with Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal<\/a>) about the “success” of baseball’s efforts to address the issue of performance enhancing drugs.<\/p>\nAnd the stats are there to prove it… I guess.\u00c2\u00a0 There have been no suspensions in all of Major League Baseball in ’08.\u00c2\u00a0 Although, remarkably 65 Minor League players have been handed 50-game suspensions, no one at the Major League level — not even the Minor Leaguers who filled injury-ridden rosters throughout the season — has failed “the toughest testing program” in sports.<\/p>\n
But then there are other stats.\u00c2\u00a0 Runs are down… sort of.\u00c2\u00a0 With two days to go, this year’s runs per game total is at 4.55, the lowest it has been since all the way back to 2005 when it was 4.45 or 2002 when it was 4.45 and “way” below 1998s average of 4.60 runs per game.<\/p>\n
Home runs are down, too… kind of.\u00c2\u00a0 At 1.02 home runs per game, the total is the lowest it has been since 2005 when it was 1.01 per game.\u00c2\u00a0 Coincidentally, the home run totals of ’08 are still higher than ’98 when the league averaged 0.99 per game and lower than ’55 when the league averaged 1.04 home runs per game.<\/p>\n
But what’s it all mean, really?\u00c2\u00a0 What are the effects of performance enhancing drugs?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy to chalk up Mark McGwire’s and Sammy Sosa’s ’98 performances to chemical enhancement but at the time wasn’t it expansion and “juiced” baseballs that were given the credit.\u00c2\u00a0 And how can we dismiss McGwire’s then-home run record so easily when in 1987, as a rookie, a much smaller McGwire blasted 49 home runs?<\/p>\n
Even if baseball has wiped out 99% of all performance enhancing drugs from the game, shouldn’t we still see one or two genetic freaks sneaking through the cracks of the Minor Leagues and busting on the scene?\u00c2\u00a0 Is it possible just one year removed from Barry Bonds breaking the All-Time home run record that steroids and performance enhancing drugs are just gone?<\/p>\n
Or is it more likely that the effects of performance enhancing drugs are the scapegoat for the bigger problems in the game?\u00c2\u00a0 Smaller ballparks, awful pitching, better bats, balls that hop off the bat and rules that give batters an advantage at the plate are factors, too.\u00c2\u00a0 With runs only down 3% and home runs down 6% from the supposed “juiced” period, were performance enhancing drugs the elixir everyone thinks they are?<\/p>\n
Where the game is most impacted is in its’ history.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether performance enhancing drugs played an enormous role in the careers of players like McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and others or not, there will always be a black mark next to their names.\u00c2\u00a0 They were never banned from the game like Pete Rose or Joe Jackson so the members of the BBWAA who vote on the Hall of Fame get to play judge, jury and executioner on their immortality.\u00c2\u00a0 McGwire’s\u00c2\u00a0legacy already took a hit when he was passed over in 2007 and 2008 for enshrinement.\u00c2\u00a0 Clemens and Bonds will be more interesting cases since prior to any steroid use, both players were Hall of Fame bound.<\/p>\n
Instead of vilifying the “Juiced” Era, is it possible we take it for what it was?\u00c2\u00a0 The “Deadball” Era of the game featured rules that allowed pitchers an advantage over batters yet the Hall of Fame features many pitchers who were stars of the Era.\u00c2\u00a0 Ed Walsh, a Hall of Fame pitcher from the “Deadball” Era was notorious for throwing a spitball, a pitch that was once legal — like performance enhancing drugs — in the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Fellow Hall of Famer Sam Crawford once said of Walsh’s spitball, “I swear, when it went past the plate, it was just the spit that went by.”<\/p>\n
Why not take a similar approach to the “Juiced” Era players and compare them to the other players of their time?\u00c2\u00a0 When we look back at the Era, it seems like more players “cheated” than didn’t, if the Mitchell Report and Jose Canseco are to be believed.\u00c2\u00a0 (Exactly when did Jose Canseco become credible?)\u00c2\u00a0 And if that is the case, shouldn’t we revere Bonds and McGwire and Sosa and Clemens for “cheating” better than everyone else?\u00c2\u00a0 The list of names on the Mitchell Report does include names like Mark Carreon, Brendan Donnelly, Ryan Franklin, Eric Gagne, Chuck Knoblauch, Josias Manzanillo and F.P. Santangelo to name a few.\u00c2\u00a0 In some cases like Franklin and Gagne, we don’t even begrudge them a continuation of their career.<\/p>\n
Baseball\u00c2\u00a0is cyclical.\u00c2\u00a0 Right now, “small ball” and pitching are experiencing a renaissance.\u00c2\u00a0 But home runs are not down that much.\u00c2\u00a0 There are still 84 players with 20 or more home runs which is more than the 79 players in ’98, 76 in ’05, 76 in ’03 and 75 in ’02.\u00c2\u00a0 It comes nowhere near the 102 players that bombed at least 20 homers in 1999 but it’s still a lot more than the mere 37 players who hit more than 20 homers in ’89 and ’92.<\/p>\n
And anyone that believes that performance enhancing drugs are gone from the game for good and that everyone who has been accused did use and anyone who has not been accused did not is naive.\u00c2\u00a0 And if they are a card carrying member of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America, they should have their card revoked.\u00c2\u00a0 In the end, isn’t it better that we just compare the players of the Era to their peers and decide based on that where they stand in baseball lore and forget about who was using and who was not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanks to the tons of statistics and information and books and stories of the game, even though I never really saw Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig or Ty Cobb or Walter Johnson play, I feel like I have.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t