So now it is official- Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi took steroids. And so did probably half of the players in MLB. Really- I think it was a change in Brady Anderson’s workout routine that caused his HR’s to leap from 16 in 1995 to 50 in 1996. Really- he was just seeing the ball better.
To be honest, I don’t care if Bonds took steroids, and I couldn’t disagree with Jay Caruso more:
Bottom line for me is this: Bonds is going to break Aaron
jeff
In Jay’s defense, he said in the comments section that he spoke in haste when he talked about stripping them of awards retroactively.
Hubris
“hell, the only difference between Bonds and Ruth would bethat rather than put the creme steroid on himself, Ruth would probably have a hooker rub it in.”
– simply perfect
Ralph Gizzip
It’s only baseball. It’s not like anybody really gives a crap.
Blackjack
John,
Every new park is a hitter’s ballpark? Not Safeco Field in Seattle, that’s for sure.
I will agree with you that many of the ex-greats would also have done them given the opportunity. That’s all the world would have needed — Ty Cobb with roid rage.
CadillaqJaq
Roids in MLB? I give a crap, let ’em play.
But part of John’s post struck a nerve: “Really- I think it was a change in Brady Anderson’s workout routine that caused his HR’s to leap from 16 in 1995 to 50 in 1996. Really- he was just seeing the ball better.”
Revisiting last summer’s Olympic games, remember seeing/listening to the USA women’s softball coach explaining how he’d hired a “vision instructor” to assist the team in seeing the ball better?
Using tennis balls he’d marked with a numeral, he’d fast pitch them using a pitching machine and eventually the hitters were able to call out the number inscribed on the ball while in the batter’s box. Hitting it became secondary (…and often, as witnessed during the Olympic games).
Curious, are any MLB teams using a “vision instructor?”
dylan
Yes Cadillaq Jaq. The Kansas City Royals employed that sort of technology this summer(04). It consisted of different marks(colors,numbers) on succesively fired tennis balls. The batter had to discern between balls as they were pitched to them. The goal was to “see” the ball better. Whether the 04 Royals saw the ball better: thier 105 losses might conclude otherwise.
JohnO
“They weren’t cheating. Baseball was not testing and had no position on it, to their shame”
The reason there is no formal roid testing in MLB is the player’s union is opposed to it and Selig, being the worst commissioner to ever hold the position, won’t push it.
Yes, it’s not “cheating” in the technical sense since the specific chemicals are not tested for, but if it’s not “cheating” then why didn’t they just admit their steroid use?
jpe
Jesus, you think like a lawyer.
It’s not cheating because it wasn’t banned? The problem isn’t that they’re breaking an MLB rule (for example, I don’t think any of us could give a flying fuck that Curt Schilling violated MLB rules by negotiating a clause that would grant him a salary increase if the Sox won the series); the problem is that cheating history by playing on an uneven field with the past.
It’s not about whether Ruth is a better person or something (so it doesn’t matter if that fuck would’ve juiced up); it’s about who’s the best with a bat.
Bloggerhead
John: I think you’re wrong that the Babe would have used steroids, unless they would have given him a buzz, because simply administering them is useless without a workout regime. And all know how he felt about those. When all’s said and done, Ruth will benefit from this scandal, because he will now remain the greatest player of all time.
M. Scott Eiland
The Babe was known to work out–the methods were just a tad primitive (chopping wood, training in a boxing gym). Presumably, if steroids had been available back then, whoever provided them would have told him what he needed to do to benefit from them. We know for a fact that he had no problem with using illegal drugs (i.e.–booze during the 1920’s).
Terry
In his Washington Post column on Saturday, Thomas Boswell put it pretty good when he stated: “The glory of Roger Maris’s 61 home runs, which felt heavy to him in life, became a buoyant legacy to his family after his death. The disgrace of Bonds’s 73 tainted home runs will become heavier with time until even fake muscles may not bear the weight.”
M. Scott Eiland
I’d take Boswell with a grain of salt–he’s been a committed Bonds hater for years, and he absorbed a lot of well-deserved abuse for his lame arguments for Sammy Sosa over Bonds in the 2001 NL MVP race (which exalted RBI totals to a ridiculous extent–he probably thought Vinny Castilla should have been NL MVP this season).
Bloggerhead
Scott:
You’re right, of course, that the Babe did undertake ostentatious displays of working out; there’s a good deal of existing footage. But this was late in his career, when whispers of his diminishing skills & his never-diminishing desire to try and be a role-model just about forced him into it.
I guess my point was that in order for him to have derived any tangible benefit from steroid use, he would have had to sustain such exertions that, as you well know, just weren’t the Babe’s style, the magnificent bastard. Simply put, he was the nation’s greatest unadulterated (heh) athlete between the Jims, Thorpe & Brown, and never truly appreciated the need to enhance his prodigiousness; or (wink) the original Lord Pork-Pork (before Lord Haw-Haw, even), and a supremely tragic figure against which Bonds’ own fall pales.
Dr. Fager
HUBRIS -“the only difference between bonds & ruth” etc.
The difference between Bonds & ruth is that Ruth hit 714 homers WITHOUT steroids.
The opinions voiced in some comments sections are absurd.
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