘Hey, I need something to keep me going. Could you give me some sort of vitamin?’ I don’t know what they put in there, and I never asked a question about anything.”
I think we forget that other aspects of life also change over time — for example, the role of doctors and the regulation of drugs in the first place. There’s a reason that there are laws now intended to curtail “doctor shopping”, and that’s because prior to those laws it was disturbingly easy to go find a doctor who would legally prescribe you whatever you thought you needed. Indeed, in the 60s and 70s it was no trouble at all to go find yourself a “diet doctor”, and that doctor’s sole purpose in life was apparently to write prescriptions for greenies or yellowjackets or any number of other stimulants. Before they banned Quaaludes, it was no trouble at all to get a ‘script for them.
So what we have now is an environment where we, as a society, are more cognizant of what drugs people should not be taking, and a media which is more keen on digging up dirt, and a regulatory concept where what doctors are prescribing is actually monitored to see if they’re “bad doctors”. Is it then no surprise that we have millions of people convinced with the certainty of the sun rising that steroids are worse than whatever might have been in use before?
To those of you who are barking about how there’s no evidence that amphetamines enhance performance in any way similar to steroids, all I can say is grab a clue. Do you even know what the prescription for ADD and ADHD is? Every single drug (and feel free to read that with a period after every word) which is used to treat those disorders is a stimulant; Adderall is nothing more than pure amphetamine salts. And if you are so deluded as to think that they don’t make a difference, all I can suggest to you is that you go find some kid who’s on them and take his away… and just see how much differently he behaves, focuses, and concentrates. No, amphetamines won’t help you hit the ball 500 feet…
…well, you know, except insofar as amphetamines help you focus and concentrate, and thus allow you to see the incoming pitch better and make better contact, which I’m sure has no impact at all on whether you can drive the ball with authority.
Please.
The main point remains, however, that cheating has in fact always been a part of the game and that there has been no “pure” era. Period. And I’m not talking about mere gamesmanship like stealing signs, either. If ESPN and the current media mentality had existed in 1880, or 1900, or 1919, or 1939, or 1969… we’d be having this same argument about something other than steroids, and if you don’t believe that’s true then you’re willfully deluding yourself.
And anyone who believes that baseball was ever “pure” should read a book about the 1890s Baltimore Orioles. A bigger group of cheaters never took the field.
Oh, BTW, that group of cheaters include: John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Wilbert Robinson, Ned Hanlon, Hughie Jennings, and Joe Kelley, HOFers all.
Of course, some people would call them innovators, not cheaters, but that is just semantics.
What difference in effect is there between a prescription 1960s greenie and today’s legal over the counter Red Bull or 5 Hour Energy, which all pro jocks seem to guzzle these days? I suspect not much.
Cheating, alcoholism, you name it: went on then, goes on now. The one difference is steroids. I fail to see the point of your argument.
Joe, you make many good points. I’m surprised no one is mentioning Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking book “Ball Four”, which discussed the use of greenies forty years ago (as well many other “undignified” things baseball players did.)
But I take issue with your reference to sign stealing as “cheating”. It’s not. There is no rule against it, and every team is always looking to steal signs. It’s not just “everybody does it”, it’s “everybody does it because it’s not illegal.” A runner on second base is always looking in at the catcher’s signs to help out the batter; that’s why the catcher uses different signs in that situation. In a bygone era, teams used to police this themselves: if a batter was caught peeking at the catcher’s signs, the next pitch would be under his chin.
Greg B. @40: A lot of difference. Red Bull will give you a rush of energy, and might stimulate certain dopamine receptors, but it does not fire the same chemical changes in your brain as amphetamines do which cause you to become hyper-focused.
Don’t be naive to think that the athletes from EVERY era were looking for an edge in their performance. Just that whatever the drug or treatment was for the era was either not tested for or did not have testing capabilities.
When the steroids scandal first became big news- in the late 1990s- and into the point where there were congressional hearings, I totally expected players to say “I asked the doctor to give me something, and I didn’t ask what it was, I just took it.”
That might have gotten a few doctors hauled into court, but it would have kept the players as pure as say Willie May.
Guess there weren’t enough doctors actually involved.
Let’s not forget that amphetamines are still around today. Barry Bonds got busted for amphetamines 2-3 years ago, which resulted in a collective yawn. There’s no double standard here. Amphetamine users got a pass 40 years ago, and they’re getting a pass still.
Also, the stolen base record wasn’t about a player suddenly, in one offseason, developing superhuman speed the likes of which nobody has ever seen. No, it was about stolen bases becoming a viable offensive strategy because players couldn’t hit very well in the 60s and 70s. Thus, a manager allowed a player to steal 100 bases. It was strategy. Dom Dimaggio led the AL with 15 stolen bases in 1950. Players simply weren’t trying to steal as much back then. But when Cobb set his record, nobody was hitting home runs. Stolen bases were a major offensive strategy.
The same goes for Cal Ripken’s consecutive games record. He was ALLOWED to play all those games. For a while, he was a great player and he was lucky not to get hurt. After a while, he should have sat once in a while but he was too beloved in Baltimore for a manager to take him out.
I hated Hamill’s review — I kept thinking how phony it sounded. This piece articulates why so clearly. Simply brilliant.
“Hirsch, in his own words, believes there’s a big difference between steroids and amphetamines — the former, he says, builds muscle mass and enhances performance while the latter “restores energy and allows someone to perform at full strength.” That seems to be the argument.”
This if facile gullible BS. Steroids, by themselves, do not increase muscle mass and enhance performance. In combination with a rigorous exercise regimen, they do. And MANY players who took steroids said they took it for exactly that reason — to restore energy so they could perform at full strength. Indeed, the principle advantage of steroids may be that they keep players in the lineup (for a while).
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Cheating and CHEATING Share and [...]
I agree about the double standard and just looking at the comments its still around. The only thing I have an issue with in this piece is that any of these things are considered cheating. It was not until this decade that there were rules against the use of steroids and speed. No, a memo with no enforcement from the commissioners office, does not count as a rule nor does the federal law against the use of these products either as there are a number of laws that players may break with little to no punishment on the field of play.
That said, the idea that it was steroids primarily responsible for the power number or late career numbers is nonsense. After the strike baseball expanded. Hitters started wearing more body armor claiming the inside of the plate. Baseball parks shrunk. Advanced stats starting to make an impact in the game meaning run scoring and power became the dominate team theory. Maple bats came into the game. The ball was allegedly juiced (I think it was mythbusters but some show showed how this alone can cause a significant increase in carry distance). Players hit the weight room year round for the first time in significant numbers. Better surgical and medicine means players recover better both in the short term and long term. This and a number of other things had as big of an impact as anything.
@39 – “Hit ‘em Where they Ain’t” is the book, or at least it’s the one I read. Outstanding. You don’t have to be an O’s fan to love that book. It paints a great picture of baseball in the 1890′s: Labor struggles, Syndicate baseball (owners sharing ownership of multiple teams), major baseball personalities of the time. Me likee.
steroids were first extracted in 1931, and synthesized in 1934.
which leads us back to the great theological debate of our times: did Babe Ruth use steroids? Hmm, three-home-run game in 1935 comes to mind.
(or alternately we can stop being so paranoid, and compensate for the steroid era just like we have with every other change that baseball has undergone since the Town Ball era. As a first approximation, OPS+ nicely handles those differences in environment.)
You simply cannot compare “Greenies” (or amphetamines”) with steroids. Amphetamines provide a short-term energy boost and, if taken “regularly” will lead to addiction, physical degradation and death. At best, they help keep someone awake after a night of drinking and carousing.
Steroids are taken as part of a structured regimen to gain strength and/or recover more quickly from injuries.
Taking a “Greenie” MAY have enabled a player to have a relatively productive day when he would have otherwise not played because of a “cold” or some other excuse…and it MIGHT have been productive.
Steroids, on the other hand, create a totally different athlete. One doesn’t have to be a physics major to understand that a stronger batter can hit the ball harder with a heavier bat.
If you have ever had the misfortune of knowing someone strung-out on amphetamines, you know that there’s no way they could enjoy a productive season, career…or life!
Drew: You say this
“between 1965 and 1990 Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Andre Dawson and Mark McGwire hit 49 HR
Willie Stargell, Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman hit 48 HR”
I chose 50 as a recognizable round number, but homers were way up across the board. To use your benchmark of 48-49 homers, between 1996 and 2002, the mark of 48 or 49 homers was hit 10 times—or more than had been hit in the 25 year period you mention—and that doesn’t include the 17 times players hit 50+ homers over that span. There is just no dispute that during those years, power numbers exploded throughout the majors.
Now, there may have been other reasons for that power explosion, but I find it odd that many of those factors were in place before the steroid era, when we didn’t see elephantine slugging averages, and more importantly, those factors were still in place after players began being tested for PED’s, when home runs dropped to more normal levels. Curious, no?
As for your contention that pitchers also took steroids (demonstrably true), I would say that was actually one of the factors for the power surge. When pitchers throw harder, a batted ball travels farther.
Again, what bothered me most about the steroid era was not the records, all of which must be placed in context of their time, but the effect on competition. The rise of the intentional walk—to the point that managers would intentionally walk Barry Bonds with the bases loaded—or the dreaded unintentional intentional walk, to take the bat out of a sluggers hands, grew to absurd proportions, negating the prime confrontation of the sport, between pitcher and hitter in critical moments. Bob Welch’s strikeout of Reggie Jackson in the World Series was an iconic baseball moment (as was Reggie’s revenge homer later on) which wouldn’t have happened in the steroid era, because Reggie would have been given a free pass both times.
Great piece Joe!
“injecting yourself with steroids seems so much more villainous than popping a couple of greenies to get a boost.”
I wonder if people realize that a lot of “clean” players today inject themselves with B-12 before games to get more energy. It’s legal, it’s a vitamin, but it’s injected to give them more energy.
“There seemed a much more direct cause and effect … steroids = bigger muscles = more home runs.”
People who look at things that simply ignore the pitchers using steroids, who are able to pitch deeper into games with more effectiveness than they would have otherwise. If many pitchers and hitters are using steroids, then there should be some balancing out, not an offensive explosion.
There were many factors for the offensive explosion in baseball after the strike. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after the strike, when owners were desperate to get fans back, they started marketing home runs and “chicks dig the longball.” And more home runs were suddenly hit.
IMO, the baseball became more lively after the strike. Owners and baseball manufacturers always deny it, obviously, but they used a livelier baseball for a while in 1987, and again in the late 1990s, in my opinion.
Jon Morse is right on. Anyone who says stimulants are little more than an energy drink has either never had them or had too small of a dose. The difference between controlled psychostimulants (amphetamines) and other stimulants (caffeine) is that it changes how you think, not just your energy level. The difference in concentration is immense. For sports, where proper technique is key to being good, this makes a huge difference.
In baseball, maybe you wouldn’t be a more powerful hitter, but I don’t see how you wouldn’t be a better hitter or pitcher with the difference in concentration.
@The Vera–If someone was cracked out on them, they could still be successful at baseball, just maybe an obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, selfish teammate.
I’m sure Mantle said that if he’d known people would make a big deal about 40-40 he’d have done it a few times. Did Mays say that too?
Too many armchair scientists on here claiming to know the relative benefits of steroids vs. amphetamines.
Players will do whatever, take whatever to get ahead. There’s a lot of money at stake. Owners/commissioners will look the other way as long as possible. There’s a lot of money at stake.
Get over it.
The point of this post is that players for a long time have used drugs to enhance their performance (thus the term PED). And then there are brilliant readers who wholeheartedly agree and then state that steroids didn’t help Bonds, McGwire, Sosa etc to hit all these blasts. Funny.
my only goal in life is to expose the crooked Attorney General Wasden in Idaho. And the crooked Governor, Butch Otter, if people in Idaho vote for these losers, ever again, the get what asking for, and that is felons, who conspire, to ruin peoples lives, and protect crooked DA’s judges, and others in Idaho…It is all posted on my website, they are crooks pure and simple and will someday be exposed….
Interesting point by @26 — is it ok to use a blind quote (or is it double blind?) in a blog? See, I’m fine with it because I trust Joe to filter out axe-grinding and BSing. He’s the kind of “always see both sides” thinker that I can trust with shady data (see his post about medal count for hyper-honesty). But, interesting argument.
Great article Joe, thanks.
Reid: “And the “Yes. Well.” What does that mean? Is that a clever literary device?”
With all due respect, Joe is not writing a 300-word story about a fire, Reid. Copy editors are often perceived, unfairly in my opinion, as trying their best to destroy any shred of personal voice in a writer’s work, but it’s criticism like this that allows that perception to thrive.
[...] the longtime Kansas City Star columnist who’s now also writing for Sports Illustrated, has a nice column on his blog about cheating in baseball and historical context. It was sparked by a review of the new Willie Mays biography. I haven’t read the book, or the [...]
Absolutely correct in every way, Joe. Well done indeed!
Especially the quotes that could be pulled out of today’s steroids world about just wanting to play every day and not knowing what the doctor gave me and not caring. Or the everyone did it and it didn’t help me line.
I feel much more strongly than most about cheating and I do not understand how any form of cheating can be rationalized or forgiven more readily – it is all cheating. Maybe there should be different punishments for different degrees of cheating but there should be punishment.
I would be OK if the players were monitored every day and banned permanently if found to be cheating. As I said, I feel more strongly about it than most. But as long as there is a serious attempt to monitor and control cheating, I can live with it.
The sport is about individual grace and stamina at the same time and it is also about a team approach as well. As such it is a unique sport among the many out there. Nothing compares to baseball.
My view on the sport and on cheating is the main reason I picked Stan Musial as my favorite player while living in Panama.
Barry Bonds saved baseball.
@Reid
I may wake up some day and read how Joe has been fooling us all and is really not as honest as he seems to me but I really doubt that is very likely.
I feel confident that the inclusion was done because the person being quoted DID know the player was using greenies and DID know that he had stopped. After all, there wouldn’t be any point to the inclusion if it werent a known fact.
There are writers who could type those same words and I would wonder where they got the facts, because IMO they often seem to substitute their assumptions (or superior knowledge/opinion) for mere facts.
Joe doesn’t do that; in fact, he usually goes out of his way to say what part of his statements are his beliefs – just so we all know where he is coming from with the story at hand.
Ray if you want to call my comment out use my name. I did not say that steroids did not help, I have no idea if they did or did not. But, so far the actual evidence points to the answer being steroids did not do all that much. Most (if not all) statistical studies done on the numbers over the last decade have shown no such power surge that is outside the expected. There has been no studies done on steroid use and the effects on playing baseball from a medical or physiological point. There have been a couple of studies on the other hand that have shown speed to have positive effects on performance. Not that I care if either had or had not an effect as grown men should be allowed to ingest anything that they want.
@38 — It is not true that all ADD/ADHD drugs are amphetamines. Look up Strattera.
” Now teams like KC & Pittsburgh shouldn’t realy be playing MLB.”
The Cubs haven’t won the World Series since 1908 maybe they should be given the boot.
MarkWIDX@68: Thanks, I hadn’t been aware of Strattera. Its approval for ADHD must be fairly recent since it’s still under heavy post-approval safety scrutiny. (Hey, look, I just inadvertantly provided an it’s/its grammar example.)
Apparently nausea is a fairly common side effect, though, so I’m not sure a player would want to be using it either legitimately or illicitly. Still, it is a non-amphetamine, so I do appreciate the fact check.
I’ve never heard anyone say amphetimines were ok. Who started this argument? And who pitted against people against steroids use?
Joe, you are a fantastic writer. Has anyone ever told you that?
Seriously, just about every single one of your posts is fabulous.
Continuing the Will-Drew argument at about comment #20, we saw strikeout rates skyrocket in the 60s and 70s. So maybe greenies helped starting pitchers keep their energy and focus late in games and helped relief pitchers throw smoke several days in a row. Maybe greenies were a pitcher’s best friend, not a home run hitter’s. The point is that greenies were affecting the game, and they were giving an unfair advantage to at least some of the users — just like steroids.
[...] The line closes Hamill’s review of James S. Hirsch’s Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend. There are a lot of problems with the above sentiment, not least of which is that baseball players were full of a lot more than just joy in the 1960s. Joe Posnanski mentions amphetamines, and he also notes: [...]
The PED users had to work out for long hours to garner the benefit of their usage.
The amphetamine user just had to drop and go. No hangover [Mantle] no exhaustion, no fatigue. They were worse.
Beautiful thread…
[...] Joe Posnanski on Willie Mays, PEDs, and the history of cheating [...]
Mays was linked to “red juice” by a drug dealer (Milner) who claimed he saw it in Mays’ locker – he did not say he saw Mays take it nor did he say Mays gave or offered any to him. Mays’ doctor later said it was cough/cold medicine. No player or teammate of Mays has reported seeing Mays take speed either.
And it isnt just steroids that so many of the stars were taking in the 90′s and beyond – most of them were taking speed and steroids – Bonds has tested for speed.
Trying to equate greenies with the modern combination of speed plus steroids is folly.
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Cheating And CHEATINGBill James called him the third greatest player ever — behind only Ruth and Wagner, who played in an era that is hard to compare to our own. Mays’ era feels much closer. He could… Baseball S Wagner from Wikio [...]
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Cheating And CHEATINGBill James called him the third greatest player ever — behind only Ruth and Wagner, who… [...]
My personal story about/with Willie Mays…
When I was a child growing up in NE Ohio I chose the Pittsburgh Pirates as my team. mainly because we received the Pittsburgh TV stations’ signals better than the Cleveland stations’. My parents and next older sister to me and I generally went to only one Pirate game per year from 1959-1965. We nearly always chose to see the SF Giants because we loved watching Willie Mays – especially Mom.
June 30, 1961 was a gorgeous Friday night in Pittsburgh, back when they did not start their night games at Forbes Field until 8:15pm so that the ballpark’s lights could better illuminate the field I guess. My sister and I would always go down to the dugout to see the players up close during batting practice and on this occasion Willie Mays was standing between the 1st base dugout and the batting cage probably waiting his turn to take a few cuts. My sister and I began shouting at Willie to come on over so we could get an autograph. He was great – When he turned to look at us he blanched, seeing me – a dorky 9 yr old farm kid wearing a beat up Pirate cap and my sister waving our scorecards and pens at him. For the next few minutes he good naturedly jawed at us because we were obviously Pittsburgh fans and how he could never give his autograph to us. In a sense, we really had a great few minutes in awe of him and shocked that he kept on motioning to us and indicating that no way he would ever come over to see us. Well, after his final few swings in the cage Willie walked over and spoke to us briefly, signed our scorecards and a few others I imagine and then he winked at us and was gone. It was an almost surreal moment for me. He homered early in the game but the Bucs came back to score 2 in the bottom of the ninth to win 4-3. Maz scored the winning run from 2nd base in a terribly close play at the plate, sliding under the tag at the plate, narrowly beating Mays’ throw on a sharp ground single by Virden. What an evening for a dorky 9 yr old farm kid!
I think it’s become pretty accepted that players had open access to greenies for decades – and I would imagine stimulants have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Amphetamine use is way worse than steroids. And, you can add in “the jar in the clubhouse” factor to it. True or not, the prosecution makes it sound like Bonds was a cyborg – speed users are not monitored. And were not. We’re not talking about ADD sufferers – that’s a prescription under a doctor’s care. BOWLS of greenies in the clubhouse.
One also forgets that “diet pills” and “something to help you work” were out in the open and mainstream in the 40s and 50s. Ballplayers would have had to be puritans to not at the least be the same as the general population.
And, to put it in perspective, how many of us have coffee each day? That’s a drug too, and a fairly strong one. The point is is that times change, and you can’t expect that the label and the era create a more innocent use or milieu.
Willie Mays, by the way, is my favorite ballplayer of all time. He’s a god.
Enjoy the argument here– it’s sound, well-constructed and deftly delivered. But after a discussion I had with a friend, it doesn’t quite sit as well, because of how it’s couched.
Isn’t going after a review like Hamill’s a little straw-man-ish? It’s a review written by a tough, clear-eyed guy… who’s a non-baseball-writer, someone for whom baseball, post-1957, WILL never be the same again. He’s not attempting any sort of evenhanded appraisal of baseball– he’s reviewing a book. You’re attacking him– however genteelly– on merits he never claimed to have here.
I don’t get the outrage that some people feel about Durocher’s
Giants stealing signs in 1951. You call it cheating, but to my
mind, stealing signs is not cheating because there has never been
a rule against it.
Giving signs to batters and runners is part of baseball, but it
is not covered by the rules as far as I am aware.
No one criticizes a player or coach who studies the opposition
with the naked eye and deciphers their signs. Rather, they praise
them for being smart enough to “break the code”. So why all the
anguish over the fact that the Giants figured out a way to take
advantage of their opponents signs?
In comparison to steroids, amphetimines, or segregation, stealing
signs doesn’t amount to anything at all in my opinion.
For all of the people excusing greenies, sign stealing, and say spitballs- please, tell me how being able to play at near 100% late in the year (instead of tailing off on long road trips), knowing what pitch is coming (through- in the case of the ’51 Giants effectively an elaborate ring of deception, not say a guy on second tipping his teamate which could possibly be gamesmanship), and actually altering the freaking ball (at least as bad as corking- only instead of being ejected and then viewed as a cheat- the perpetrator is “crafty” and gets to go to the Hall)- is worse than Steroids, if anything steroids allow players to dedicate themselves harder to training (not to excuse them but I just have a hard time seeing it). Oh, and Hamil does realize that Baseball in its “Golden Age” had at least one actual World Series thrown right, I mean I would think that gamblers and players conspiring to fix the championship would put more tarnish on a sport than steroids, but hey that’s me.
“No one criticizes a player or coach who studies the opposition
with the naked eye and deciphers their signs. Rather, they praise
them for being smart enough to “break the code”. So why all the
anguish over the fact that the Giants figured out a way to take
advantage of their opponents signs?”
The best example I can think of that explains the difference between the 1951 Giants sign-stealing and the “normal” version of it (which it could be argued was simple gamesmanship) involves another sport- essentially its the difference between the “Spygate” stuff the Patriots were killed for and having a smart QB or LB read the defense/offense at the line or jump the snap count- one involves players making a realtime decision, the other outside forces applying non-sport resources to a problem in order to defeat the game.
Again on the greenies- people don’t see how guys being able to concentrate, etc. late in the season would fundamentally alter both the statistics and outcome of games?
Heck, forget Greenies, gambling, the inherently rigged nature of a closed sport (basically, prior to Robinson MLB statistics are as valid as Japanese League stats, they were compiled against less than superior competition- and yet no one seems to regard Oh as a the all-time HR King, or use Satchel and Gibson’s Negro league stats to argue their superiority to Koufax and say Bench), what about the immense effect on hitting stats that facing a tired pitcher in the 7th and beyond creates- you’re telling me that going up against a guy whose throwing sub-optimal stuff isn’t a huge edge?
I’m trying to think why the anti-Bonds argument bugs me so much, and I think its a culmination of a number of things- the self-righteousness (like Sports Writers wouldn’t take something that turned them into Grantland Rice in exchange for a few years off of their lives) and chumminess (in effect Bonds was treated differently because he was a jerk- heck you could even argue that if he was treated fairly he never juices in the first place given his purported reason- being the best player of his generation and almost inarguably the greatest LF of alltime prior to his later years and being ignored in favor of a Strikeout machine and a Circus freak)of the coverage, the possible racial tinge (seriously, how did Clemens not get just as much scrutiny as Bonds- guy was a pitcher sure but his career turnaround was far, far more dramatic- Boston-to-Toronto vs. Bonds being Allstar Caliber-to-Greatest Hitter since Ruth caliber), the almost greek tragedyesque nature of it all (it really does read like Sophocles “man sacrifices intergrity of thing that means most to him for recognition he already deserved” ) and finally the false nostalgia- Baseball was never innocent, saying it was is the sports equivalent of pining for the ’50s and ignoring the fact that it was far, far worse than today if you weren’t a Straight, White, Middle-to-Upper class male, or people saying the culture is far more violent today than it was in times when Torture and Execution were viewed as family entertainment.
Poor Barry Bonds. He made millions, broke Hank Aarons HR record while using speed and steroids, and gets his godfather caught in the crossfire of a generational PED ” who dunit .”
Hamill thinks NYC baseball in the 50′s was “the Golden Age” and I bet plenty of men his age feel the same way. Guess what?He might be right.
Wow. Eye candy.
#67. Regarding why Clemens didn’t get as much scrutiny as Bonds, Clemens’ incredible performances in his 40s didn’t dwarf what he did during his prime. His 1.87 ERA at age 42 was similar to his 1.93 ERA at age 27, for example. And he showed at least some signs of aging. For example his K/9 rate was in the 7-9 range in his 40s, compared to peak rates of around 10.
Also, early on Clemens had concocted the story about how his off-day workouts were so intense and so difficult that the days he pitched were like off-days to him.
Bonds, on the other hand, hit 73 HRs compared to a high of 46 in his 20s. His OPS reached Ruthian heights, but never came close to that during his prime. And he never came up with some story about a super-fantastic, back-breaking workout regimen. Clemens, believe it or not, was smarter about the whole thing.
Of course, there is probably a racial element too, as well as the issue of Bonds’ surliness versus Clemens doofusishness.
I have been saying for years that there has always been cheating in baseball. People are putting tags on Bonds and McGwire and labeling them as cheaters and not good enough for the Hall of Fame. But what about the pitchers who were taking steroids? There were just as many of them on the stuff as hitters. They were able to pitch more innings and recover better between starts. Throw more and harder fastballs longer in their careers. The dispensing of speed in the dugouts in Major League Baseball is well documented. If you are going to vote to keep some of the players who took steroids out of the hall then you better take the ones who took greenies out too. I know that is not going to happen. A note to Hall of Fame voters…vote according to the same statistical standards that have been used for years. 3000 hits you’re in…300 wins your in…500 homeruns you’re in… 300 career average you’re in…400 saves you’re in…1500 RBI’s
you’re in etc… It’s only fair to the present day players who were only doing what all players have done since the game was started. They were trying to get an edge.
Today’s players can take greenies if they like. They might get caught, since there’s testing now. But if they do, like Bonds did a couple years ago, nobody will care. Just like nobody cared in the 60s and 70s.
Likewise, pitchers can throw the spitball. Players can steal signs. Hitters can use a corked bat. And nobody will care.
Steroids is different. Steroids, as Vito Corleone might say, is a dirty business.
There is no double standard.
[...] of my writing heroes, Joe Posnanski, does a fantastic job of explaining how baseball has always had cheating of one sort or another. [...]
Why not just change the standards of entry to the Hall of Fame for admitted or highly-suspected steroids users? Today’s players have so many competitive advantages over players from bygone eras that a sliding scale seems reasonable just to begin with, and slide it even further for steroid users. I don’t mean that there are any hard and fast numbers for entry, but there are a few benchmarks (3000 hits, 300 wins, etc.) that HoF voters often refer to when making decisions. After adjusting for era, bump these mental checklist items up some order of magnitude for players who’ve used PEDs.
In other words, no one is out-right denied access to the HoF because of PEDs. They simply have a higher bar to reach. Because, even with their added advantages, they still had to play the game, and play it well for a long time, and that requires certain skills that PEDs don’t (yet) enhance. I don’t know of any PEDs that improve eye-hand coordination, or base-running smarts, or pitch execution, or turning a double play. Sure, Mark McGwire hit a lot of home runs that, for a lesser person, might’ve been deep fly balls, but the important thing is that he consistently made solid contact on all sorts of major-league pitches, and this is one of the hardest skills that any athlete can possibly master.
Stealing signs in baseball is cheating? Huh? If I’m on first, and a pitcher tells me, “Hey, I’m going to the plate on this one.”, I may try to steal. But what if he signs it to his catcher, and I manage to understand the sign? I’m cheating? Give me a break!
As I have often told my friend, Willy Richter- When a player reaches an age when we might expect a decline in his performance and instead there is a dramatic improvement, you can be sure he is on something and it ain’t hot chocolate.
And that something is well masked by some other pharmaceutical agent. Oh the wonders of modern science.
All too true. I love baseball but, even now,
its racism is infuriating: McGwire applaud-ed, Bonds a pariah. LaRussa’s DWI (did you all forget?) swept under the rug, Ron
Washington (you watch) run out of the game. Forgiveness, the blind eye, redemp-
tion should be available to all. Let he who is without sin…blah…blah…….
I don’t know how anyone can equate greenies with steroids. It wasn’t until the proliferation of steroids that HRs spiked to a ridiculous level, and all of a sudden players were having career years after the age of 35. This is all the proof one needs that steroids are in a class all by themselves.