Ivan Rodriguez bulked up over a similar time period (check his 1998 Topps card vs. his Introduction with the Marlins in 2003. Pedro Martinez added 15 pounds of muscle over the last off-season (while coming off rotator-cuff surgery).
Neither of these guys have a whiff of scandal attached to them (at least w.r.t. steroids or HGH). I would never say their omission “only reflects the sources Mitchell was able to get information from”; I’m more likely to say their omission confirms the general opinion these guys play drug-free.
Let’s face it: A lot of people don’t like Sammy Sosa’s act (something I can completely understand), and so they’re more than willing to toss him in with the users. He may indeed be named as part of the HGH rings run by Radomski/McNamee once federal prosecutors present their full case. But right now I don’t really understand how he can be lumped in with admitted or strong-evidence users like Bonds,McGwire, and Clemens.
I think the argument is that for about 5 years now everyone has been saying “Bonds, McGuire and Sosa” in the same breath regarding the home run chase and suspicion of steroids. Over that span there has been a ton of smoke around Barry and Big Mac and essentially none around Sosa. He’s gotten a bit of a bad rap.
I think Sosa is a twit and I’m inclined to think that he used 'roids, but I cynically think that about 80% of players have used something at some time so that’s probably not the point.
It’s just that this in one more case where he wasn’t incriminated, but will still probably be labeled as a Steroid Guy ahead of 75 of the other guys where were actually named in this report.
Say this for Sosa, he seems to at least have been smarter than most of his peers if he was using and abusing.
Personally, I don’t really care that much who took steroids and who didn’t. I’ve said this before in other contexts, but I’ll repeat it here: beyond the legality/illegality issue, I don’t see such a big difference between taking steroids and getting a cortisone shot for an injury. Steroids are performance enhancing; a cortisone shot isn’t? A player gets injured; he can’t play. He gets a shot; he can play. That enhances his performance. Period. (Before the shot, he can’t perform at all; after, he’s good to go.) Same with “Tommy John” surgery. Some pitchers who have torn up their tendons got a ligament transplant and added 5 mph to their fastballs. It’s hard to believe some players haven’t gotten that surgery even without an injury, just to gain that advantage. And why stop at medical manipulations? These guys don’t ever have to have real jobs; they work out all year, have personal trainers, personal chefs, are miniature businesses unto themselves with the money they make and the corresponding expenditures for keeping themselves world-class athletes. Their whole lives revolve around making themselves into these specialized creatures for our entertainment. Everything about them is artificial. Pro athletes are as different from you and me as a thoroughbred horse is from a pack mule. Does it really matter what they do to make themselves that way, especially if the same actions are being taken by (at least) a majority of their peers?
This is where someone will probably jump in with the “it is a health risk for them” argument. I’ve got a newsflash for everyone: spending several years as a high-level athlete is, in and of itself, a health risk. Pushing your body to those limits will have inevitable consequences down the road, whether you shoot up steroids or not. Bad knees, bad back, neck pains, shoulder pains–have a good career in the pros and you’ll get all that and probably more after your playing days are done. At least if you kept yourself in the game for a while, you’ll probably have the money to pay for the operations you’ll need when you’re 50.
And yeah, it’s illegal without a legitimate prescription. OK, so get a legitimate prescription. Go to a doctor and say, “it’s my job to be in peak physical condition, and I need this stuff to be in peak physical condition.” Sure there are risks associated with taking this stuff. Have you watched any of those prescription drug commercials that air ad nauseum on TV these days? Have you listened those lists of potential side effects? Folks are pimping drugs on TV with potential side effects up to and including DEATH. But if there’s a need for the drug, doctors will prescribe it.
The only thing that gets me about this is, of all athletes, why would baseball players feel that they need such enhancements? Will taking steroids (or HGH, or whatever else) help you hit behind the runner? Hit the cutoff man? Lay down a bunt? Keep a hitter off balance by changing speeds? There are so many aspects of playing baseball that can’t be helped by drugs; it displays such a short-sighted view of the sport to think that the only way to win is to knock the ball out of the park or blow a fastball by the batter. That’s where management is guilty–they failed to convey to the players that skill, not mere strength, translates into wins. Every time I’ve ever sneered about the “semi-retarded steroid freaks” on TV, it turns out I wasn’t kidding. They’re dumb. If some of those marginal players had focused on making themselves better ball players instead of better physical specimens, that would have done more to secure their roster spot than all the drugs they could shoot.
On a lighter note, how can you be “Omniscient” if you don’t know how to spell McGwire’s name?
I concur. The best example is perhaps lineman in the NFL. For them, a bigger health risk than whatever chemicals they may or may not be ingesting is their weight. The simple physics of the position they play demand that they have enough mass available for acceleration to create a meaningful amount of force at the point of impact. The simplest and most effective way to accomplish this is to eat. A lot. They’re elite athletes and physical freaks, but they’re not healthy. And yet no one argues that a defensive tackle should stay at 285, though he could bulk up 330, so that he doesn’t force the players around him to follow in his unhealthy footsteps in order to remain competitive.
In the end, I think you’re left with the fact that the drugs are illegal and, more relevantly, against the rules. And I suppose, on balance, that for various reasons it’s probably best that they are against the rules, and so long as they are you may as well have an effective policy for deterring their use. What I don’t like to see is the judgemental vitriol directed at the users. I think that people tend to get their emotions as a fan mixed up with a rational appraisal of the severity of the crime, and overreact.
Think of it this way: a student scores some Ritalin from a classmate to help him study for and take the SATs. Or a lawyer does the same so he can stay up all night preparing for court. Both of these people are doing something illegal to gain a competitive advantage, but most people who despise the baseball dopers wouldn’t call them “cheaters” or “scum.” I would ask that the people here and elsewhere who condemn baseball’s dopers most strongly pause, step back, and try to judge the athletes by the same standards that they would judge the illicit-pill-popping student or lawyer.
Is that a joke? That his flip out with Reilly was because he didn’t want to alienate himself with the union?
Is that the kind of crazy-ass retro-fitting they do for that episode in Chicago?
Sosa juiced. You know it. Everyone knows it. We know it because he hit 66, 64 and 63 home runs in three separate seasons. What’s the story line if he didn’t? McGwire and Bonds juiced, but Sosa was really the greatest home run hitter of all time. . .Ruth, Maris, and Sosa. Except Sosa was WAY bettter than both of them because he did it 3 times.
If he wasn’t named in the report, it’s because all the names in the report basically come from following the strands in the webs of McNamee and Radomski and that pharmacy in Florida.
This didn’t focus on the Balco labs much at all. And, that’s not to mention that there are probably several of these types of networks throughout baseball. Radomski wasn’t supplying everyone in the majors who juiced.
:rolleyes:
Oh, get off yours. This thread is for the discussion of the Mitchell report. It’s about steroid use in baseball. It’s the lead story in every paper in the US today. Those of you living in Bondsylvania should love this report more than anything. If nothing else, it’s going to expose as hypocrites anyone who wants to cut Pettitte and Clemens some slack while vilifying Barry.
Not true at all. People started fingering Pudge as a steroid user as soon as he showed up to camp in… 2004, maybe (?) having clearly lost a bunch of weight in the offseason. I don’t recall hearing anything about Martinez, true.
The goal was not, as I understand it, to name every steroid user out there. He named around 30 active players who have used those kinds of drugs, and if that’s even a third of the true number I’d be surprised. Sosa’s a significant omission, I admit, but that doesn’t outweigh the ‘visual’ evidence.
Maybe because he hit 60 home runs for the first time at age 30 - which is 50 percent greater than his previous career high - and then hit 60 home runs two more times in the next three years before his body started giving out on him. Sosa was younger than McGwire, but they went through very similar career patterns. The real only difference between their cases, as far as I know, is that Sosa didn’t sound like he was hiding anything when he talked to Congress. What’s the evidence that McGwire used steroids? He admitted to using andro the same way Sosa said he used creatine.
Read my words; I said he backed down from going thru with an on-the-spot test because he knew it would alienate him with the union. The flip-out was pure Sosa hot-temper at being called out, a overblown but not-that-unusual a reaction from a top athlete who’s being embarassed by someone he considers inferior. It’s not pretty, but many athletes (regretably) would behave in a similar way in that situation. The patience of Cal Ripken is exceptional.
Sosa hit 40 HR in 1996, his previous career high before 1998. However, he played in 124 games that year; extrapolate and he probably could have hit at least 50 that year.
Sosa is ~5 years younger than McGwire, and you’re right they do have similar career patterns (though Sosa has seemed to age better). Ken Griffey Jr. also has a similar career pattern (great longball hitter/speedster, power numbers ratchet up in the late ‘90s, starts to break down a few years later), and he’s closer in age to (less than a year younger than) Sosa. Yet he isn’t persistently dogged by steroid rumors (no more than any other large player). Sosa, on the other hand, is all-but-guilty in many fans’ eyes because he “looks like” a steroid user, even though the level of evidence against him is basically the same as it is against Griffey.
Why? I think Sosa’s self-aggrandizing reputation has a lot to do with it. Plus, people have been saying “Bonds/McGwire/Sosa” for so long they overlook the stunning difference in circumstantial evidence against these three players. Bonds is under indictment for lying about taking steroids, and essentially has admitted he took them “unknowingly.” McGwire revealed in 1998 he used Andro (not a steroid, but it basically tricks your body into making steroids, and is not at all in the same “health supplement” category as creatin), and was clearly evasive on the issue before Congress. Not a bit of evidence other than “he looks like a user” is offered on Sosa, and unlike McGwire he flatly denied using before a Congressional committee (Funny, everyone believed Palmeiro when he said the same thing, until he failed the test later that summer). Sosa is a jerk, but at present he isn’t anywhere near McGwire and Bonds (two jerks themselves) in terms of steroid culpability.
Exactly right; Miguel Tejada and Eric Gagne were named in the report for Chrissakes, yet it seems more people still believe Sosa was a user.
This is a strong argument IMO that he didn’t take steroids. Sosa is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer; something even a casual observer can pick up on after 15 minutes of conversation.
Fair enough. But he in 162 games in 1997, he hit 36 home runs. And he hit 36 in 1995 also, in 144 games. So prior to 1998, I think you would have thought you had a fair reading on Sosa’s power.
Griffey hit 45 HR in 1993 and 40 in 1994. I don’t know what he may have done, but a jump of 45 to 56 is just a bit less strange than 36 or 40 to 66!
What’s the ‘lot of evidence’ on Sosa’s side? The fact that not everybody gets equal suspicion for using steroids, and that he’s not in this report? To me, that just doesn’t outweigh the changes in his body and power numbers. You’re right that people get suspected erratically, as a function of their profile within the sport, their public images and other things. But that doesn’t mean everyone who is suspected is wrong. I’m no insider, but I did indeed hear talk that Gagne and Pudge Rodriguez were using steroids, so I’m not surprised that Mitchell was able to detail what they did. Given the fact that he only had a few sources, and as far as I can tell none were based in Chicago, is it that surprising that he didn’t name Sosa?
The report is based on Balco, and 2 clubhouse workers who were supplying on the side. This is a small part of the problem. Every clubhouse has steroids in it. A lot of players are letting a big sigh of relief out. They got away with it but now have to decide how to get off them. HGH is still a problem. That requires a blood test to find. The players union has to fight against blood testing. The users will stay slightly ahead of testing procedures in the future. Like biking and the Olympics the war will go on. So will the drugs.
We owe Canseco a big hand for revealing the problem. He was ridiculed on this board when his book came out. He was honest . The others lied.
I’m not surprised at this leap of logic, considering the flimsy evidence put forward “proving” Sosa was a user. Sosa is unquestionably one of the best power hitters of his generation. Comparing him to past greats, however, requires an understanding of how the game was played in different eras.
The simple fact is that players train to become HR hitters today (obviously, because as Ralph Kiner said, "“Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, and singles hitters drive Fords.”), and the game has adjusated for that. Steroids has something to do with that, but so does improved weight training, year-round gym time, and a change in the long-held belief that strength training was bad for baseball players. To put it as simply as possible, 60 HR’s today ain’t what it used to be, so I think even if steroids weren’t involved fans would legitimately disagree about Sosa’s ranking among all-time great power hitters. Three seasons of 60 HR’s wouldn’t settle the argument “by leaps and bounds”.
Furthermore, there are other remarkable and recent power-related baseball feats that don’t seem to point the public toward automatic declarations of steroid abuse. A-Rod has reached 500 HR’s faster than any player in history, has five seasons of at least 45 HR’s–matching Sosa–and eight over 40–one more than Sosa–and no one believes A-Rod won’t add to those totals in upcoming seasons. Was he a user too?
Let’s make a final point very very clear: I think it’s far from “obvious” Sosa used steroids or HGH, and a lot of circumstantial evidence (especially in comparison to the equally-scrutinized McGwire and Bonds) suggests he didn’t use steroids. His career, in fact, is not that much better than other power hitters of the era (Griffey, A-Rod) who are not automatically assumed to be steroid users. I’ll concede that Sosa may have used–I mean isn’t every player pretty much a suspect in this, regardless of the names named–by IMO the automatic public assumption stems more from a revulsion at his slap-happy “hop out of the batter’s box” persona than actual objective proof.
We’ll find out, maybe. Canseco says he was. Can you tell me how much A-Rod has bulked up over the years? I found a blog (citing media guides) saying Sosa went from 175 pounds in 1990 to 220 in 2004. I’d get a narrower range if we could, but I figure he also weighed about 220 in 1998, while Sosa was young in 1990, I find that amount of weight gain noteworthy.
I don’t believe Sosa juiced and I still would like more evidence on McGwire than “we all know he did” and Jose Canseco’s say-so. Sosa also radically altered his batting stance around 1997-1998 and no one seems to give that any credit at all. He was a more patient hitter in those years as he significantly raied the number of walks he took in the late 90s/early 2000s and lowered his strikeout total slightly.
So, where do we go from here? Fifteen or twenty years of ML Baseball were drenched in steroids, human growth hormone, amphetamines, painkillers, and drugs I can’t spell. Can we just paint over that era, and say it doesn’t count? I’m not going to waste time claiming, “Your hero was dirty, but mine was clean.” :dubious: It was and is the juiced era. Even those who didn’t use the stuff played in its shadow. Nearly every facet of the game was tilted by the presence of enhanced players. Clean players had to change their game to cope with the juicers.
We should simply put brackets around the era, and let the fans and historians come to their own conclusions. The hits, the plays, and the games happened, and they are part of history. We cannot ignore them. How far back did it go? I don’t know, but Roger Maris’s sudden hair loss looks like testosterone supplements to my non-medical eye.
MLB can strive to put an end to the era, and we’ll see how well that works. I have a feeling we are not finished with the juiced era.
Evidence in Sosa’s corner? You mean “lack of physical evidence” that he did it.
Sorry, I’m not a guy sitting on a jury in a murder trial. I’m a guy who watches baseball. And Sosa fucking juiced. And everyone knows it.
If Sosa didn’t juice, then he put together 3 seasons of homers, naturally, that were better than every single unjuiced home-run season from the previous 100 years of baseball. Gee, you’d think some people might respect him.
He’s also #2 on this dude’s list of most “unusual age performance profiles” of all time. That list in which everyone in the top 17 played post 1987. I guess we just figured out how to stop aging. . .oh, wait, we remembered after baseball started testing. There isn’t a player on that list post-2004.
And, CJJ* doesn’t think he’s the greatest power hitter ever because today guys “train for it”, or as others have said, “because the game has changed.”
Yeah, they trained for it, and the game changed. . .because guys like Sosa were using steroids.
There are already brackets and asterisks around it.
Certain guys aren’t going to get in the hall over it.
Shit. . .people can still recall a half dozen names from the Black Sox scandal. People put a little mental asterisk next to seasons like Bob Gibson had in the late 60’s. . .not because he wasn’t great, but just because it was considered a “pitcher’s era.” And, he came back to earth after they lowered the mound.
This will never go away in people’s mind. The Mitchell Report will be the sledgehammer with which arguments are pounded out.
The damage is done. Hopefully enough shame came from this that players will stay away from whatever gains them unfair advantage in the future.
Griffey’s numbers broke down from injuries and illnesses, that’s pretty widely known. That’s why you often hear broadcasters saying that if he’d stayed healthy, he’d have been the one beating Aaron’s record.
I have no idea about Corkbat Sosa using steroids and honestly don’t have an opinion one way or another if he did or not, but Griffey’s decline is pretty easy to document with injury. If you need a cite, I can set you up with a (probably) 4 hour phone call with my grandfather who is (sadly, for him) a lifelong Reds fan.
This is a very good point to make. Place baseball players in a larger context, and their actions don’t seem so nefarious. To cite another example, it’s considered common knowledge that long haul truck drivers pop a lot of pills to stay awake and make their runs in shorter times. That’s dangerous to their health, and is potentially dangerous for other people on the road (if they “crash” from the pills wearing off and then really crash if they fall asleep behind the wheel). Yet, there is no hue and cry being raised about that. Whether you’re shooting up or getting yourself surgically enhanced or trading on inside information, people throughout society engage in behaviors that are illegal and create “unfair” advantages.
The general sense of outrage varies wildly, depending mostly upon how personally connected one feels to the subject in question. However much we may enjoy watching it, baseball is a relatively minor component of how most of us live our lives. Getting all fried up about widespread and common actions in the sport doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
I do feel it makes sense to set rules and police the sport; that’s an agreeable matter. But I don’t like the hypocrisy that’s attached to a lot of this, especially from that piece of shit Selig, who took over the game, crashed it into the ground, then was perfectly happy to sit back and take no action while those he brands as criminals today were the ones who helped heal his harms ten years ago with their juiced up bodies.
The Trucker popping pills to stay awake vs the baseball player juicing. For me the question is: What is the whole point of the exercise? With trucking it is to get goods from one place to another and popping pills does facilitate that. Baseball on the other hand is a sporting competition with no other end than the enjoyment of watching a competition. When the competition is unfair it kinda ruins the whole point of baseball.
