That rule would also eliminate baseball within three years. 
Fans will switch to cricket, where a pitched ball batted out of the park counts as six runs.
During my days as team photographer for a wooden bat summer collegiate league team I suggested this rule and my rule for limiting the number of foul balls in an at bat and the players almost unanimously approved of my home run rule and almost unanimously disapproved of my limited number of foul balls rule.
That’s great, but who would pay to watch that version of baseball?
Well, US Pro Cricket didn’t exactly set the country alight.
What, you didn’t know there was a US professional cricket league? Apparently neither did anybody else (other than me, but since I’m writing a book about cricket in the US, that’s no surprise…)
You assume he couldn’t have won the next 4 without juicing? If he won the first 3 clean, I would have to give him the benefit of the doubt on the others. He’d already proved he had the skills.
I agree that juicing is a terrible thing from a health aspect. But is that the only issue in play here. Football has banned these substances long ago and actively tests for them. Are they concerned with health? If they were, they might want to do something about the 300 and 400 pound players. Did you see HBO’s Real Sports strory on what’s happening to these guys?
Airman, you should sit down with Don Hooton, father of Taylor Hooton, and tell him that steroid use in athletics is no big deal, and that all parents have to do is enforce the rules.
In my mind, steroids is more than just a health issue for those involved. If baseball were played by super strong robots, it might be cool for awhile, especially watching the 1400 foot homeruns, but I don’t think it would last. With steroids, it’s sort of taking the humanness out of the game, and bringing those involved one step closer to being these robots.
I’m in favor of putting the asterisk back next to Maris’ name and having it say something like “without illegal performance enhancing drugs” and though it matters to no one but me, I now have enough evidence to say that Maris is still the home run record holder. And Aaron’s record is in no danger in my mind.
Yes, I’m going to assume that he wouldn’t win the MVP award having to compete against Albert Pujols, among others, the last three years. When he was nearing his 40s. And considering he never finished higher than 5th since the strike. I am going to confidently assert Bonds would not have any more than three MVPs right now. And Albert Pujols might have just as many.
The leagues? Of course not. Except to stars - like quarterbacks. Gotta protect the quarterbacks at all costs.
The leagues only have steroid rules to ease the conscience of the public. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if the NFL, MLB, NBA, etc., could get away with it, they’d make steroid use mandatory to provide bigger, faster, more entertaining athletes.
I agree with this. In fact, I would take it further: steroids help the free swinger, in that he can now get around on the faster pitches that previously would have been whiffs. Seems to me steroids must certainly help average as well.
BTW, as a point of interest to everyone, Bonds hit 36 homers per 162 games over the first 14 years of his career. He hit 58 homers per 162 games over the last 5, when he was approaching 40. This is statistically significant and it defies a dismissal of steroids as having a trivial impact for Bonds. Bonds would be significantly lighter in homers right now had he just maintained his homer/game pace prior to the last 5 years, and that’s iffy considering his age (without the aid of steroids). He will achieve the crown jewel of baseball records when he would otherwise not have, not if he was clean. This is disgusting, IMO.
Want to talk about integrity of the game? How about 2003. Aaron Boone doesn’t get to hit his extra-inning homer if Giambi hadn’t hit 2 homers that game. Without those hits, the Yankees lose the game and series. This is the playoffs! Curse of the Bambino, my ass.
To which I say this: he still had to hit the ball. Steroids do not make you able to hit the ball. I can’t hit a baseball. I just can’t, no matter how hard I try. And he hits two homers when everyone is watching. That’s not steroids, that ability. That’s talent. Period.
That’s a very silly argument, Airman. Dare I call it a strawman argument? No one is suggesting you as Bonds’ competition. But the hundreds of MLB players not on steroids, or the thousands of minor leaguers not on steroids, or the millions of Americans with better hand/eye coordination than you ARE his competition, and at least some of them could have benefitted by Bonds’ not using steroids.
Some of those HRs that he hit with steroids would have been long fly outs, some would have banged off the fence for doubles if he hadn’t been on steroids, and his numbers would certainly have been less than they are now. What would they have been? We’ll never know, but it’s possible that they would have been such that Bonds might have retired five years ago.
No, that’s two fly balls that probably should have been caught at the warning track, at best. The biggest change in home run production isn’t people pulling hanging breaking balls over frickin’ everything. Those are going to happen regardless of which chemical stew you are or are not taking.
The difference is the guy going the other way on a pitch down and away. Normally, it’s tough to drive a pitch that’s breaking away from you with a defensive swing. Nowadays, a ball that would have been a fly ball or a bloop single is in the bleachers. That’s steroids, that’s neither ability nor talent. In years past, the mark of the game’s strongest players was their ability to hit with power going the other way. All of a sudden, everybody and their grandmother is hitting opposite-field homers.
I think MLB should implement an immediate steroid/HGH/PED test, which I like to call the Standard Transparent Evaluation of WWE Opponent Individual Determination, or STEWOID for short. It’s quite simple. If you look like a frickin’ professional wrestler, you’re out. Period.
-Rav
Are you serious? Taking steroids helps you hit the ball farther on average. Period. People who abuse steroids hit more homers than they otherwise would have. Period.
Do you dispute this? If so, how do you account for the stats I provided on Bonds?
I would also argue–in fact, I did mention this–that steroids do help you hit the ball. Bat speed helps average, right? Balls you would have waved at before, you now get around on.
Steroids won’t make a talentless dope a baseball player, but it ratchets up the ML-calibre player. Solid (at best) big leaguers can become MVPs (Caminiti). Hall of Famers like Bonds transform into the greatest slugger of all time, absolutely cartoonish in his ability. Was he great without steroids? Certainly. Is he greater with them? How can anyone seriously argue otherwise? Say you don’t care, that’s certainly your prerogative. To say steroids don’t make a difference? Absolutely laughable.
I don’t necessarily dispute that, but if you look back in history there are several times in baseball’s past where great statistical anomalies have occurred. Take 1968, for instance. The Year of the Pitcher. What made the pitchers so much better that year, to the point where the NL batting average was around .240 and the year previous to that Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown with a batting average of .301(!)? There are, of course, several factors. Just as it is here.
First, you have expansion. More teams equals thinned out talent. These guys don’t face top notch pitching day in and day out. They face the ace once in a while and then get fat on the ham and eggers. Can we agree on that?
Second, you have pitchers doing things with their arms that an arm should not be able to do, resulting in injuries. Pitchers very rarely return to form, so a previous ace gets passed around in the hope that he will regain his previous form, and so he takes up a roster spot that could be used for a promising new pitcher. In the meantime, the former ace is now throwing grapefruits.
Third, you have a small number of teams buying up all the talent, thus making a disproportionate number of teams get inferior players. If the pitching sucks throughout the staff, anybody facing those teams will get fat stats. Barry Bonds is just good enough to take advantage of that.
Last, you have the juice. I have never said that it doesn’t make you hit the ball harder, because that’s more a question of bat speed, which as you said equals strength. But it doesn’t make you hit the ball. And again, if they want to risk their lives for glory, money, and eternal fame, that’s their business. They will pay the consequences later, not you.
I would disagree that that has been a factor for Bonds. First, his batting average has been erratic throughout his career, and it’s only been in the last three years that it’s been insane, and of course that’s a product of all of the walks. Also, other than that freak 73 homer season, his homers have been pretty much in line with the rest of his career, if only slightly higher. And to top it off, he’s always been a feared hitter, placing first in intentional walks 10 of the last 12 years and no lower than second for the last 13.
It;s up to you to prove that the juice is making him do it. The statistics don’t. If you want to say that the juice made him hit 73 homers, would you also say that the juice made Maris hit 40 and 61 in successive years when he never hit more than 33 at any other point in his career? Of course not. But Bonds, ooooh, it’s the juice, right?
Like I said, the burden is on you to prove that the juice is doing it. Can you? Here is his career stats page. Look at that and tell me it was the juice. I think you’d have a hard time doing that with a straight face.
No, remove that season from the last 5 years, and he has hit 53 homers per 162 games (compared to 36 for the first 14 years of his career). Give it up, dude, steroids have made a statistically significant impact on his stats, almost 20 homers per 162 games even without the best home run year of his career.
Funny, that was the page I had already looked at when I produced the stats previously. Funny, eh?
This is the usual comment about Bonds, but dividing his career into “the first fourteen years” and “everything since” obviously gives a very false picture of how his career has progressed. Bonds’s career cannot clearly be divided into two phases and he did not suddenly have his home run output jump that fast all at once. A more accurate progression can be seen if you divide his career into four phases; The Early Years, The Pirate MVP Years, Giants Pre-Superman, and Superman Giants:
The Early Years: Bonds from 1986 to 1989, when he was getting established, averaged 21 homers per year.
Pirate MVP Years: In 1990-1992, when he established himself and the league’s best player, Bonds averaged 31 homers.
Pre-Superman: From 1993 to 2000, Bonds put out steady home run production, averaging about 40 homers a year; it would be 41-42 without the 1994 strike. There’s no clear progression towards more power in that period of time; 2000 ws his best homer season, but 1993 is the second best in that period, and there were FAR fewer homers being hit in the NL in 1993 than there were in 2000. In context his 1993 season was more impressive.
So Bonds didn’t jump quite as fast as he’s being reputed to have jumped. If you take out the 73-homer fluke, his output in the last 5 years is 53 per 162, but his output for 1993-1999 was 49 per 162. There’s no sudden, dramatic leap forward in 2000. You’re bringing the average down by including his struggles in the ealry years.
I don’t necessarily buy steroids make him more able to hit homers. As I mentioned before, the fact is that LOTS of players can hit the ball just as hard as Barry Bonds; I don’t think Miguel Tejada takes roids, but he was hitting them just as far as Barry. Lots of other players supposedly juice, and lots of other players seem to be just as strong, but nobody else is as dominant. Bonds clearly has something they do not; steroids or not he has ability nobody else has.
But, what IS likely is that steroids have allowed Bonds to avoid injury, or recover from it, unusually quickly, and to remain productive long after the age when most players collapse. Bonds being the best hitter ever I can believe; Bonds being the best hitter ever at age 39 is frankly hard for me to believe. It’s so againt any precedent for player aging and ability that it defies belief. If he had not juiced he would still have had d0minating talent - but whether he could have stayed healthy enough to use it is questionable.
In any event, I don’t think it much matters if Bonds was helped 10% or 0.1%; this taints his legacy. With Joe Jackson, it doesn’t mean a damn if he tried to lose nor not; what matters is that he put himself in a position where you suspected he MIGHT have. With Bonds, it doesn’t matter how much the roids helped. They MIGHT have helped.
Well I have a lot to say as an extremely serious baseball fan.
- Bonds being tied for the MVP record at 3 before juicing is misleading. In the early days of the award there we limitations on how often you could win it. Up until after the 1930 season you could not win the award more than once. So Ruth would have definitely won in 1924, 1926, and 1927. And he stood a very good chance of winning it in 1928, 1929, and 1930 if not for that rule.
Ruth probably would have won 5-7 MVPs if not for the rule prohibiting previous winners getting the award.
- I’ve been watching baseball for a long time. Most players have a peak period in their career. Some players don’t have a strong peak and they have a pretty much “level” career until they retire.
But in the history of baseball no player I’ve ever seen has ever reached his peak at age 35, it has just never happened.
We can predict with some degree of accuracy that Albert Pujols, barring injury, will be good and probably improving until age 29/30, that’s how a huge percentage of players develop, they get better up until about age 30, at 30 they will level off or go into a slight decline. At 35, they enter a steep decline.
IN ages past only the truly great, the truly durable, went past age 35 without falling off much. NONE of the great players of the past or the recent past got better every single year after age 35.
Maybe Barry Bonds is just benefitting from new amazing exercise technology. Well I’ve been a serious body builder (I worked as a trainer for a short period after leaving the army) since I was 20 years old, and the technology hasn’t really changed much since the early 80s. There’s new machines, more easy to use free weights et cetera but we haven’t learned anything magical about making the body faster, strongre, better at middle age.
It’s hard to say when Barry started juicing. But if I follow the assumptions made in this thread then pre-juice Barry Bonds relative numbers put him at about the same offensive level as Dan Brouthers, Joe Jackson, Mickey Mantle, which means he was top 10%. Why he wasn’t talked about as being top 10% before his explosive later 30s is hard to imagine, he was. It might have been his attitude or personality, I don’t know.
But after age 35 Barry’s numbers moved into Ruthian levels, and that just plain don’t pass muster. You don’t go from being Mickey Mantle to Babe Ruth, it just doesn’t happen. No player has ever done that in the history of the game at age 35+, it just does not happen.
Sure, maybe it was “natural” but I’ll trust my history and my statistical norms and say it wouldn’t have happened without illegal substances.
- I could care less what stance the government takes on steroids. A sports league should have the right to set it’s own rules, and a sport should aim towards fairness. Bringing up things like “well it’s not fair that athletes make a lot of money” is completely unrelated. That has to do with perceived societal unfairness, I’m talking about the fairness of the game. The idea that players should all play on a level playing field in any sport, and the greater competitor should win.
It’s not fair to the game, the fans, or the players that players should be forced into using a dangerous drug they may not even want to use just to remain competitive. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Well, first off, let’s stop right here. Instead of homers per year, let’s use homers per AB. Using your divisions we have:
Early years - 24.79
Pirate MVP - 16.33 (about what we would expect given what we know of players’ timeline for breakout seasons and peak performance).
Pre-Superman - 12.61. A bit of an improvement, but not out of the ordinary.
Superman - 6.67. I’ve changed the timeline on this since I think that 2000 belongs in the superman group, that’s when he posted a career high SLG at an age where that should not have occurred. But that’s a huge freaking leap. He basically halved his HR per AB rate. And even if you want to get rid of the 73 HR year and knock it down to something more reasonable like 47, we get 7.42.
[quote]
So Bonds didn’t jump quite as fast as he’s being reputed to have jumped. If you take out the 73-homer fluke, his output in the last 5 years is 53 per 162, but his output for 1993-1999 was 49 per 162. There’s no sudden, dramatic leap forward in 2000.
[quote]
I disagree. The difference between his superman years and his pre-superman years is greater than his pre-superman and Pirate MVP years. Especially since it’s harder to improve when you’re already at the top than it is when you’re not. There’s an economics term for that, but I can’t remember. Decreasing marginal value or something.
So Albert Pujols is considered steroid-free, according to this thread. Same with Tejada.
We know a few players who have admitted to use. But let’s stop pretending that these players and a few others are the only ones. Not everyone is going to grow to comic book sizes and be obvious candidates.
This is a widespread issue in all sports - college, olympic, professional. It’s probably an issue at high school level, although I’d like to niavely believe that it is much, much smaller in scope there. I’m amazed how shocked people act when someone actually admits use. Are we (a collective we of all fans, not just the posters here) like the “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” monkeys until it is thrust so much into our face that it can’t be ignored.
Complain as you want about Barry Bonds. Among the things that have improved are his eye for the plate and for pitch spin, his ability to read pitchers, his bat speed (despite the extra bulk). He works his ass off to make himself a better hitter, not just stronger.