Repost Baseball Roids Barry and other Cheaters

Since baseball season is in full swing I'm  re-posting an article I wrote a few years back on my old verizon website.

Although baseball has been cleaned up for the most part there's still a few cheaters around. If you do a before and after study of players whose stats undergo a sudden transformation you'll able to judge for yourself


Baseball and Steriods

     

Spring Training is here and it's that time of year

to hear the crack of the bat, 

pitchers throwing so fast

hear the ball whizz through the air

curves make batters despair

bases stolen with zest,

rookies passing the test, as the weather warms up,

your teams prospects are up

things are gonna be good if they can get some more wood.

or  some arms in the pen

and a coach mother hen

But it's just not the same   

Something changed with this game

   

It's often said that baseball is business and that's true, all professional sports are.

People are willing to pay good money to watch grown men play a sport that many of us played when we were younger,  at a level most of us could never dream of achieiving.

Seeing athletes peform feats of athletic prowess, making a defensive play in which the body seems to defy the laws of gravity and human limitation, a picther who can make a ball move in amazing ways or travel at a hundred miles an hour, the beauty captured by the flight of a baseball out of the park are all things that I still enjoy watching.

The battle of an ace pitcher against a hot hitter, the baserunner attempting to steal, the closer coming in with a one run lead and the bases loaded; baseball definately still has it's share of excitement and drama ....  for me anyway.

But like so much of our society something has changed. During the 1970's baseball experienced a mini dead ball era. Even so it was still an extremely popular and entertaining sport. But homeruns were down from previous era. The field of play was bigger with higher  fences set farther away from home plate than the ballfields of today. The new ballparks of that era were designed with a sterile, cookie cutter sameness. They were all giant bowls. Airflow was vitually non-existant. Entering a ballpark was like entering a sunken bowl more suited to watch gladiators take on the lions than to watch a ballgame. Most of those bigger ballparks were surfaced with astroturf which caused groundballs to accelerate to tremendous velocity on the second bounce. Speed became a big offensive factor. Stolen bases were way up and baseball was still fun and exciting.

Driven by greed, the fraternity of baseball owners forced the players to strike in August of 1994, cancelling the rest of the season and even the World Series. The following spring the owners locked out the players causing a late start to the 1995 season. 

Huge player salaries sparked jealousy in many of the fans and blended with the anger caused by the callous cancellation of the previous baseball season. Attendance fell and revenue took a hit. Deperate owners brainstormed (sorry for coupling the word owners with brainstormed) to come up with a way to win back the fans.

Ever since the days of Babe Ruth the home run was the biggest generator of excitement among that fans. Many  older baseball devotees longed for the days of Aaron, Mays, and Mantle, the exiting home run races and a league full of dangerous power hitters who could also hit for average. The power hitters of the 1970s were for the most part hitters with low batting averages, easy to strike out and bordered on outright slobhood.

So a plan was lauchned to increase home runs.  An order went out to the baseball factories to wind the core of the baseball tighter which made the ball harder and increased it's velocity and distance off the bat. The fences were moved in at the old stadiums and new stadiums were built with smaller playing fields. Umpires shrunk the strike zone forcing most pitchers (except the real popular ones) to have to throw the ball to a smaller area more easily covered by the hitter.

It butchered the art of pitching and ruined the enjoyment of many a baseball purist but homeruns were up and stadiums were packed. The owners were happier than a bunch of pigs in manure.  

Training techniques also vastly improved at this time. Weight lifting techniques were invented that improved strength but did not hurt flexability. Year round training became more and more popular and yielded great results. In today's era a player who loafs in the off season is at a disadvantange. With today's salaries, players not only can afford to work out during the winter they can hire their own trainers if the want to.

As a result of things like improved health care and childhood nutrition, the size  of the general population in the United States has increased. And so has the size of the average major leaguer.  So the average baseball player of today is both bigger and stronger than his predecessors. These two factors have also contributed greatly to the increase in homeruns from the early 1990s to the present day. 

But during this time a sinister force entered the world of baseball. Armed with the ability to vastly increase strength, batspeed and visual acuity. Illegal and physically destructive many of the more amoral, greedy, and stupid players have become it's slave. That force is known by the name of steriods and it has become the perfect vehicle to expose the inner workings of the hearts of everyone involved with baseball, from the owners, broadcasters, sportswriters, players and fans.  

It is often said that the most difficult feat in sports is to hit a baseball. I agree ! Think about it, a  skilled and often nasty, highly trained athelete is standing 60 feet and 6 inches away from you. He puts his body into a motion designed to disguise the small circular object that he is about to throw in your direction. The flight of the circular object coming in your direction will not be straight. It might come at you at 100 miles an hour, rise and tail into toward your head, it might suddenly veer away from you. It may appear like a hundred mile an hour pitch and actually be 78 miles an hour and drop at the last mili-second. Your job is to hit it if it crosses an odd-shaped 18 inch plate that sits on the ground in front of you and passes you at a height between your knees and armpits. The ball is allowed to cross that zone at any angle and speed. It's your job to hit it.

Any substance that:

 increases your visual acuity so that you can see that ball, pick up it's spin and gauge what it is going to do,

increases the speed of your swing allowing to wait longer and pick up the ball better before you swing,

and increase your strength which increases both the speed that you hit the ball toward a fielder and the distance that you hit the ball is a giant plus.

That's what steriods can do for a professional baseball player.

Thirty home runs in a season was always the mark that seperated the true power hitter from the hard line drive and spray hitter.

As we moved into the new century a funny thing happened, not only were thirty home run seasons no big deal anymore, true power hitters were cranking out 40 and even 50 homerun seasons. Next the impossible happened not only did Roger Maris's homerun record of 61 fall, it tumbled.

Babe Ruth had set the record of 60 during the 1920's, Roger Maris broke it in 1961 by one homerun in a season that had been extended to 162 games.  The Major League baseball season was 154 games when Babe Ruth played.    

By the mid 1990's steriods had really taken hold. Players of average build turned into the Incredible Hulk almost overnight. Ken Caminiti who from 1987 to 1994 never hit more than 18 homeruns aquired a new physique and home run power. In 1996 Caminiti hit 40 homeruns, knocked in a staggering 130 runs, batted 326 and won the Most Valuble Player award in the National League. If you average these categories for the 6 full season that Camiti played before he started on the juice, his averages were 12 Home Runs, 69 RBIs, and a 264 batting average.

When Roger Maris's home run record fell, it didn't just fall, it was smashed by that steriod pin-up boy Mark Maguire in 1998. McGuire hit 70 home runs that year. It's kind of hard to tell when McGuire first started using steriods. Personally I think he came into the league as a steriod user, his early glory days were spent on the Oakland As with admitted steriod user and egomaniac Jose Canseco. McGuire's propensity toward injury may have been an indication of steriod damage. From 1996 through 1999 McGuire never hit less than 52 homeruns  before his 2 year injury plagued fade out.

Also in 1998 the formerly scrawny Sammy Sosa hit 66 homeruns. Bulging Sammy went on a tear from 1998 through 2002 never hitting less than 49 homeruns and topping 60 homeruns 3 times.     

1998 was an incredible season for Major League baseball. The excitement generated by the homerun race between McGuire and Sosa absolutely electrified baseball fans. Attendence was good and T.V. veiwership was off the hook. Underneath it all was the rumbling that McGuire and others were using steriods but major league owners could have cared less. The season was awesome, so much so that even the Major Leauge Baseball and TV network's grandious overkill and blantant hype of Mark McGuire's breaking the homerun record couldn't put a damper on it. When McGuire hit the record breaker they actually stopped the game. McGuire then climbed into the stands crying his eyes out like a little sissy boy and huged family of Roger Maris sobbing all over them in the process. I found it both distastefull and disgusting. I don't know for sure if his balling was an indication of the feminization and emasculation of the modern american male or a steriod induced emotional outburst. I suspect it was a little of both. It totally detracted from the game of baseball leaving me longing for the old days when a like feat would have garnered tremendous applause with a standing ovation before the game rightfully continued. A ceremony could have been held after the game minus the sobfest.   

Last year Rafael Palmiero went from being a respected ball player to a national embarrassment. Mr Viagra, as I like to call him shamelessly lied to a congressional committee while the cameras were rolling, strongly and emphatically denying his steriod use. Shortly afterward Palmeiro was suspended for failing a drug test. He tested positive for steriods.

 

Which brings us to the most contemptible of all the steriod enhanced cheaters and self absorbed jerks in all of baseball, one Barry Bonds. At the begining of this season Barry Bonds was 7 homeruns short of passing Babe Ruth for 2nd place in lifetime homeruns. 

I still remember how Bonds disparaged The Babe when questioned by a reporter about the possiblity of someday passing him on the home run list. So let me say just for the record that Babe Ruth was a better ballplayer hung over from a night of drinking than Bonds is with or without steriods. Babe was also a better man and human being than Bonds will ever be.  

King Barry of the land of Ego went from a pre-steriod home run average of 31 per season to an average of 48 homeruns per season after roids (or should I say after his highly crafted BALCO nutrition program). However that's only part of the story, Barry Bond's at bats per seasons have dramatically decreased after steriods so in reality now he is averaging double the number of home runs per at bat that he did before he started on his 4 part steriod regimine plus insulin doping.

Bond's after steriods batting average also increased by a whopping 47 points and you've got to remember this guy is going to be 42 years of age in July. His skills ... so to speak ... reached Herculean proportions at a time that they would naturally have been deteriorating even with the best genes and natural training program.

In the 2001 Bonds broke Maguire's home run record with a total of 73.  

Records and stats are at the very core of baseball lore and legend. They are how todays players are measured against the players who went before them and are cherished by those who truely love and respect the game. They are goals to shoot for.

Stats measure performance and are the main determining factor on what how much money ballplayer will earn. And the amounts that a player can earn are staggering. Alex Rodriguez  made 26 million dollars playing for the New York Yankees last year.

As I've already stated stats, meaning home runs generate an immense excitement and attendance at ballgames. Excitement and high attendance mean more money for everyone, especially the owners of baseball teams. The current crop of baseball ownership have proved that they have little respect for this game and even less moral integrity. Their actions betray the contempt that the owners have for true baseball fans especially when there are a few extra dollars to be made.

So some guys are generating revenue because they are cheating, so what ? 

Ballplayers are breaking the law by taking illegal substances, hey steriods don't mess up their performance like recreational drugs that we test them for do and they're not getting caught ... who cares ? 

The ballplayers are risking serious health consequences ? Big deal, we're rolling in the dough ! 

 Boy what a group of guys ! Hopefully their house of cards is getting ready to fall they deserve it.

Steriod users are common cheats plain and simple. Their records should be wiped from the books from the moment that their cheating started.

You know what's really contemptible, one of the greatest hitters ever to walk on a baseball field was thrown out of baseball and his records were expunged in the early 1900s. His name was Shoeless Joe Jackson and he was accused of throwing a World Series.  Pete Rose another all time great has been banned from the Hall of Fame for betting on baseball games as a manager. Isn't breaking the law by taking illegal drugs and cheating equally as bad ? It is to me, but Pete and Shoeless Joe took part in activity that had the potential to hurt both the power and revenue of baseball owners. So what's really important to these arrogant stuffed shirts is obvious. 

Then there are the owner's lap dogs in the baseball media, many of whom are explayers. They've known what's going on for quite some time. Not only have they kept their mouths shut, they've wholeheartedly hyped Barry Bonds and others and deliberately covered up for them. They make the sophists in the old media look like pargons of virtue and towers of courage.

The fawning coverage of Barry Bond's tainted quest to  pass Babe Ruth, the constant cutting away from a real ballgames to see that Bane-like steriodial protype bum make his tainted run at the record book ruined the 2004 season for me and soured me on baseball.

If Bonds didn't go down with an injury early last year I might have stopped watching baseball altogether.

Then there are the kids. When I was a kid Willie Mays and Sandy Koulfax were my idols, they inspired me ! I practiced thowing a ball up in the air as high as I could, taking me eye off of it, locating it and basket catching it just like Willie Mays. There was no hint of scandal or bad behavior from those guys, the media wasn't working overtime to did up dirt on them and when they were before the cameras or talking to writers they displayed a respectful and decent image that any kid would do well to imitate.

That's gone now and even worse, young men and women know that many of these guys are using steriods. Many young men with aspirations to play major league baseball believe that the only way to make it to the their dream of playing major league baseball is to take steriods. So young men and women are willing to risk their health because of a group of amoral cheaters and the greedy vermin who enable them.

Something is definately rotten in the world of baseball.   

Baseball has had a special place in my heart since I was a kid. I've played it from the time I was young. I've played it as an adult, managed a team, and taught it.

I've spent countless hours playing baseball with my two sons and have many memories of their time spent in little league and playing school ball.

What has happened in baseball truely sickens me and the saddest thing of all is that if baseball is to be saved, it's not going to come from within baseball. Certainly not from the owners, not from the cheaters or the other players who are so willing to look the other way. Not from the news media either. The only way that baseball (and these people associated with it) is going to change is if it is shamed into changing. That and the rising up of a moral outrage so strong that people will stop paying to watch it. And, that's really sad, not just sad, pathetic !