I assume anyone who follows MLB already knows that Manny Ramirez is the latest player who will now forever have his career called into question by a banned substance. He joins a generation of players with HOF stats who now have their legacies tainted, if not discredited outright, by PEDs.
Who’s going to be left from this era that we’ll be able to have some reasonable confidence did it the right way?
Off the top of my head, I would pick Ken Griffey Jr. (his 600+ homeruns are more meaningful to me than all of Bonds’), Derek Jeter (I know he’s smug, but, as far as I know, he’s not a cheater) and Mariano Rivera (owner of the single most feared pitch of a generation – maybe the best single pitch in the history of the game).
The guys who did it clean need to be appreciated all the more since they did it in the shadows of those who cheated.
Who else deserves to be lauded for doing it clean? Let’s make a list of juice-free, HOF worthy, steroid/PED era players.
Pujols is WAY early to say cuz he is reletively new/young…but at this rate I don’t see why he would be, and no he hasn’t been linked to anything.
I would give a second nod to Griffey Jr. All signs point to him being totally clean…which to some point is surprising given that the biggest HGH excuse is “to come back from injury” and Jr has been injured more times than anyone.
Please excuse the hijack, but you think Derek Jeter is smug? I’m truly surprised about that. He’s one of the more polite and thoughtful players I’ve ever seen. To this day he calls Joe Torre “Mr. Torre.” He goes out of his way to not say anything inflammatory, which often makes him a boring interview, but I don’t see smug.
As for the OP, I wouldn’t be surprised by anyone failing a test, but Jimmy Rollins and Carlos Beltran are two that I’ve never heard a whisper about.
Jim Thome - 550 HRs, and I’ve never heard him mentioned in the same breath as PEDs. Like Griffey, his HR totals are even more impressive.
Greg Maddux - Nearly the same career as Clemens (minus the K’s, Cy Young’s, and roids). Their wins, ERA, WHIP, and ERA+ are nearly identical.
Pedro Martinez - Didn’t last long, but his peak was as good as anyone who’s pitched in the last 50 years. Another guy with no connection to PEDs that I’ve heard of.
Randy Johnson - Another guy with longevity plus some utterly dominant years at this peak. Only offense to the game that I’ve heard of is his mullet.
No one. I mean I don’t really think Tim Wakefield is on anything, but it is silly for me to theorize on who did what. Jeter are from all appearances ultra competitive players who had teammates who used some extracircular stuff. Why would they be any less likely to cheat than anyone else? Why wouldn’t Griffey? Because his swing was pretty? A player who can’t get healthy might try extra things to get back. You can’t tell a player’s moral fiber from watching him on TV or seeing he deals with the media. Taking steriods was a perfectly rationalle decision and no name would surprise me.
I just checked out Johnson’s career, and he had that Clemens and Bonds like late career surge. His best year was at age 38 (2002), although he did have some great years earlier as well. Shame that baseball has come to the point that that is automatically suspect, even though there’s no evidence of it.
If he stays healthy and puts together another good season or two, Carlos Delgado. He stayed clean, but was always overshadowed by players who didn’t (and it didn’t help that he was playing in Toronto). Assuming he gets to 500 home runs (reachable), he should be a legitimate candidate.
Agreed. All this talk about “ooooh, Griffey’s clean as a whistle!” is premature and naive. A year ago, everyone would be going gaga over A-Rod in this thread (in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a similar thread, and A-Rod was gushed over). Who cares if Griffey hasn’t been linked to or mentioned in the same breath? What in the world does that have to do with anything?
One of the first MLB players busted for PED use was Alex Sanchez. After that, a few crafty middle relievers were thrown in the mix. No one is sacrosanct in this.
I have doubts that any of these guys are clean. I’d be willing to bet that Pujols, Thome, and Delgado aren’t clean. You can’t keep that kind of muscle tone throughout a 162 game season that lasts over summer. There isn’t enough time to recover naturally if you’re lifting that much in addition to playing in 90°F temps every day.
Of the ones mentioned, the two I’d say are most likely to be clean are Maddux and Griffey. Griffey lived through the same era as Sosa and Bonds and McGwire but his body didn’t change that much, plus he has that sweet swing. Maddux didn’t rely on overpowering stuff, and his best years were in his 20’s as one would expect, and his perfomance dropped off after age 34, again as one would expect.
Right. While I hope the players I like the most are clean - this would include Jeter, Rivera, Smoltz - it’s blind guess at best. Great players have gotten busted, so have scrubs, pitchers and hitters, guys who stayed healthy and guys who fell apart. You cannot rely on things like body build, health and career arc in most cases.
This is the saddest part about this entire era - there is no person listed in this thread that I feel 100% confident about. Maddux is probably the closest, but there are still similar players that have been implicated. The list of the guilty (or presumed guilty) include such disparate players as Roger Clemens, Neifi Perez, Alex Sanchez, Barry Bonds, Ryan Franklin. I can’t think of a single player profile or career path that doesn’t have a comp in the PED hall of shame.
Like someone said up-thread if we had this same discussion a year ago there would have been posters singing the praises and innocence of both Manny and A-Rod.
Albert Pujols has swore multiple times (including a SI cover story) that he is and always has been completely clean. He is the greatest player I have had the pleasure of watching day after day, and there is no doubt I’ll be telling my kids and grandkids about him. But if he tested positive tomorrow I would not be surprised. Disappointed, saddened, disheartened - but not surprised.
If he makes it through his entire career without a positive test we can have some confidence I guess…
Pudge lost a suspicious amount of weight after steroid testing began, and I believe Canseco named him specifically as a user. Neither of which proves anything, and there are bigger names who are viewed with more suspicion, but he’s on the list, too.