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I'm also getting sick of Larussa. He would make Mac a saint if given the opportunity.
As bad as steroids are, what Rose did is worse. He broke the most hallowed rule in sports - you don't gamble on your sport, and especially not in games involving your own team. It's posted in every professional locker room in large letters written in plain English.
Not to mention that he AGREED to his own ban. He traded it for MLB not publicizing the findings of their investigation. MLB has lived up to their end of the bargain, he needs to do the same.
He will never get in (even if Selig lifts the ban, the Hall won't change its stance) - and deservedly not.
I'm also getting sick of Larussa. He would make Mac a saint if given the opportunity.
Who cares? Everyone from Selig down to the locker room attendant in Durham knew steroids was rampant in the game during that time. Selig didn't care because it made baseball front page news - especially during the Sosa/McGwire power surge. Brady Anderson doesn't go from slap hitting leadoff man to 50 bomb dropping stud in one offseason without a little help. Same with Bret Boone. But, that was the era. Rules weren't in place to test for it or to stop it, so they used the advantage that was available. And they knew that baseball knew it, so they probably figured they were safe doing it.
The only people who are getting crucified for it are the people who put up eye-popping numbers. But, if you think the fringe bench player didn't have a needle in his ass, I have a property next to Bob you may be interested in. They just didn't have the talent to combine with it, so they stayed under the radar.
From the beginning of the game, there have been corked bats, cut balls, vaseline, nail files, speed, PEDs, etc. And a number of those guys are in the HOF. Accept all the past numbers at face value and move forward with your more stringent rules.
You're right. If baseball players are going to cheat, we should just throw up our hands and do nothing about it. Nice.
My feelings exactly.
Last edited by Cry Havoc; 01-12-2010 at 12:53 PM.
They are doing something about it going forward. They have policies and testing in place. The policies and tests weren't in place, because baseball didn't care. Don't tell me Selig and co. didn't know what was going on. They just didn't care. So, now they're going after the big number guys. Well, if McGwire's numbers are stripped - then what about Brady Anderson? What about the little known middle infielder who used steroids and just couldn't put it all together like some of the freakish athletes?
What I'm saying is, because baseball sat on their hands with testing and policies - there's no way to know what numbers are clean in history - so how do you cherry pick what to accept and what not to? McGwire's obviously not clean. Neither are Bonds and Raffy. But, we don't know if Aaron ever used PEDs. They were around. Speed and types of steroids were both around when Ruth was playing. Mays might have been a juicer. Mantle, too. Maris had a Brady Anderson-esque e in numbers in 1961.
Move forward with the new rules - and do what you please from here on out. But, unless you can prove or disprove all the numbers from the past - yet you still try to categorize them as clean or unclean - you're on a very slippery slope.
But you set a dangerous precedent there. "Well, we have never stopped/tested for PEDs in the past, so we're just going to let everything go from now backward." And that's totally short-sighted. You're going to encourage millions of kids to start doping and playing with the odds, because if they don't get caught, well, who cares? Baseball can't do anything about it because they haven't in the past.
That's faulty logic to me. If you can take steps to discourage players from cheating, then by all means you must do so. We will never know if Hank Aaron used PEDs -- but we are absolutely certain that Mark McGwire did. We're positive Palmeiro did. We're 99.99999% sure that Bonds was juicing. If there is extremely potent evidence that someone is cheating at a sport... why would we allow that? Simply because we've never stripped a player of their records or statistics before?
I don't understand the, "Well, players in the past could have PEDed and we just wouldn't know, so we should let this generation by with it." WHY? We know FOR SURE that players in the 90s took PEDs en masse. At what point are you going to put a stop to it, with real consequences for the offenders? And if you aren't going to take a stand on it, why not just promote the use and start handing out needles to high school kids? Because this is the heart of the matter. When you're 16 years old and starting to get attention from scouts, you think you can do anything. You think popping some roids and HGH is going to guarantee you a spot in the majors. And every single American boy who's a sports fan wants to be able to walk onto a field someday and hear 30 or 40 thousand fans cheering for him. Do you really think that "testing" will be sufficient to curtail young players from taking the risk that they might not get caught? Is that what we're banking on? At what point in history has the technology behind doping behind the tests for the doping?
I personally feel if you're tested positive for any kind of illicit substance, your numbers should be pulled from baseball forever. But I realize I'm in the definite minority there. I just find the entire situation sad, and there's a bunch of backpedaling to make it acceptable just so we don't have to make unpleasant decisions about what to do with the 90s power hitting numbers that might have saved baseball.
Last edited by Cry Havoc; 01-12-2010 at 01:52 PM.
I don't have any problem with any of that. I do think, though, that the only thing that conceivably makes McGwire a Hall of Famer is his home run total. If McGwire had retired with 482 home runs, there is virtually no conversation about whether he might be enshrined -- he wouldn't be.
No argument from me on that. I was a McGwire hack as a kid. But, as a more knowledgeable baseball fan who sees past the longball now, McGwire wasn't THAT good. He could put a baseball in the 5th deck, and then strike out the next four ABs.
I think the HOF is kind of a joke, anyway. PEDs aside - how does Jim Rice suddenly become good enough to be in, when he wasn't the past 14 years? The numbers haven't changed a single bit.
I'm not saying to just ignore it happened - but what can you do about it? If you strip his numbers, do you go back and pick through the box scores and see if a McGwire HR gave the A's/Cards a win? Does that get changed? You can't act like the era ever happened. You can't ignore that the HRs occurred. If any of these guys ever get into the HOF (which is not my argument), put the steroid footnote on their plaque. But, I just don't see how you would ignore that it existed.
The definition of a HR is a ball that cleared the fences between the foul poles. Bonds did that more times than anyone in history. The box scores reflect that. Natural or roided up, he leads MLB in that. Denying it doesn't change that it's a fact. It sucks - but what does changing numbers/records/scores/stats do?
Well, for starters, it would act as a much more serious deterrent to any up and coming young players. It would also seem a little bit more proactive than the, ".... Oh well!" stance that baseball seems to be taking now.
As far as records go... well, in the NCAA, if your program is found guilty of violating rules, the offending schools are stripped of every win during said violation up to an including a national championship. I'm not suggesting we go that far, but to pretend like there's not a middle road is strange, considering that nearly every other sport takes measures against cheating that far exceed a footnote in the Hall of Fame.
You make good points. I just feel like there's more that could be done by baseball to dissuade this from happening en masse again in the future, which, as of now I think is extremely likely.
100% agree with you. Mac is a career .263 hitter.. Just 1600 hits.. When he was playing in that era of baseball the talk was when you hit 500 HR's that is the magic number, he's got 583 HR's.. We know his Slugging numbers and everything are among the best of all time but since we now know 100% it's all tainted with steroids, i don't see how he ever gets in the hall..
He does not deserve it
I don't get these guys that come out and admit to steroid use yet hide the details of what they took and make idiotic cliams like "It had no effect on my HR total at all, that was all skill" They have to know everyone rolls theirs eyes when they spew nonsense like that, yet that continue one after the other to play it that way..
While I don't think steroids help you HIT a baseball, it takes you from doubles hitter to home run hitter no question.
I've stated in the past I like Mark McGwire, he's good people and know this for a fact talking to people in the St Louis media that know him well.
I've also stated I'm a bit ashamed to have had a cheater like him on the team and I'm embarassed for the city to have the Mark McGwire FWY 70 signs hanging.
That said, I'm roided out. I've had enough of the digging and the searching for who did what and when they did it.
Bonds, Sosa, all of em are out of the game, they are not gonna play again. Theres now a good testing system in place, while not perfect is about as good as you can get IMO. The steroid era was a black eye for the game and will be looked down upon it as the 70s and meth, the black sox, pete rose's gambling.
The game will endure, it always has and always will.
Flame away.
McGwire is officially a massive bag of .
"I've learned a lot," McGwire told fans. "Especially to kids out there, steroids are bad. I made a huge mistake in my life and it's something I want you guys to learn from. Don't ever, ever go down that road."
Yeah. Because who wants to have millions of dollars in salary, millions more in endorsements, a role as the hitting coach of the Cardinals and possibly a spot in baseball's hall of fame?
I don't know ANY kids who would want that.
McGwire, you took the shortcuts to play at an elite level, you made the money, and now you're "sorry" for it and you don't want people to do the same. You cheated, you assisted in furthering the destruction of the integrity of baseball, and now you're taking an incredibly well-paying dream job from a sport that you have already taken so much from in a position of dishonesty.
If you're really that sorry, if you want to show how contrite you are, donate every dollar you can from the years you used steroids to compete to charities. Start with the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Otherwise, the, "I'm sorry I cheated but now I'm going to sit on my ass making 6-7 figures at this job but NO ONE ELSE DO IT" rings just a little bit hollow.
"I'm not going down that road with Jose," McGwire said. "I'll take the high road with the Jose stuff."
What a tool.
If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is a gift man gives himself!
McGwire is officially a massive bag of .
"I've learned a lot," McGwire told fans. "Especially to kids out there, steroids are bad. I made a huge mistake in my life and it's something I want you guys to learn from. Don't ever, ever go down that road."
Yeah. Because who wants to have millions of dollars in salary, millions more in endorsements, a role as the hitting coach of the Cardinals and possibly a spot in baseball's hall of fame?
I don't know ANY kids who would want that.
McGwire, you took the shortcuts to play at an elite level, you made the money, and now you're "sorry" for it and you don't want people to do the same. You cheated, you assisted in furthering the destruction of the integrity of baseball, and now you're taking an incredibly well-paying dream job from a sport that you have already taken so much from in a position of dishonesty.
If you're really that sorry, if you want to show how contrite you are, donate every dollar you can from the years you used steroids to compete to charities. Start with the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Otherwise, the, "I'm sorry I cheated but now I'm going to sit on my ass making 6-7 figures at this job but NO ONE ELSE DO IT" rings just a little bit hollow.
"I'm not going down that road with Jose," McGwire said. "I'll take the high road with the Jose stuff."
Massive fail.
Why is always about the money with you people.
Clearly it has never been about money with big Mac. Or people worshiping him after he stuck a needle in his ass so he could hit a little white pill 580 feet.
Massive fail.
Why is always about the money with you people.
Baseball is going to fail! After all of the major stars admit their wrongdoings....their names should be torn from the books and erased from memory. I was one of those little boys who followed Big Mac. He was my hero that year he hit 70. He made me love baseball again.
But now, baseball doesn't even come close to being on my tv screen. Its sad, really sad.
It only takes a few to ruin everything. The great ones of old really were "The Great Ones"
If there was any justice, Roger Maris would have his record restored..
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