Barry Bonds quest for HR record

[Tim McG]

Does it strike you as funny that every other poster on this board disagrees with you?

It would be fascinating to me to see if you would defend Bonds as vigorously if he had played his whole career in Pittsburgh, or Tampa Bay or somewhere.

Somehow i doubt it. Seriously, seriously doubt it.

Every other poster...?

That would be 50% right?

I'm OK with that.

And for the record, I would defend anyone not given the basic constitutional right to a fair trial.

[Aggie87]

Does it strike you as funny that every other poster on this board disagrees with you?

It would be fascinating to me to see if you would defend Bonds as vigorously if he had played his whole career in Pittsburgh, or Tampa Bay or somewhere.

Somehow i doubt it. Seriously, seriously doubt it.

Every other poster...?

That would be 50% right?

I'm OK with that.

You know what I meant, now you're being ridiculous.

And for the record, I would defend anyone not given the basic constitutional right to a fair trial.

You wouldn't defend Bonds as strongly as you are now, and you know it.

No sense in debating something as obvious as Bonds' steroid use with someone who has his Fanboy blinders on.

[rachel]

Again, I will be the first to admit I was wrong if it is ever proved Bonds did steroids. I have said this innumerable times. But it's going to take a lot more than an ex-girlfriend and a media guide.

What about your eyes and his big fat effin' head?

Just seems like a "Mr. Obvious" moment.

Hm.

Well, I have a neighbor looks like he's a potential thug.

Should I call the police now?

If you don't know about the relationship of steroid use to cranial size increase, then you don't have any business posting on this threa..

oh nevermind. Your post speaks for itself.

Does it.

Hm.

Seems you assailed me because of a lack of being able to see with my eyes.

I'm thinking you might want to do a study on the mechanics of hitting a baseball....or on assuming someone is guilty just because he looks like he could commit a crime

Just sayin'.

Silliest. post. ever.

My post referred to your statement that it would take more than an ex girlfriend to prove to you that Bonds had used steroids. I was not addressing whether or not said steroid use would improve his batting. I'll leave that to others in the thread. (why I need to restate that for you when it's clearly quoted in my post is, well, just par for the course it seems with you...but anyway)

My reference to your eyes is to say how can anybody with two eyes and a brain not see how his cranial circumference has enlarged. That does not happen naturally. That is a standard by product of steroid use.

Maybe you should study anatomy and physiology.

[Big Al]

I am SO glad I started this thread. I think.

[Jazzmoose]

Whoa...wait a minute. Now, no one enjoys a good game of "push Dan's button" more than I do, but is this guy seriously arguing that Bonds doesn't use steroids, or that there's any doubt?

[Tim McG]

I see.

Lets revisit then, shall we?

What about your eyes and his big fat effin' head?

Just seems like a "Mr. Obvious" moment.

Hm.

Well, I have a neighbor looks like he's a potential thug.

Should I call the police now?

Edited May 13, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Tim McG]

Whoa...wait a minute. Now, no one enjoys a good game of "push Dan's button" more than I do, but is this guy seriously arguing that Bonds doesn't use steroids, or that there's any doubt?

Thank you, Jazzmoose.

I am arguing that there isn't sufficient proof he used steroids.

Secondly, I am arguing that steroids create muscle mass, not HR hitters.

Thirdly, I am arguing that even if true, steroids or strength do not compensate for vision, timing and skill. Hence, HRs are not the automatic result of their use.

Lastly, [and why this is such a hard sell, I will never know] all of us are accorded the same constitutional privilege as a Barry Bonds: The right to a fair trial and a right to have his case heard by a court of law...and not by tried in the court of public opinion.

Our laws require hard evidence, not innuendo or supposition. To assume less, even for Bonds, is to undermine the very rights we all covet for ourselves.

I simply cannot make it any more plain then that.

Edited May 13, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[md655321]

Sports' fandom has nothing to do with a court of law though. Innocent until proven guilty is a fantastic thing, and something that MUST be rigorously adhered to in situations of criminal and civil misconduct.

But this is simply about being a fan. Integrity, whatever that may mean, is something that plays a role in our enjoyment of sports. The preponderance of the evidence is frankly overwhelming, and it is enough to have an effect. And isn't in an absolute that he took the cream and the clear? He claims to have not know it as steroids. Um, ok fine. But there is NO DOUBT he took steroids.

Bonds was a great home run hitter before steroids, as well as a great hitter afterwards. How many tainted homeruns does it take to make a record worthless? For me, it is one.

Still, Bonds stats aren't nearly as tainted as Babe Ruth's, and I think it is a little insane that we are so critical of the steroids era, while the segregation era, which was worse by a factor of about, oh, infinity, is still looked upon fondly.

[Jazzmoose]

Whoa...wait a minute. Now, no one enjoys a good game of "push Dan's button" more than I do, but is this guy seriously arguing that Bonds doesn't use steroids, or that there's any doubt?

Thank you, Jazzmoose.

I am arguing that there isn't sufficient proof he used steroids.

Secondly, I am arguing that steroids create muscle mass, not HR hitters.

Thirdly, I am arguing that even if true, steroids or strength do not compensate for vision, timing and skill. Hence, HRs are not the automatic result of their use.

Lastly, [and why this is such a hard sell, I will never know] all of us are accorded the same constitutional privilege as a Barry Bonds: The right to a fair trial and a right to have his case heard by a court of law...and not by tried in the court of public opinion.

Our laws require hard evidence, not innuendo or supposition. To assume less, even for Bonds, is to undermine the very rights we all covet for ourselves.

I simply cannot make it any more plain then that.

Hmm. Well, I'm with you on two all the way. And three should be obvious to anyone who has seen Hank Aaron. And I understand your 'lastly' point, and hear where you're coming from. But it's always fun to speculate and discuss things, and as far as speculating and discussing, your "one" is full of shit. But have fun!

[Larry Kart]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/sports/b...wanted=1&th

Taking a Swing With Steroids

By LEE JENKINS

Published: June 14, 2004

In the four-tenths of a second it takes for a 101-mile-an-hour fastball to fly from the pitcher’s hand to home plate, the San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds sizes up the seams and gauges the spin, projects where the ball is headed and decides what he wants to do with it.

One night this season, Bonds used this sliver of time to plant his right foot, jackhammer his hips and thrust his hands so violently that he got completely around on the triple-digit baseball and yanked the ball out of the stadium, about 60 feet foul.

Around SBC Park in San Francisco, fans seemed torn between applauding the blow and debating it. In a press-box seat, one reporter said to another, “Steroids can’t do that.� And, inevitably, the response rang out:

“How do you know?�

Such is the interchange defining a sport divided — between those who speculate about the role of steroids in every game, and those in awe over a Bonds blast or some utility infielder’s opposite-field home run.

Until last year, baseball spurned testing for steroids, partly because of the perception that steroids were for football players and bodybuilders. Ingrained in the American consciousness is the belief that baseball requires too many skills based on hand-eye coordination and savvy. When Bobby Valentine, the former Texas Rangers and Mets manager, was once asked about Bonds and steroids, he said, “Does he shoot them in his eyes?�

Steroids, of course, are not injected in the eyes. But their uncertain influence on a player’s strength, bat speed, hand-eye coordination and confidence has become a source of debate and a backdrop to the 2004 baseball season, particularly in the wake of a federal investigation into steroid distribution in the Balco case and the grand jury testimony of Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi and other players. In subtle ways, steroids course through every artery of the game.

To go through one at-bat with a steroid user, you would have to find him. No active major leaguer has been positively identified for steroid use, so only a composite is available.

The player might have discovered an anabolic steroid while playing winter ball in Latin America, where steroids are widely available at local drug storesfarmacias. He might have remembered that the former major league slugger Jose Canseco once said that 85 percentÖ of major leaguers used steroids, or that another former player, Ken Caminiti, contended that 50 percent took them.

Despite warnings that steroids increase the rate of heart attacks, the amount of cholesterol in the body and the risk of sterility, the player takes an initial cycle, either ingesting the steroids orally or injecting them into his buttocks. Some scientists have established that steroids add muscle mass even if the user does not train, but the player is eager to maximize results, so he continues a fierce workout routine.

“Even those who don’t train get stronger,� Dr. Benjamin Z. Leder of Massachusetts General Hospital said. “But I don’t know of any world-class athlete who doesn’t train, so it’s always in combination.�

Major League Baseball and the players union commissioned Leder and his colleague, Dr. Joel S. Finkelstein, to conduct a study on the supplement androstenedione in 2000, but baseball and union officials say no such study has ever been administered to determine the influence of steroids on baseball players.

“We have to get away from the perception that steroids are just for muscle-bound bodybuilders,� said Frank UryaszÖ, president of the National Center for Drug Free Sports, an sports drug-testing company based in Kansas City, Mo. “In a perfect world, we’d take a pool of baseball players and give half of them steroids to see what would happen. But we’re not going to do that.�

Better Workouts and More Confidence

The broadcaster Bob Costas said that 10 years ago he believed there was no reason for a baseball player to take steroids. Now, he marvels at the accomplishments of contemporary stars, but he also wonders about them.

“You still have to hit the ball,� Costas said. “If you put rocket fuel in a Honda, it doesn’t mean it would win the Indy 500. But if you had two genuine racing cars and one got the rocket fuel and another got regular fuel, then it makes a difference.�

The difference shows up in various ways. As the juiced player continues his off-season cycle, he is able to work out longer and more often. Trainers tell him that when muscles are stressed, they usually become fatigued and break down, a catabolic effect. Anabolic steroids override the catabolic effect and shorten the recovery time from workouts.

On opening day, when the player walks to home plate, he has a new build and a fresh outlook. According to Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the biological psychiatry laboratory at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical Center, the player will have become more muscular in the shoulders, neck and upper arms. “He starts to look more male than male,� Pope said.

During 20 years of researching anabolic steroids, Pope has had countless athletes tell him they feel invincible when performing with steroids, providing a psychological edge on par with the physical advantage. The first-year user could very well be a decent career hitter, already possessing the unique skills necessary to play baseball, but he has observed in recent batting practice sessions that his fly balls are carrying an estimated 15 to 20 feet farther.

“I’ve never taken the stuff, but talking to guys who have, they get a lot of extra confidence,� Mets outfielder Cliff Floyd said. “They think, ‘When I hit the ball, it will go farther than when I hit it before.’ They have this different attitude, like they’re invincible, and they’re just going to crush it. I think that’s the real edge.�

When fans and teammates get their first glimpse of the player, they may wonder quietly about his off-season regimen. They may check to see if his facial structure has changed, causing his helmet to ride high on his head. But Dr. Alan D. Rogol, who has worked with the United States Anti-Doping Agency, warns against such superficial judgments for any athlete under the age of 30.

“A boy at 17 might finish growing, but your adult composition is in no way complete,� said Rogol, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia. “It could take 10 more years to get peak bone mass and muscle mass. Part of that is training and part is the maturation process. On the other hand, if you’ve been playing 10 or 12 years, and you’re 35 and put on 40 pounds and are ripped and totally different, that’s harder to deal with. Then I’d have to think twice.�

In his first regular-season at-bat with steroids in his system, the player digs into the batter’s box and tries to calm himself. Scientists believe steroids can heighten aggression, which could help the player attack a pitch with greater force, or hurt him because he will chase too many bad pitches. Whether a result of power pitchers, smaller ballparks or steroids, recent years have had the most home runs in history, but also the most strikeouts.

“Much has been made of ’roid rage,� said Dr. Allan Lans, a sports psychologist who has worked with the New York Mets and players for other teams. “In baseball, aggressiveness is to be a very controlled kind of thing. If you don’t have control, it becomes detrimental to your performance. Even at the plate, what’s required is focus and concentration. You can’t use steroids for something like that.�

Scientists say they do not believe steroids improve hand-eye coordination, but because they agree the drugs help build strength, some extrapolate that steroids would also quicken bat speed. Better bat speed gives the hitter more time to wait on a pitch, to read it and follow it. The player most likely has an extra split second to decide what pitch is approaching and whether he wants to swing at it.

“Steroids make your hands faster in that they increase muscle in your forearms and pectorals and numerous muscle sets involved in hitting a baseball,� said Dr. Charles Yesalis, professor of health and human development at Penn State. “If you need less time to get around on the ball, you have more time to tell if it’s a slider, knuckleball or curve. That makes complete sense.�

When the player does start his swing, the steroids are really put to work. He is able to jerk the bat around faster, creating power from his arms, chest, shoulders and neck. “It’s basic force equals mass times acceleration,� said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, professor of medicine at New York University, who has spent 20 years studying doping. “The mass is muscle and the acceleration is the bat speed. There is a collision. The ball is being hit with more force than before and will go farther.�

After the player makes contact, he looks up at the field and is met with surprise. The pitcher, who has faced the player numerous times in the past, appears suddenly suspicious. “You see guys who had warning-track power, and now the ball is going over the fence,� Mets pitcher Tom Glavine said. “We’re in a day and age when everyone’s suspected of something. There are players who work hard, but when a guy comes out of nowhere, you wonder what’s going on.�

Pitchers have also been known to take steroids, not necessarily to throw harder, but rather to rebound more quickly from their previous start. Even though steroids can take away some of the flexibility and whip action that allows a pitcher to throw a baseball, they decrease the tissue breakdown that comes from throwing around 90 pitches a game. “I never thought there was a reason for pitchers to do it,� Glavine said. “I’m not so sure anymore.�’

A Burst Out of the Box

As the player steps out of the batter’s box, he does not necessarily have more speed, but he does possess greater explosiveness, because of stronger fast-twitch muscle fibers. When Caminiti admitted to Sports Illustrated in 2002 that he used steroids, he said: “I’d be running the bases and think, ‘Man, I’m fast!’ And I had never been fast.�

Wadler said: “Remember Ben Johnson coming out of the starting blocks in the 100 meters at the 1988 Olympics? It’s just like that.�

(Johnson, a Canadian sprinter, was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for steroids.)

By the time the player touches first base, he can hear the cheers wash over him, and he accepts them without much guilt. Many athletes on steroids attribute their success to their strenuous superhuman workout routines, refusing to acknowledge that steroids often make those routines possible.

“He’ll feel like, ‘I’ve earned this because I work out all the time,’� Lans said. “It’s a mind-set people have about success. Someone believes, ‘This will get me over the top,’ and they do it and then find a way to validate it.�

Given the state of justice in Major League Baseball, the user will probably be punished only by his own body. As he continues to develop, he could lose flexibility and his muscles might become so strong that the tendons will no longer be able to connect them to the bone. Doctors have seen an increasing number of elbow injuries, knee injuries and tendon ruptures, in which the muscle strips completely away from the bone.

“The muscle mass gets so great that the tendons sometimes can’t carry the weight,� said Dr. Robert J. Dimeff, director of sports medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

One of the easiest ways to heal from any injury is with steroids. Steroids can assist in the healing process. To strengthen tissue and put more time into rehabilitation, the player will be tempted to begin using again, starting the cycle over.

[Tim McG]

Whoa...wait a minute. Now, no one enjoys a good game of "push Dan's button" more than I do, but is this guy seriously arguing that Bonds doesn't use steroids, or that there's any doubt?

Thank you, Jazzmoose.

I am arguing that there isn't sufficient proof he used steroids.

Secondly, I am arguing that steroids create muscle mass, not HR hitters.

Thirdly, I am arguing that even if true, steroids or strength do not compensate for vision, timing and skill. Hence, HRs are not the automatic result of their use.

Lastly, [and why this is such a hard sell, I will never know] all of us are accorded the same constitutional privilege as a Barry Bonds: The right to a fair trial and a right to have his case heard by a court of law...and not by tried in the court of public opinion.

Our laws require hard evidence, not innuendo or supposition. To assume less, even for Bonds, is to undermine the very rights we all covet for ourselves.

I simply cannot make it any more plain then that.

Hmm. Well, I'm with you on two all the way. And three should be obvious to anyone who has seen Hank Aaron. And I understand your 'lastly' point, and hear where you're coming from. But it's always fun to speculate and discuss things, and as far as speculating and discussing, your "one" is full of shit. But have fun!

Fair enough.

[Larry Kart]

http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2005/01...ball_yes_st.php

January 4, 2005

BASEBALL: Yes, Steroids Help

Unless you take the strong libertarian position - that there should be no restrictions on what ballplayers can ingest regardless of the impact on themselves or the game - the debate about what to do about steroids in baseball really revolves around three questions:

1. Does taking steroids help make you a better baseball player? (If not, there's no point in banning them).

2. Is taking steroids harmful to your health? (Again, if not, there's no reason to ban them)

3. Is there a feasible way to test for steroid use or otherwise enforce a ban?

I recognize that there are serious people who disagree about the second and third questions. But I submit that, if you think about it honestly, what we do know about the first point is quite clear: steroids* can and do help performance in baseball, and specifically help in hitting for power.

* - I refer here colloquially to "steroids" to include other hormone-altering performance-enhancers like human growth hormone. As often happens in debates about drugs, precise definition of the substances involved is itself a whole sub-field of debate.

The Available Types of Evidence

Part of the confusion over the link between steroids and performance derives from the different types of evidence we use to answer these types of questions. To illustrate, let's compare this question to one with a settled answer: whether throwing the ball faster will help a pitcher strike out more batters.

Direct Evidence

One sometimes hears the argument made that we can't and don't have direct evidence of how steroids help performance. This is true enough, as far as it goes. For example, we can show directly how velocity helps a pitcher get strikeouts: you can measure batters' reaction times and show how increasing velocity makes it harder to make contact. Or, you can simply watch a guy who throws 95+ blow pitches even past guys who are looking for them. That kind of "see the causation with your own eyes" evidence doesn't exist for steroids and performance in baseball.

Statistical Proof

Where direct evidence of causation isn't available, of course, statistical proof of correlation can be good enough. A classic example of this from the intersection of law and medicine is the fact that we still don't have direct evidence that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer (i.e., scientists can't show how it happens), but the statistical evidence shows a fairly overwhelming connection between smoking and increased likelihood of getting lung cancer.

Statistical proofs of correlation are pervasive in baseball - to use our example above, it would be easy to do a study showing that pitchers who regularly throw above 95 mph get a lot more strikeouts, and are much more likely to generate large numbers of strikeouts, than pitchers who rarely or never crack 90+ mph. That correlation is so powerful that it will show up in almost any study.

Other correlations are trickier, which is why a reliable study has to use a large enough sample size to be able to generalize, and has to ensure that truly comparable players are being compared, so that different outcomes can't be explained away by some other factor.

Here, there are two problems with studying steroid use. One is finding large and otherwise truly comparable sets of players (comparing the same player before and after isn't useful because of the interfering factor of age, which ordinarily is, of course, very powerfully correlated with declining performance after about age 28 or so). But the bigger problem is that steroid use, by virtue of being illegal, is done in secret; we have so little reliable information about who uses what, when and in what amounts that for the foreseeable future, it will be impossible to do statistical comparisons with any degree of confidence.

Circumstantial/Inferential Evidence

The fallacy in many arguments over steroids in baseball is to note the lack of direct or reliable statistical evidence and declare the question unresolved. But this is not consistent with how human beings make decisions in everyday life, in law, medicine, politics or in baseball. When the best forms of evidence are unavailable, we look at what remains: at circumstantial evidence, and logical connections to be drawn therefrom. For example, even if we couldn't see fast pitches going by hitters and read the evidence of the same in box scores, what we do know about hitting a baseball - you have to time your swing to make contact - is itself strongly suggestive of the fact that a faster pitch will be harder to hit.

I would submit that that evidence is more than sufficient to persuade us that steroids help performance in baseball. Let's once again break this down to a few questions:

A. Do Steroids Help Build Strength?

This much is not seriously disputed, which is one reason why steroids are banned in the NFL and the Olympics, where physical strength and speed can be shown to connect directly to performance. There are certainly debates about precisely how and to what extent steroids help, but few serious people would debate that taking them helps build stronger muscles.

B. Does Strength Help In Hitting A Baseball?

This is really the crux of the argument. It is often said that you can't take a drug to help you hit a curveball, which is true but totally beside the point. The issue isn't whether steroids will help you or me become a major league ballplayer; the issue is whether guys with the pre-existing skills to play professional baseball will have those skills enhanced. To deny that, among other things, you have to argue that strength has no impact on the ability to hit for power. Of course, this is ridiculous. Since the introduction of the home run as a regular part of the game in the 1920s, it has always been the case that big, strong guys with powerful chests and arms have tended to be home run hitters, and skinny little guys have not. To deny that steroids have an impact on hitting for power in particular, you have to look at all the home runs hit by the Gehrigs and Foxxes and Mantles and Kluzewskis and Killebrews and all the singles hit by the Willie McGees and Vince Colemans and Nellie Foxes of the world, and argue that it is just a coincidence that physical strength has always been so strongly correlated with home run power. You have to not only look at Bonds and Giambi and all the other guys who have been placed under one sort of cloud or other and say that whatever they took or were given didn't matter; you actually have to say that all the muscle Barry Bonds has added has had nothing to do with his power surge, that Jason Giambi's increased power production as he gained muscle was just a coincidence. Sorry, I'm not buying that.

Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity acceleration. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a variable affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed. But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?

C. Do Steroids Help In Conditioning?

Strength is the core of the debate. But correct me if I'm wrong here - I believe most of the analyses I've seen have similarly shown that steroids can assist more broadly in conditioning - beyond pure muscle mass - by assisting in the ability to train at greater length without injury, at least in the short run.

D. Does Superior Conditioning Help In Baseball?

The question, again, essentially answers itself, and doubly so for aging players seeking to stave off declining bat speed (or declining velocity, for pitchers, but pitchers and steroids are another day's debate). Honus Wagner lifted weights; Ty Cobb was a conditioning fanatic. It could be a coincidence that they lasted into their 40s in a day when few others did.

The Bonds Issue

I would stress, again, that I don't have anything but the sketchy information in the public record on what Barry Bonds took and when, and how it helped him. And it's true: Bonds' late career surge has had other causes, from better bats to a greater uppercut in his swing. But I've been disappointed at some of the efforts from otherwise reasonable people to obscure the fact that Bonds' increased strength has had an impact on his unprecedented late-30s power surge.

I meant to get to this when it ran in mid-December: the New York Times editorial by Will Carroll of the Baseball Prospectus (discussed here on his blog). I like and respect Carroll from his work at BP, but the Times piece has some serious issues. One is the point I make above: Carroll essentially implies that he is agnostic on whether strength helps with power hitting, contrary to 85 years' experience:

[W]e have little or no idea what these drugs accomplish. Do stronger players hit the ball farther, swing the bat quicker or throw the ball harder? Does using steroids reduce fatigue so that they can do any of those things more effectively than "clean" players?

While there is no doubt that these chemicals are effective at their stated goal, albeit with significant complications, the question of how their effects manifest themselves in a baseball game has not been answered. There are no credible studies that connect drug use to improved performance, nor any that determine what cost these athletes may be paying.

Much more problematically, Carroll uses some seriously misguided examples to imply to the Times' readers that Bonds' power surge is not so unprecedented:

It is true that Bonds's performance over what many would expect to be the twilight of his career has been incredible. Instead of a slow decline as he approached 40, Bonds has done what can only now be described as superhuman. . . . The raw numbers, however, only reflect his increased home-run production; they do not say whether he hits more homers that fly significantly farther.

What of this late-career surge? Certainly we can point to that with an accusing finger, sure that Bonds's numbers in the record books have been written with some "cream" or "clear" substance. It's much easier to point than to find facts.

According to Clay Davenport, a researcher at Baseball Prospectus, Hank Aaron's best year for home runs - when he had the most homers per at bat - was 1973, when he was 39. His second best was in 1971, at age 37. Willie Stargell had his best seasons after age 37. Carlton Fisk put his best rate in the books when he was 40. Even Ty Cobb had his best home run rate at age 38, though the end of the dead-ball era helped that. It is not uncommon, according to Mr. Davenport, for a slugger to change his mechanics as he ages, swinging for the fences as his ability to run the bases declines.

These are terribly bad examples. First of all, Aaron in 1973, Stargell in 1978 and 1979 and Fisk in 1988 all had one thing in common: none of them were full-time, 500+ at bat players any longer, as they'd been in their primes. It's a lot easier for an older player to improve his production if he has a third to half of the season to rest as opposed to the years when he was playing every day, a fact that has absolutely zero to do with Barry Bonds.

Let's take Stargell first, as he's the most egregious example. Willie Stargell's career best slugging percentages, both absolutely and relative to the league, came at the ages of 26, 31, and 33, well within the normal range. Stargell's home run rate improved slightly in 1978-79, at age 38 and 39, but his doubles - also a key power stat - dropped off sharply from 43 in 1973 to 18 and 19 in 1978 and 1979. Was he really hitting for more power? Also, Stargell had another thing going for him: while he wasn't, strictly speaking, platooned (his backup, John Milner, was also lefthanded), the decline in his playing time allowed him to see a much more favorable mix of pitchers: Stargell had 30.5% of his at bats against lefties in 1978 and 30.7% in 1979, as opposed to 39.5% in 1971 and 33.1% in 1973. For a guy with Stargell's big platoon splits, that's a significant advantage.

Then there's Aaron. If you know the game's history, you already know that Aaron's late-career power surge was an illusion created by the improved offensive conditions of the 1970s as opposed to the 1960s, combined with his move in 1966 into homer-friendly Fulton County Stadium and out of pitcher-friendly Milwaukee County. Aaron hit 52 homers on the road and 37 at home in 1962-63; in 1971 and 1973, those figures were more than reversed to 55 at home and 32 on the road. But it doesn't stop there; with just 392 at bats in 1973 at age 39, the right-handed Aaron saw 44.4% of his at bats against left-handed pitching, up from 30.9% in 1971 and 26.5% as a full-time player in 1969.

Then there's Fisk, whose "best" home run season was 253 at bats in 1988. Do I really need to explain why a catcher might hit better playing half the time? And yes, the right-handed Fisk faced lefties 36.5% of the time in 1988, compared to 22.9% in his actual best season, 1977.

(Ty Cobb, whose career high in home runs was 12 but whose career high in slugging average was at age 24, is not even worthy of discussing at length).

None of these guys - indeed, no other player in baseball history - compares remotely to what Barry Bonds has done, and it does no service to the debate to pretend otherwise. Prior to 2000, Bonds was 34 years old and had a career slugging percentage of .559, with his two best slugging percentages (.677 and .647) coming at age 28 and 29. Since then, he has slugged .781, a 40% improvement on his career average and a 15% improvement over a five-year stretch compared to his career best season. Neither Carroll nor Davenport could find an example anywhere, certainly not outside of guys who straddled the arrival of the lively ball in the 1920s, of an established player who had anything like a 40% improvement in his power numbers from age 35 to 39. (Bonds has also batted .358 over the past three years, compared to batting above .320 just once through age 35, also nothing like a normal aging pattern).

Carroll's argument would have been better served by recognizing the fact that what Bonds has done is totally unprecedented and clearly not unrelated to his dramatic improvement in physical strength in his late 30s. Pretending otherwise does no one any good.

[Dan Gould]

I posted this last one earlier, Larry, when this was part of the regular baseball thread. It did no good. None of it does any good. He is blind to reality. Blind to anything that doesn't comport with his twisted, undefensible beliefs.

He doesn't think it means anything if it can be shown that Bonds paid BALCO for copious amounts of PEDs (just because he bought them doesn't mean he actually used them. There's no proof. Nanny nanny poo poo.

A doping schedule created for "BLB" doesn't mean anything. There is no proof that its actually for Barry Lamar Bonds. And anyway, no one saw him use the drugs.

A doping schedule that lists cities and dates that coincide 100% with the road schedule of the San Francisco Giants doesn't mean anything. There is no proof that it was Bonds' schedule, and anyway, no one saw him use the PEDs.

And anyway, the Grand Jury testimony was illegally obtained. Nanny Nanny Poo Poo.

Edited May 13, 2007 by Dan Gould

[Tim McG]

He who, Dan?

Surely you can't be referring to me, now, can you...?

[sheldonm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/sports/b...wanted=1&th

Taking a Swing With Steroids

By LEE JENKINS

Published: June 14, 2004

In the four-tenths of a second it takes for a 101-mile-an-hour fastball to fly from the pitcher’s hand to home plate, the San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds sizes up the seams and gauges the spin, projects where the ball is headed and decides what he wants to do with it.

One night this season, Bonds used this sliver of time to plant his right foot, jackhammer his hips and thrust his hands so violently that he got completely around on the triple-digit baseball and yanked the ball out of the stadium, about 60 feet foul.

Around SBC Park in San Francisco, fans seemed torn between applauding the blow and debating it. In a press-box seat, one reporter said to another, “Steroids can’t do that.� And, inevitably, the response rang out:

“How do you know?�

Such is the interchange defining a sport divided — between those who speculate about the role of steroids in every game, and those in awe over a Bonds blast or some utility infielder’s opposite-field home run.

Until last year, baseball spurned testing for steroids, partly because of the perception that steroids were for football players and bodybuilders. Ingrained in the American consciousness is the belief that baseball requires too many skills based on hand-eye coordination and savvy. When Bobby Valentine, the former Texas Rangers and Mets manager, was once asked about Bonds and steroids, he said, “Does he shoot them in his eyes?�

Steroids, of course, are not injected in the eyes. But their uncertain influence on a player’s strength, bat speed, hand-eye coordination and confidence has become a source of debate and a backdrop to the 2004 baseball season, particularly in the wake of a federal investigation into steroid distribution in the Balco case and the grand jury testimony of Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi and other players. In subtle ways, steroids course through every artery of the game.

To go through one at-bat with a steroid user, you would have to find him. No active major leaguer has been positively identified for steroid use, so only a composite is available.

The player might have discovered an anabolic steroid while playing winter ball in Latin America, where steroids are widely available at local drug storesfarmacias. He might have remembered that the former major league slugger Jose Canseco once said that 85 percentÖ of major leaguers used steroids, or that another former player, Ken Caminiti, contended that 50 percent took them.

Despite warnings that steroids increase the rate of heart attacks, the amount of cholesterol in the body and the risk of sterility, the player takes an initial cycle, either ingesting the steroids orally or injecting them into his buttocks. Some scientists have established that steroids add muscle mass even if the user does not train, but the player is eager to maximize results, so he continues a fierce workout routine.

“Even those who don’t train get stronger,� Dr. Benjamin Z. Leder of Massachusetts General Hospital said. “But I don’t know of any world-class athlete who doesn’t train, so it’s always in combination.�

Major League Baseball and the players union commissioned Leder and his colleague, Dr. Joel S. Finkelstein, to conduct a study on the supplement androstenedione in 2000, but baseball and union officials say no such study has ever been administered to determine the influence of steroids on baseball players.

“We have to get away from the perception that steroids are just for muscle-bound bodybuilders,� said Frank UryaszÖ, president of the National Center for Drug Free Sports, an sports drug-testing company based in Kansas City, Mo. “In a perfect world, we’d take a pool of baseball players and give half of them steroids to see what would happen. But we’re not going to do that.�

Better Workouts and More Confidence

The broadcaster Bob Costas said that 10 years ago he believed there was no reason for a baseball player to take steroids. Now, he marvels at the accomplishments of contemporary stars, but he also wonders about them.

“You still have to hit the ball,� Costas said. “If you put rocket fuel in a Honda, it doesn’t mean it would win the Indy 500. But if you had two genuine racing cars and one got the rocket fuel and another got regular fuel, then it makes a difference.�

The difference shows up in various ways. As the juiced player continues his off-season cycle, he is able to work out longer and more often. Trainers tell him that when muscles are stressed, they usually become fatigued and break down, a catabolic effect. Anabolic steroids override the catabolic effect and shorten the recovery time from workouts.

On opening day, when the player walks to home plate, he has a new build and a fresh outlook. According to Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the biological psychiatry laboratory at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical Center, the player will have become more muscular in the shoulders, neck and upper arms. “He starts to look more male than male,� Pope said.

During 20 years of researching anabolic steroids, Pope has had countless athletes tell him they feel invincible when performing with steroids, providing a psychological edge on par with the physical advantage. The first-year user could very well be a decent career hitter, already possessing the unique skills necessary to play baseball, but he has observed in recent batting practice sessions that his fly balls are carrying an estimated 15 to 20 feet farther.

“I’ve never taken the stuff, but talking to guys who have, they get a lot of extra confidence,� Mets outfielder Cliff Floyd said. “They think, ‘When I hit the ball, it will go farther than when I hit it before.’ They have this different attitude, like they’re invincible, and they’re just going to crush it. I think that’s the real edge.�

When fans and teammates get their first glimpse of the player, they may wonder quietly about his off-season regimen. They may check to see if his facial structure has changed, causing his helmet to ride high on his head. But Dr. Alan D. Rogol, who has worked with the United States Anti-Doping Agency, warns against such superficial judgments for any athlete under the age of 30.

“A boy at 17 might finish growing, but your adult composition is in no way complete,� said Rogol, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia. “It could take 10 more years to get peak bone mass and muscle mass. Part of that is training and part is the maturation process. On the other hand, if you’ve been playing 10 or 12 years, and you’re 35 and put on 40 pounds and are ripped and totally different, that’s harder to deal with. Then I’d have to think twice.�

In his first regular-season at-bat with steroids in his system, the player digs into the batter’s box and tries to calm himself. Scientists believe steroids can heighten aggression, which could help the player attack a pitch with greater force, or hurt him because he will chase too many bad pitches. Whether a result of power pitchers, smaller ballparks or steroids, recent years have had the most home runs in history, but also the most strikeouts.

“Much has been made of ’roid rage,� said Dr. Allan Lans, a sports psychologist who has worked with the New York Mets and players for other teams. “In baseball, aggressiveness is to be a very controlled kind of thing. If you don’t have control, it becomes detrimental to your performance. Even at the plate, what’s required is focus and concentration. You can’t use steroids for something like that.�

Scientists say they do not believe steroids improve hand-eye coordination, but because they agree the drugs help build strength, some extrapolate that steroids would also quicken bat speed. Better bat speed gives the hitter more time to wait on a pitch, to read it and follow it. The player most likely has an extra split second to decide what pitch is approaching and whether he wants to swing at it.

“Steroids make your hands faster in that they increase muscle in your forearms and pectorals and numerous muscle sets involved in hitting a baseball,� said Dr. Charles Yesalis, professor of health and human development at Penn State. “If you need less time to get around on the ball, you have more time to tell if it’s a slider, knuckleball or curve. That makes complete sense.�

When the player does start his swing, the steroids are really put to work. He is able to jerk the bat around faster, creating power from his arms, chest, shoulders and neck. “It’s basic force equals mass times acceleration,� said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, professor of medicine at New York University, who has spent 20 years studying doping. “The mass is muscle and the acceleration is the bat speed. There is a collision. The ball is being hit with more force than before and will go farther.�

After the player makes contact, he looks up at the field and is met with surprise. The pitcher, who has faced the player numerous times in the past, appears suddenly suspicious. “You see guys who had warning-track power, and now the ball is going over the fence,� Mets pitcher Tom Glavine said. “We’re in a day and age when everyone’s suspected of something. There are players who work hard, but when a guy comes out of nowhere, you wonder what’s going on.�

Pitchers have also been known to take steroids, not necessarily to throw harder, but rather to rebound more quickly from their previous start. Even though steroids can take away some of the flexibility and whip action that allows a pitcher to throw a baseball, they decrease the tissue breakdown that comes from throwing around 90 pitches a game. “I never thought there was a reason for pitchers to do it,� Glavine said. “I’m not so sure anymore.�’

A Burst Out of the Box

As the player steps out of the batter’s box, he does not necessarily have more speed, but he does possess greater explosiveness, because of stronger fast-twitch muscle fibers. When Caminiti admitted to Sports Illustrated in 2002 that he used steroids, he said: “I’d be running the bases and think, ‘Man, I’m fast!’ And I had never been fast.�

Wadler said: “Remember Ben Johnson coming out of the starting blocks in the 100 meters at the 1988 Olympics? It’s just like that.�

(Johnson, a Canadian sprinter, was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for steroids.)

By the time the player touches first base, he can hear the cheers wash over him, and he accepts them without much guilt. Many athletes on steroids attribute their success to their strenuous superhuman workout routines, refusing to acknowledge that steroids often make those routines possible.

“He’ll feel like, ‘I’ve earned this because I work out all the time,’� Lans said. “It’s a mind-set people have about success. Someone believes, ‘This will get me over the top,’ and they do it and then find a way to validate it.�

Given the state of justice in Major League Baseball, the user will probably be punished only by his own body. As he continues to develop, he could lose flexibility and his muscles might become so strong that the tendons will no longer be able to connect them to the bone. Doctors have seen an increasing number of elbow injuries, knee injuries and tendon ruptures, in which the muscle strips completely away from the bone.

“The muscle mass gets so great that the tendons sometimes can’t carry the weight,� said Dr. Robert J. Dimeff, director of sports medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

One of the easiest ways to heal from any injury is with steroids. Steroids can assist in the healing process. To strengthen tissue and put more time into rehabilitation, the player will be tempted to begin using again, starting the cycle over.

...not to poke holes in the article but you can count the guys throwing 101 mph fastballs on a regualr basis on one hand.....now back to the debate!!!

m~

[Tim McG]

Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity acceleration. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a variable affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed.

Because they can see the ball better, too.

Bat head speed is only one part of the equation: Timing and skill [including accuracy] are the other two thirds. Funny he should leave this tid bit of information out of his "analysis."

I would stress, again, that I don't have anything but the sketchy information in the public record on what Barry Bonds took and when, and how it helped him.

And this guy complains about Carroll's article in the Times? Whoa.

But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?

And the answer would be...?

The guy sure asks a lot of unanswered questions.

More supposition compounded.

Edited May 13, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Aggie87]

Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity acceleration. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a variable affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed.

Because they can see the ball better, too.

Bat head speed is only one part of the equation: Timing and skill [including accuracy] are the other two thirds. Funny he should leave this tid bit of information out of his "analysis."

Even if it IS only one part of the equation, the fact that it IS part of the equation is enough in itself. Increasing muscle-mass contributes to hitting the ball with more force, causing it to travel farther. Nice to see you're finally concurring that it is part of the equation for a power hitter.

But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?

And the answer would be...?

The guy sure asks a lot of unanswered questions.

Ever heard of a rhetorical question?

[Tim McG]

It is a leading question without an answer and it is designed to get people to believe something without facts in evidence.

A rhetorical question it is not.

[Dan Gould]

It is a leading question without an answer and it is designed to get people to believe something without facts in evidence.

A rhetorical question it is not.

Jesus Fucking Christ. There aren't FACTS IN EVIDENCE that "stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?"

READ THE FUCKING BASEBALL ENCYLOPEDIA.

CORRELATE HEIGHT AND WEIGHT WITH HOME RUN TOTALS.

[Tim McG]

Gee wiz, Dan.

Try decaf.

[Jazzmoose]

His doctor said it was the caffeine. So he shot him.

[Tim McG]

His doctor said it was the caffeine. So he shot him.

Well...he missed.

Edited May 14, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Soulstation1]

up for debate

[Jazzmoose]

We're changing your handle to 'shitstirrer'....

[Chalupa]

Giambi tests positive for amphetamines

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?i...e=ESPNHeadlines

Edited May 23, 2007 by J.H. Deeley