I thought you were claiming only a few were using PEDs. Either way, you’re claiming facts not in evidence. Bonds was well on his way to a Hall of Fame career before his head grew several hat sizes - so much for his grab at immortality, huh? McGwire hit 49 HRs as a rookie - he would have been just fine without them as well. Palmeiro also threw away his legacy.
Bonds gets more publicity and attention nowadays because people can’t have nice things - they focus on this non-sensical thread, and ignore the rest of the plot going on. Judge is putting up amazing numbers compared to his contemporaries - why worry about comparing him to guys during the PED era? Focus on what’s happening now - today’s game is SO much fun!
Bonds, yes he’d likely be HOF material. Not so sure about McGwire, because he often got injured. The PEDs helped him heal, stay strong, and continue playing.
Some people have raised the question, for sure. Judge is naturally big (6’7", 275 lbs) and fairly low body fat, but is it the result of winning the genetics lottery or because of PEDs? With the sophistication of modern doping techniques, it’s pretty hard to say for sure. All we know is that you can’t spot a PED cheater by just looking at them.
Sorry - I didn’t mean to suggest McGwire was on a HOF trajectory. He probably would have come back in 1995 to start hitting 35-40 a year, and still ended his career around 2001 as injuries started piling up. Good to great career, gone on to sell diet supplement and male enhancement pills alongside Frank Thomas.
FWIW: Maris hit his 61 in his last 151 games. If you are going to draw arbitrary lines around a season doing it that way isn’t any less valid than looking at a player’s 1st X games in a season. [Yes know all about Ford Frick and the mythical asterisk]
I would also. The problem now is the unfairness that has occurred over time. Baseball players using uppers in the 60s weren’t breaking any laws, and maybe not even violating any rules of baseball. Same thing with early users of steroids. Should they be considered the same as athletes who did exactly the same thing a few years later that was illegal and in violation of the rules. Was it even unfair to use PEDs when they were legally provided and not in violation of the rules? Every baseball player could have popped a few greenies before the game if that wanted to before laws limiting their use changed.
Agreed. Perhaps they could name this “the modern era” and have records separated? Then we can shunt the records of Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, etc over to the modern era and I would then be happy.
I’m a big New York sports guy, almost exclusively NFL but I also root for and will occasionally watch the Rangers*. (Even saw them once at MSG.) I kind of root for and might even watch the Knicks if they ever didn’t suck, but it’s been decades. But baseball? I just can’t watch it. I get bored and antsy – it feels like waiting at a stoplight to me – and I also really don’t like being so ignorant of the rules and nuance. Not knowing anything about what I’m watching makes me feel unmoored, but I also have no interest in learning it. Like cricket.
Back in 2000, a buddy of mine was bartending at a hole in the wall that I would go to after work pretty regularly, and one of the guys who worked there was a huge Mets fan. We were all sports fans in general, so that Subway series was a big deal to us. I managed to watch maybe three innings total of that entire World Series; I just can’t take it. Lifetime total of maybe five innings watched, tops.
So in terms of offering the outsiders perspective, as a true non-baseball fan, I find this Aaron Judge story to be both compelling and super fun.
*Being a Rangers fan means that the Islanders are the only New York team I root against. They’re like the Eagles to me. (The Eagles being my most hated NFL team, even ahead of the Cowboys and Washington, largely because of the Reid / McNabb era.)
Going back even further, in 1929 the Tigers hit eight home runs to right field in four games against the St. Louis Browns. The Browns responded by putting up a 21’ fence above the right field wall that stayed there until the Cardinals built a new stadium in 1966. Should all the home runs hit to right field before 1929 come with an asterisk, or should the hitting records after 1929 come with an asterisk saying the owners cheated.
So…they got rid of the steroids, then? The players have shrunk back to normal human size like they were before? How did they do this? Extensive testing?
I’m impressed if they cracked down on it. I hated seeing guys who looked normal(Bonds, McGwire, etc.) all the sudden showing up with upper bodies that were gigantic.
Weird that this happened as late at the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I thought most sports got rid of all that well before that. Well, tried to.
Ben Johnson got caught at the 1988 Olympics, for comparison. Cycling was testing the entire time Lance Armstrong was cheating his way to victory, but at least he evaded the cheating instead of there being no cheating.
Was baseball just encouraging cheating by choosing to ignore it?
Are the guys in baseball today totally clean or are there workarounds? Obviously not as good since homeruns have come way down.
