Breaking news is that A-Rod tested positive for steroids in 2003, when he won the AL MVP and homerun titles.
That’s going to stir the pot a bit I think.
The default position is everybody used.
I don’t mind if no one from the steroid era gets inducted. That will drive home the message to ballplayers of a risk that will affect them.
Still it would be difficult to ignore 66,and 73 home run seasons. They happened. Thats why I would accept an annex.
Kind of like a video store with a porno room .
Powerful message: “Dad, how come if these guys hit so many HRs they’re not in the HoF, while lesser hitters are?”
“Because the HoF tries to honor good ballplayers with character, son, not just good ballplayers who cheated.”
Yep, very powerful message as he turns and sees the avowed racists, alcoholics, and adulterers.
Because apparently those things don’t give you an unfair advantage in baseball.
…shrugs I dunno, I got nuthin’.
Is Pete Rose still around? I’ll bet he wishes he took steroids instead of gambling on his own games. 
What? I can’t find anything about Glaus & steroids after the initial “anonymous source” story in 2007 that referred to possible shipments of drugs in 2003 & 2004. Doesn’t appear that anything ever came of it. Nor can I find any supporting information for your “pure steroid-fueled” claim about the 2002 Angels. Got anything handy?
You don’t actually believe this, do you?
Steroid use was rampant even in the 70s. Since people weren’t aware of the side effects back then, I would guess a higher percentage of players then were users than right now.
Aside from steroids, Hank Aaron and all his contemporaries were using Amphetamines. Mickey Mantle himself said he would have been unable to take the field without using speed. Hall of Fame pitchers used sandpaper and spit.
Baseball has run on steroids and speed for more than 40 years with MLB’s tacit approval. Steroids and speed put a faster, stronger product on the field. MLB would still be approving of it, if public opinion had not turned against it so strongly.
But it did. So all of a sudden MLB has to pretend the last half century didn’t happen. To minimize the damage, they will try to scapegoat and demonize a few “evil” players for doing what everyone has been doing forever with MLB approval, hoping fans are stupid enough to fall for it.
Two choices ignore what happened and treat all players by their records or ban a generation .Both would be ugly and controversial.
Gaylord Perry?
Cheating has always been allowed in baseball, football and basketball in the US as long as you get away with it. The exception being the Black Sox. You can throw a spit ball as long as you don’t get caught. Gaylord Perry is in the Hall of Fame solely because he was a cheater and is celebrated for it. Getting away with breaking the law is as American as apple pie, Ma Barker, and moonshine. I knew in the early 80s that football players were using steroids, and I assume anyone else paying attention did too. The teams and leagues were making tons of money off of it and they turned a blind eye to it. If they wanted to stop it, they could have stopped it by having everyone pee in a cup once a week.
If you want to argue that the powers that be and/or the players cheapened the game and raped all our memories of the great old timers, well then so be it. That’s what they did. But don’t take it personally, it’s business.
I have no problem with any HoF voter who left Perry off his ballot for character reasons, and I would have zero problem if he hadn’t gotten voted in at all because of character issues related to the cheating.
That said, the fact that baseball have fucked up by admitting all sorts of creeps in the past to the HoF is not IMO a free pass to continue admitting creeps. I’m all for someone (you?) starting a Hall of Creeps, in fact, in which all the frauds, liars, gamblers, etc. who can admission to the HoF get nice big plaques explaining (or even justifying) the shitty, low-class things they did to keep them out of the HoF.
Baseball still runs on speed- ask any player. They are called “greenies.”
This.
Respectfully, “this” is offensive nonsense. No one follows pro sports BECAUSE it’s a business, at least not anymore than people follow car manufacturing or stock brokerage as a hobby. People follow sports because it’s all about athletic competition at the highest levels, with great care exerted to ensure that all activity is fair and equitable. Where fairness or equity isn’t assured–as in the Yankees having a greater revenue stream than the Royals–at least we understand what inequities operate, and we factor them into our consideration of the sport.
Steroids, like gambling or crooked officials or blackmail, are NOT open for our scrutiny, and like all these dirty little secrets, must be rooted out, so fans continue to perceive the games as a fair competition between players at the same level of play. Once it becomes established that the outcomes are in any way fixed (and in baseball that the records are without meaning), solely to benefit those keeping them secret for their own selfish gain, people will stop caring about the games, and the revenue stream will dry up for everyone.
As Bill James once noted, for the owners and the players, yes, of course it is a business. But for the observers --whom baseball requires in order to stay in business–it is a sport. Obliterate that as a standing definition, and kiss it goodbye.
Have Bill James or any Sabermetric statisticians done an analysis to determine when steroids became dominant? With baseballs numbers so available, I would think they could spot anomalies fairly easily. Fans could spot when things were warped.I would think numerical analysis would be able to quantify the change.
You’re about 15 years behind the times. Greenies stopped being prevalent about 10 minutes after they started testing for them.
No these are definitely tested for now, you can’t get away with using these.
When announcers say a player has really good speed, I wonder what he charges for it.