For the sake of this debate, let's agree that steroids were specifically banned beginning in 2002 and ignore that it was a toothless ban until 2005. Before 2002, they were banned by commissioner's fiat, but only in the sense that all illegal drugs -- cocaine, marijuana, thalidomide -- were banned.
So let me make an argument to you: Mike Schmidt, the darling of our Phillies-loving crowd, should be evicted from the Hall of Fame and ignored on all lists of great players. That's because, according to Schmidt himself, Schmidt used amphetamines -- that is, illegal performance-enhancing drugs:
There were a few times in my career when I felt I needed help to get in there. I'm [not?] a victim; I admit to it. I'm not incriminating myself or players I played with to say we were on amphetamines our entire careers. I just wanted to see what they would do. It was a lack of willpower. You had an impressionable young kid, and someone says, 'Man you want to feel good?'According to the article (by Murray Chass, so I feel dirty quoting it), Willie Mays and Willie Stargell also took amphetamines. Howard Bryant's book on Hank Aaron claims that he used amphetamines for performance-enhancing reasons (though Aaron himself claims in his autobiography that he used them only once).
I have never once heard anybody say that Schmidt (or Mays, Stargell, Aaron, or Ruth) shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. Is the difference that we trust the power of steroids more than the power of amphetamines (debatable, given that amphetamines were being used to combat the grind of a nine-month season of all-night partying)? Or is it just that amphetamines seem like a quainter kind of cheating committed by men much older than us?
And, as a surprise gift for people who have read this far, I will never again speak of steroids on this blog, at least until I break this promise.
Isn't the difference between enhancing one's performance versus enhancing the ability to perform?
ReplyDeleteWell, according to Schmidt himself, he used them..."a couple" of times as a young player (and he makes a comment that could suggest he was 28 at the time; that would translate to the 1978 season, which was actually kind of a down year for Schmitty). Not exactly invalidating the most impressive statistical seasons of his career.
ReplyDeleteI get your point, though. A lot of players used greenies, and it was going on for a lot of years. I still can't quite equate them with steroids in terms of their impact on The Game of Baseball and the way it is/was played.
I don't have deeper answers than that - it's just not the same on a performance level in my eyes, even if it is similar on a "wrongness" level. What has been different about player performance since greenies were banned? What has been different about player performance since steroids were banned? These are rhetorical questions to some degree, but I think they have different answers.
Wish I could respond, but I just promised ...
ReplyDeleteAny discussion of drugs and baseball always takes me to this amazing video:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUhSYLRw14
To me, the difference between amphetamines and steroids is that steroids result in long-term physical changes in the player, changes (increased muscle mass, etc.), that truly change their strength and ability level. Amphetamines are short term enhancers of attention and energy--if the ability isn't there, amphetamines won't give it to you.
Maybe splitting hairs...
Just watch the video. THAT is truly weird and amazing.
But steroids - alone - won't let someone bulk up like that. Bonds had an amazing work out program in addition to his natural talent. It's just that the steroids gave him more room to bulk up. If you are a lazy bastard, all steroids give you is small testicles.
ReplyDeleteSo, bravo, Barry Bonds, for your dogged dedication to workouts! Now you have small testicles AND the home run title, not to mention a career that ended prematurely because no team wanted the trouble.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll adopt Isaac's promise. Except to ask: when you're talking about steroids do you mean steroids exclusively, or is it shorthand for all performance-enhancing drugs? And even in the steroid family, do you include cortisol and testosterone or are you really just thinking anabolic?
ReplyDeleteEh, I don't really think so--so much of the newer generation of PEDs (esp. growth hormone, yeah?) are about letting you bounce back from injury more quickly, thereby getting you out on the field more often.
ReplyDeleteBut let me say, I'm an "anti", in this paradigm.
Mays, Aaron, Schmidt, Bowa, Luzinski = Heros of our (ok, my) youth
ReplyDeleteBonds, Sosa, Palmero = Betrayers of the greatest game
I (an anti) think it's all in the timing.
As a curiosity, how old does the audience for baseball skew? I kind of suspect that the bulk of us would find that divide understandable.
Not only is it hard to figure out where to draw the line between "good" (or at least acceptable) drugs and "bad" drugs, there also seems to be a real difference in how the public is treating hitters vs. pitchers. The hitters have the gaudy numbers and bulging muscles, but (except for Roger Clemens) most people tend to ignore the pitchers they were facing who were throwing more innings with more power. I don't even see how you point to an obvious beginning (or end) of the PED era. The practice of pointing out specific players for excoriation might be fun, but it's hardly fair, or accurate.
ReplyDeleteI'm with piledhigh... above. I think of "steroids" as a general term for performance enhancing drugs that are used to (apologies for the jargon here) "do things to your muscles" - whether that's helping to increase your muscle mass and/or to hasten muscle recovery. I agree with TPE that you don't inject/apply/ingest them and expect results without also embarking on a workout regimen (unobstructed by now-smaller testicles, and fueled by more steroid or steroid-like substances to aid recovery).
ReplyDeleteI think of "amphetamines" as a general term for what in a late-1970s episode of Quincy, M.E. might have been called "uppers" or "pep pills" -- essentially, powerful energy boosters that have more or less immediate, short-term results without added input from the player (but hey, put 'em in your coffee or your Red Bull while you're at it).
I do not believe that either class of magic beans/fluids helps a batter make regular contact by swinging a thin cylinder of wood at a relatively small sphere being thrown at relatively high velocities and less than predictable trajectories, or a pitcher find the right spots in order to retire substantially more batters than reach base and subsequently score runs (with the possible exception of Creatine). I do believe that steroids help enhance physical strength, though, and that amphetamines do not - and may even weaken the body when overused.
*There is a significant chance that, scientifically speaking, I'm wrong in my classifications, but IANAPh (I am not a pharmacologist).
And what about players (like Babe Ruth) who imbibed some illegal liquid refreshment during Prohibition?
ReplyDelete