Yes. It was his last season. He even pitched in Oakland on July 30 of that year. He lost.
Yep. It’s like when Jim Bouton revealed to all that the players (including Mr. 61, Roger Maris) were taking illegal amphetamines before each game. Bouton was vilified by many big names in the baseball world at the time. Of course, I recently read that players still take those “greenies.” The difference with Bouton, of course, is that he did this at a time when baseball players were Heroes (capital H intended) and journalists never mentioned the less-than-savory activities they engaged in.
I don’t care because, as Ilsa Lund said before me, they are already superbly talented people. As I’ve said before, all the juice in the world won’t make me able to hit the ball. These guys (I’ll be charitable and agree that they’re all juicing) are risking their own lives for a little performance edge. Nobody pays but them. So I don’t care.
And, of course, the above post was me. Sorry.
I couldn’t care less what they do with the leftover Vaseline in the locker room.
I care. I’m a Giants fan. Barry’s HR running total and the ensuing media avalanche will be unfuckingbearable. I’m sick of it already.
holy crap…now i remember, that’s the year and reason i stopped collecting baseball cards!
/me glances nostalgically at the 150,000 count in his closet
=) gramps still sends me an upper deck factory set every year though…have every baseball set going back to 89 when they started
For the love of Christ, it’s “McGwire.”
I think it’s likely many MLB players have taken steroids. But I don’t think anything Canseco says in this book can be trusted, not one word, and I’d wager most if not all of it is bullshit. He’s a known liar and frankly a lot of his claims are highly dubious just on their face. I really don’t think he and Mark McGwire stood together in a bathroom stall and shot each other up with 'roids. Aside from the fact that it’s hard to believe two guys that big could fit into a stall, why the hell would they do that?
When Canseco says “eighty percent of players use steroids,” which is frankly a little hard to believe, unless they’re ALL taking steroids that don’t make you muscular, or claims he’s being blackballed from MLB, it’s hard to shake the feeling that he just makes up stuff as he goes along to try to sell books and get more roid money. In an ironic twist, this will simply make it harder to deal with the steroid problem.
It will soon become apparent that much of Canseco’s book is made up of lies, which will make people doubt the problem exists.
I disagree.
You disagree? How so?
Your ticket entitles you to a baseball game. You see a baseball game. How are you suffering because of that? What, so a few dingers a year more are hit? If you’re so angry about the plight of the game you’ll never see it. If you aren’t you’re approving of it by helping to foot the bills.
There’s no way that you can claim any sort of damages, unless it’s the ever elusive “bad for the game” argument, which I’m not convinced is applicable here. Gambling, yes. Steroids, no.
The ones that pay are the ones the guys that are better than the unjuiced version of the juiced players.
Uhm take out the 2nd “the ones” and that will make sense.
Not Pudge! I love Pudge. Damn.
Somehow I find Canseco’s claims that he did these star players himself a little suspiciously gaudy. I also think that because you believe the worst about these players, you’re trusting Canseco because he’s saying the worst about them. What he’s saying may be true, but he’s not a trustworthy source and offers no proof as far as I know.
The cheaters should be exposed. Canseco doesn’t do anything name names to get attention, as far as I know. Was he the one who said 80% of players use, or was it Caminiti? Did this expose that 80%, or just cast shadows on everybody, deserving of suspicion or no?
As one who took my screen name from Pete Rose’s comments to Bouton following the publication of Ball Four, I agree strongly with Rufus (who I assume is a pharmacist by his screen name?)
I also submit that Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, et al who played back when all ballplayers were usually hung over should be spotted a few per cent. (Although since they didn’t have to compete against anyone who wasn’t white, we should probably dock them a few, so it may even out).
Speaking as an ex-bodybuilder who never took a steroid, but knows lots of people who have: Taking steroids doesn’t make muscles sprout on you ala Popeye from his spinach – rather, you withstand heavier training and recover faster. If you showed up in front of friends tomorrow 10% stronger, they would not likely notice. Keep taking more and more, and they eventually will. The less lean and aerobicized you are, the longer it will take.
My gut instinct is that a lot of professional athletes use steroids, more than us ‘civilians’ know. I guess time will tell.
I’d like to poke in to say that I admire Diogenes for not dwelling on (or even mentioning!) the rumor that the book alleges that President Bush, while owner of the Rangers, “had to have known” that his players were shooting up. 
I was wondering if anyone would give me credit for that.
As easy as it would have been to try to make hay out of the W angle, the truth is I believe he probably really didn’t know. I don’t think owners reallys spend that much time in the locker rooms and it’s not like the players are going to leave their spikes lying around if the owner does show up.
I guess Canseco thinks Shrub should have been able to figure it out from changes in player’s bodies, jumps in power, etc, but an owner usually isn’t going to have the kind of awareness that athletes have about other athletes’ changes in weight or muscle. Changes that seemed obvious to Canseco probably sailed right past an owner who raraely saw them off the field. I don’t know that I would be able to figure out if someone was juicing even if I was looking for it. Athletes have a more acute awareness of those things than the rest of us do.
I think Canseco is bullshitting us about the numbers, but the principle is the same. I am really upset by the whole thing. I am a huge, huge baseball fan and for the first time in my life, I am depressed by the thought of spring training. I don’t know how I will be able to root for my Giants in good conscience anymore.
It’s more than a little edge, Airman. Before Bonds started taking steroids, he was already a stellar player, a multi-time MVP winner. In his spectacular Hall of Fame career, he had never shown any signs of being capable of hitting 60 home runs in a season, let alone 73, let alone at an age when every other baseball great in history has started - even if ever so slightly - to slide downhill. McGwire has admitted taking now-banned enhancement drugs; he’s simply objecting to the accusation that he injected steroids. It’s an edge that distorts the game, and I don’t understand how you cannot care.
I’m not sure what Airman Doors angle is either. He either hates baseball, rules, people who have opinions, or some sweeping combination of all three.
Either way his opinions on the matter are unacceptable. Baseball is part of our culture so we as Americans do have a legitimate interest in what goes on here.
Steroids represents what is probably the single greatest performance enhancer ever seen in the history of baseball.
The spitball is one of the most demonized performance enhancers in baseball. But in reality if you read some books about the “old timers” many of the spitballers used the spitball rarely. Or they found that it was a tool that was almost too random to put great faith in.
There were a select few individuals (under 10 for sure, probably under 5) who made themselves great via the spit ball. Gaylord Perry was not one of them, Gaylord Perry doctored his ball because he was an old school guy who wanted any advantage he could get. He wasn’t a spitballer.
Big Ed Walsh was a spitballer and probably the best spitballer, but even still the Neyer James Guide to pitchers says his use of the spitter is probably at least somewhat exaggerated.
And hell, batters cover their bats in mountains of pine tar before every AB. Buf it the pitcher gets some saliva on his ball he gets in a lot of trouble.