02/08: Baseball Records "Tainted" Before A-Rod
Posted by: Seamus
I’ve seen a lot of different reactions in the 36 or so hours since I’ve heard the news of A-Rod’s positive steroids test in 2003. Some of his fans and Yankee fans are crushed by the news that their hero had been cheating. Some have commented that this news just reinforces the gut feeling they had all along, which is that everybody was doing this stuff. After all, if you can’t trust the guy who was supposed to be baseball’s savior and rescue the all-time home run record from Barry Bonds, then who can you trust? I even saw some guy on T.V. liken what A-Rod did to Elvis lip-synching. And then there are others who have somehow shrugged this whole thing off completely and are just waiting for baseball to be played in 2009.
But how much has the issue of steroids really tainted baseball history? Of course we all know about the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 in which eight Chicago White Sox players were banned from baseball for having intentionally thrown away the World Series for a monetary gain. However, despite the un-impeccable proof that the Sox threw away the Series, the Cincinnati Reds still remain in the record books as baseball’s World Champions in 1919.
After all, guys like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig achieved their numbers in an all-white era of baseball history. How can these guys’ numbers be any more legitimate than Barry Bonds' or A-Rod’s when a good portion of the game’s best players were being denied entry in to Major League Baseball? If guys like Satchel Paige were allowed into the bigs, would Babe Ruth have even hit 714 home runs? Would Josh Gibson have hit more? Would Ted Williams have hit over .400 in 1941? Do we know that during the course of Joe DiMaggio’s famed 56-game hitting streak that he wouldn’t have faced just one pitcher somewhere down the road that he just couldn’t solve?
Imagine if guys like Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Ryan Howard, Hanley Ramirez, CC Sabathia, Johan Santana and David Ortiz were taken away from today’s game simply because of the color of their skin. Would David Wright’s or Chase Utley’s or Mark Teixeira’s numbers be legit? If you would answer no to that question, you’d have to treat Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams the same way.
So in terms of “clean” baseball history, that would just leave the 50’s through the early 80’s, years in which players of all sizes, shapes and colors were allowed into the game and before steroids were assumed to be prevalent in MLB. Yet baseball added eight games to the schedule (the AL in 1961, the NL in ’62). That is not something that today we see as very significant, but it was a major cause of contention at the time. Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the first year of the 162-game schedule. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick was even reluctant to acknowledge the record at the time, saying it should be noted in the record books that Ruth hit his 60 home runs under a 154-game schedule. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that Gaylord Perry, a dominant pitcher of the era and Hall of Famer, admitted to throwing spitballs his entire career.
Heck, how do we know that no players during that era used steroids? Many players from the 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers teams that won four Super Bowls have admitted to steroid use. Former Steeler Jim Haslett admitted to such use and claimed that steroid use was very rampant at the time. If steroid use was common in football back in 1975, why wouldn’t these drugs be readily available to baseball players? Are we so naive to just assume that Jose Canseco was the first guy in baseball ever to use performance-enhancing drugs? Likewise, we don’t know for sure that the 1919 White Sox were the only team ever to throw a World Series. We just know they are the only team to get caught.
So what records in baseball really are legitimate, anyway? How do we know for sure? A lot of us like to look back on the days before television and corporate stadium names as baseball's "golden era," but was it really? Personally, I would much prefer to stand by numbers achieved by a bunch of steroid users who played with other steroid users over numbers achieved when a massive portion of the best players were excluded from the game.
Then again, maybe it’s all just arrogance and denial on my part.
But how much has the issue of steroids really tainted baseball history? Of course we all know about the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 in which eight Chicago White Sox players were banned from baseball for having intentionally thrown away the World Series for a monetary gain. However, despite the un-impeccable proof that the Sox threw away the Series, the Cincinnati Reds still remain in the record books as baseball’s World Champions in 1919.
After all, guys like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig achieved their numbers in an all-white era of baseball history. How can these guys’ numbers be any more legitimate than Barry Bonds' or A-Rod’s when a good portion of the game’s best players were being denied entry in to Major League Baseball? If guys like Satchel Paige were allowed into the bigs, would Babe Ruth have even hit 714 home runs? Would Josh Gibson have hit more? Would Ted Williams have hit over .400 in 1941? Do we know that during the course of Joe DiMaggio’s famed 56-game hitting streak that he wouldn’t have faced just one pitcher somewhere down the road that he just couldn’t solve?
Imagine if guys like Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Ryan Howard, Hanley Ramirez, CC Sabathia, Johan Santana and David Ortiz were taken away from today’s game simply because of the color of their skin. Would David Wright’s or Chase Utley’s or Mark Teixeira’s numbers be legit? If you would answer no to that question, you’d have to treat Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams the same way.
So in terms of “clean” baseball history, that would just leave the 50’s through the early 80’s, years in which players of all sizes, shapes and colors were allowed into the game and before steroids were assumed to be prevalent in MLB. Yet baseball added eight games to the schedule (the AL in 1961, the NL in ’62). That is not something that today we see as very significant, but it was a major cause of contention at the time. Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the first year of the 162-game schedule. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick was even reluctant to acknowledge the record at the time, saying it should be noted in the record books that Ruth hit his 60 home runs under a 154-game schedule. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that Gaylord Perry, a dominant pitcher of the era and Hall of Famer, admitted to throwing spitballs his entire career.
Heck, how do we know that no players during that era used steroids? Many players from the 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers teams that won four Super Bowls have admitted to steroid use. Former Steeler Jim Haslett admitted to such use and claimed that steroid use was very rampant at the time. If steroid use was common in football back in 1975, why wouldn’t these drugs be readily available to baseball players? Are we so naive to just assume that Jose Canseco was the first guy in baseball ever to use performance-enhancing drugs? Likewise, we don’t know for sure that the 1919 White Sox were the only team ever to throw a World Series. We just know they are the only team to get caught.
So what records in baseball really are legitimate, anyway? How do we know for sure? A lot of us like to look back on the days before television and corporate stadium names as baseball's "golden era," but was it really? Personally, I would much prefer to stand by numbers achieved by a bunch of steroid users who played with other steroid users over numbers achieved when a massive portion of the best players were excluded from the game.
Then again, maybe it’s all just arrogance and denial on my part.
