Seriously, what business is it of ours that Mark McGwire took a supposed performance enhancing substance that wasn't even banned by baseball while he played? What makes all of us so high and mighty?I have yet to see a direct scientific correlation that shows that steroids magically gift a baseball player with the ability to hit home runs. Think about how many crappy players took steroids--it's not like David Segui was ever a threat to break Maris' record. You still need elite hand-eye coordination to be able to hit a 95-mph fastball, not to mention navigate your way around an arsenal of the best offspeed and breaking pitches on the planet.
Not only that, but how are we to even know which pitchers may or not have been on the juice? Frankly, at this point I think you pretty much have to assume that every player in baseball was using steroids during the so-called "steroid era." Why wouldn't you, considering there were no rules in place and an improbability that you would get caught? Given how many revelations keep occurring, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if new players continued to come forward now that McGwire has opened the floodgates.
And again, who really cares? I'm sorry if steroids tarnished baseball for you, but I'll never forget that magical 1998 summer watching and hoping that Big Mac and Sosa could finally topple the record. I don't care that A-Rod admitted to steroids, and I don't care that Barry Bonds is almost surely a steroid user. They're still phenomenal baseball players, and until someone can show me specific scientific evidence backing up any claims that steroids directly impacted or affected their statistics, then it's all hyperbole and conjecture.
Complaining about players using steroids reminds me of peoples' outrage over investment banking bonuses, once again a popular story in the news these days. Maybe it's because I'm reading "Liar's Poker" and finding myself utterly fascinated by it (not to mention outrageously annoyed that it never even occurred to me while an undergrad to pursue a job on Wall Street) but really, anyone who's complained about the absurd money I-bankers make (and I'm certainly guilty of this offense) is just jealous that they didn't elect to take that career path. Being morally outraged because the baseball players you held in such high esteem (never mind that they were obviously on steroids) now decide to come forward and admit that what everyone suspected was true rings hollow to me. Where was all the outrage while McGwire was en route to 70 bombs 12 years ago?
The bottom line for me is that I don't care if a player did steroids, because no amount of juice can help you become a better hitter--if they could, how come no one has realistically flirted with batting .400 in ages? Just because a few extra balls went over the wall doesn't prove to me that steroids helped them get there. How come the standard line is always that the batters were clearly cheating, but the pitchers are never held accountable? What if the pitching was truly terrible? I find it a funny coincidence that both McGwire and Sosa had these impressive runs in the National League, which has been anecdotally weaker than the American for nearly 20 years.
Check out the following league FIPs and corresponding seasons:
| AL | NL | |
| 1997 | 4.54 | 4.25 |
| 1998 | 4.57 | 4.31 |
| 1999 | 4.80 | 4.63 |
| 2000 | 4.83 | 4.71 |
| 2001 | 4.44 | 4.41 |
| 2002 | 4.37 | 4.20 |
| 2003 | 4.47 | 4.34 |
Now you can look at this chart and have it tell you just about anything you want. If you're a steroid witch-hunt person, you'll see the rise in FIP in 1999 and 2000 as surefire proof that steroids destroyed the game of baseball. If you're like me, you'll think that maybe the NL happened to have a couple of rough pitching years, but that the numbers mostly returned to normal in 2001, with 2002 posting an even lower league FIP than in 1997.
There are too many variables in baseball on any given at-bat, and in a game where you're considered a success if you reach base 35% of the time, I don't see how steroids changed the playing field unless you started to see scores of guys consistently start to get on base in half their at-bats. Now noted steroid suspect Barry Bonds was in fact getting on-base at that particular obscene clip for from 2001 through 2004, but he was also miles better than just about everyone else. Are we supposed to assume that steroids helped Bonds even moreso than the other players who took steroids, or can we just take a step back and admire the fact that Bonds was far and away the best player in baseball for a good portion of the aughts?
Great post! I'm not much of a baseball fan myself but I agree entirely that the so-called "steroid era" embraced at least enough players that trying to abolish record-setters like McGwire simply isn't fair.
ReplyDeleteMLB needs to change the rules and move on, and so do the fans.
Some people did care. I, for one, was the lone a-hole in my fraternity house who refused to watch either of those cartoon figures that summer - and took crap for it all the time.
ReplyDelete1. Steroids increase muscle growth. Increased muscle growth makes you stronger and faster. Are you seriously making the case that there is no scientific link between being stronger and faster, and being better at baseball?
ReplyDelete2. Steroids are illegal in this country. Are you seriously making the case that it's okay to use a substance banned by the government simply because the governing body of your sport hadn't also banned it?
3. Are you seriously claiming that everyone who wasn't using ILLEGAL steroids was stupid because they should've known that everyone else was doing it?
4. Steroids have proven health risks. Are you seriously saying that everyone should have used them to get one or two seasons of incredible performance before physically falling apart? That people who chose not to take them made a poor strategic decision?
5. Why aren't you taking steroids right now? They would give you abs like The Situation and you'd be able to lift a lot more weight in the gym. You'd have bigger muscles. You'd be stronger. You'd be faster. Look better in a swimsuit. What's stopping you? What's stopping every professional athlete?
6. One day, there will be another performance enhancing drug that comes out and is not covered by the language in the existing ban. Will every single player who doesn't take it be stupid? Will you root for someone who is inexplicably better than everyone else at hitting home runs as an adult, or are you defending admitted cheaters because you don't want to give up those precious childhood memories?
--T
I can't remember who the pitchers were that Sosa and McGwire faced that year, but, as you pointed out, the NL is clearly the weaker league and hence has weaker pitching.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I dont care about baseball players taking steroids from a baseball fan's perspective is there is no way to know which hitters and witch pitchers were on the juice, so that makes it unquantifiable in my eyes. As an observer of pop culture, I don't care because baseball players are entertainers, and historly in America, entertainers do drugs. I've always wondered why people don't debate that the beatles did drugs and used them as performance enhancers but the jonas bros don't so therefore the jonas bros are better because they're doing it clean.
I do agree with T's first point. Consider: Babe Ruth hit 60 HR in one season, and he was way better than anyone in his era. Roger Maris comes along decades later and beats his record by 1 HR despite having more games to play in (although Maris had to deal with continental flights and playing at night and Ruth did not - i say, advantage Ruth!) and then McGwire, Sosa and Bonds come along and pass them both by what, 10+ HR? So the question I ask here is does steroids get the elite hitters 10+ more home runs than the elite seasons of Ruth and Maris? Or is it merely the advent of the personal trainer and so on that provides the extra power, or a combination of both? McGwire clearly used steroids to add bulk, which logic dictates adds power (as opposed to Andy Pettitte using HGH to recover from injury - i put these in very different categories, but still don't really care), but since he probably faced pitchers that did the same thing, i dont think what he did tipped the balance that much. plus, i'm pretty sure ruth and maris played in bigger parks, right? well, fenway is pretty small and Yankee stadium of course has that lovely right field porch, and hmm, but Ruth and Maris played for our beloved Yankees and both were left handed and BOTH set their records when they were Yankees... does that mean they exploited home field advantage and couldn't have done it any other field and are therefore unworthy?
and, after all that, I guess I just want to say that the steroid discussion isn't worth our time anymore and if you really feel that guys like McGwire are cheaters, then go watch soccer.
Don't forget that 1998 was an expansion year--there were 12 or so more pitchers in each league than existed the previous year, at least some of whom would never have made the majors if not for that. So not only was the league weaker, there was also some AAA pitching diluting it
ReplyDeleteSomeone, anyone, please make a reasoned, good-faith argument why steroids should be illegal or banned from baseball that doesn't lean on appeals to emotion or invocations of the good ol' days. Because I haven't read one yet.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your basic premise that '98 was '98, steroids or not. The rest of this is ridiculous dude. In baseball, bat speed and control are everything, and extra (some would say "artificial) strength gives you both. Will it make a bad player good? No, but it might make a good player an all-star, a record-breaker, a hall-of-famer. I don't think it's a coincidence that the #1, 2, and 3 single season home run hitters of all time were on steroids. True, not every user breaks records, but every record was broken by a user.
ReplyDeleteAnd the bank bonuses thing... I don't know where to begin with that. I'm not jealous that I didn't become a money-grubbing banker who worships nothing but cash, I'm outraged that they sucked at their jobs, were given our money to keep them afloat, and then reward their own incompetence with it rather than giving out loans to people like my roommate and his wife so they can get the fuck out of my house already!
@Brendan:
ReplyDelete1. Steroids have proven health risks. This is a fact.
2. Steroids have proven benefits to sports performance. This is a fact.
3. If anyone in baseball is using steroids, he is compromising his health to enhance his baseball performance.
4. If anyone in baseball is using steroids, anyone who chooses not to use steroids is at a disadvantage in the game because he chose to value his long-term health over his short-term athletic performance.
5. Choosing your long-term health over your short-term athletic performance should not be penalized in any sport. It creates what is known as an uneven playing field, where some players have advantages not available to others that have nothing to do with talent, ability, or training- they have to do with purchasing and injecting a chemical. That is not the level on which baseball players compete. Therefore, allowing baseball players to use steroids if they choose is inconsistent with the purpose of baseball. The purpose of baseball is to have the same rules apply to everyone and then determine both which teams and which players are the best at baseball.
Allowing baseball players to use steroids allows baseball players to get better at baseball by doing something that has nothing to do with being good at baseball.
Allowing baseball players to use steroids punishes people who choose to obey the laws of the US.
--T
The problem that I have with the steroids witch hunt is that it falls unfairly on a select handful of players who've been caught. What if it turns out Randy Johnson also took steroids? Its certainly possible, but he's never been implicated as far as I'm aware so he's a lock for immortality. A-Rod, on the other hand, got caught, and lives in a gray area. How is it logical to throw a fit over something we don't fully know? If a handful of players were the extent of the problem that would be one thing, but that is far from the case. I believe that every athlete in every major sport pushes the boundary. With millions on the line they'd be dumb not to.
ReplyDeleteI also get frustrated with this scandal/saga because it disproporionately penalizes modern players. Ruth and Gehrig played during segregated times, meaning roughly 1/2 the pitchers they faced shouldn't have been in the league. Willie Mays was caught with Red Juice. Ty Cobb sharpened his spikes, gambled on baseball, and routinely tried to injure oposing players. Yet ... all of this cheating is ok and the modern form is not? The sanctimony also upsets me.
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ReplyDelete1. Many, many substances and activities persist to be legal and allowable under MLB policy despite posing more imminent and severe health risks than steroids or HGH.
ReplyDelete2. So do vitamins, proper diet and exercise.
3. In a perfect world, I say that's his call to make, not yours, MLB's, or the government's.
4. First of all, a reading of the Mitchell Report shows a great majority of the names were marginal or fringe players who were looking for a way to stay in the league for a little while longer. Steroid use has never made an average player into a star. The presence in baseball of many established superstars who have never used steroids puts your statement in substantial doubt.
More to the point, no one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing him to play a game for millions of dollars a year. If anyone in MLB is looking for honest work, I hear Wal-Mart is hiring. There are tons of jobs out there that are actually crucial to day-to-day life and pose a lot more serious health risks to workers. You should be holding a picket sign and agitating for the rights of coal miners and oil riggers, and yet here you are on the internet fretting that some rich douchebag playing a child's game feels peer pressure to take PEDs in order to keep up.
5. Choosing your long-term health over your short-term athletic performance should not be penalized in any sport.
And it has never been penalized in baseball. It's just that the opposite is rewarded. Willingness to sacrifice demonstrates commitment. Again, nobody is forced to make buckets of money while entertaining people. If that's something you're interested in, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, I don't just approve of that, I admire that.
It creates what is known as an uneven playing field, where some players have advantages not available to others
Anyone can afford steroids on the Major League minimum salary, and everyone can make the decision on their own whether to take on the risks and flout the law. I don't understand how the advantage is available to some and not others.
The purpose of baseball ...
Stop. The purpose of baseball is to make me happy. It is a product and I am a consumer. And I enjoy seeing physical freaks of nature compete on a level that I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Whatever it takes to get there, short of theft, rape or murder, I'm fine with. I don't harbor an everyman fantasy about showing up to an open tryout and making the team and I don't want to watch a bunch of doughy guys and skinny, .210-hitting shortstops play mediocre ball. I've been through that, I was a fan of the 1991 Yankees. You want to watch an untainted game, go down to the park and sit in on the beer league.
Allowing baseball players to use steroids allows baseball players to get better at baseball by doing something that has nothing to do with being good at baseball.
So does allowing baseball players to have Tommy John surgery. Or allowing baseball players to get Lasik.
Allowing baseball players to use steroids punishes people who choose to obey the laws of the US.
True, but laws prohibiting free and sane adults from deciding what substances to put in their own bodies are inherently unjust.