Considering anything about steroids is just basically guessing. Steroids is a broad range of products and you don’t know what was taken, when, how much, and for what purpose. Of the guys who we know took steroids for specific time periods there is no correlation of performance being better when on steroids then on not. Steroids also weren’t really against the rules at that point, so I think calling him a cheater is a stretch. Modern Clemens probably doesn’t take steroids, but perhaps modern medicine and training would replace any affects anyway.
That said you can still make a good case for Maddux. For one, teams are much better now at training velocity, so maybe if Maddux started now we would be throwing 98 with elite command.
Throwing 98 might also cause him to blow a rotator cuff.
I think, really, you just need to compare a guy against what he did to help his team win. The timeline has to be considered to SOME extent - baseball in 1889 was really not exactly a major league sport yet. In 1935, white players and Negro League players were not playing against each other yet, making the extremes in their stats more dramatic. So on and so forth. But I don’t think stuff like “Babe Ruth today would be in way better shape, but on the other hand he’d be facing sliders the likes of which didn’t exist in 1927” isn’t super helpful.
Different sport, yet the one time Lance Armstrong (bicycling) tested positive for steroids his doctor wrote it off as treatment for “saddle sores”. And in professional cycling, a common cheat was using some kind of hemo-something-or-other which basically gave you more red blood cells so more oxygen and blood with the about the viscosity of jelly.
Both baseball and cycling in the 1960’s were rampant with the use of amphetamines. The greatest cyclist (IMO) Eddy Merckx readily admits to using them. Why not? They weren’t banned.
Same in baseball. Any number of players of that era have admitted/written about using them because again - they weren’t at the time banned.
Another thing that’s changed in the last fifty years: way less spitting and cup adjusting.
The cup thing I’ll just assume some kind of fabric advances helped lessen that.
The spitting I thought was mostly due to chewing tobacco (“chaw”) which was likely banned for on-field use and probably the dugout. I dunno if smoking cigarettes was ever allowed in the dugout, yet I do recall the camera sometimes spotting players who walked up the dugout hallway to smoke.
It may have been a live action baseball film or something in “Family Guy” yet I remember a meeting of players on the mound and everyone was spitting the juice constantly.
I don’t know if bubble gum makes you want to spit, yet definitely recall Lenny Dykstra usually batting with a giant gob of gum in his cheeks.
Sunflower seeds have replaced chewing tobacco, by and large. Occasionally they’ll show a shot of the dugout and the floor is sea of shells.
Classic baseball thriller “The Naked Gun” has such a scene.
Thanks. I later thought it could be that film, yet all that came to mind was Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), as the plate umpire, patting down every batter and Reggie Jackson being the assassin.
At least they cleaned it up a bit as it looked like they were just spitting water.
