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Joe Sheehan smokes one out of the park ...

Frayed Knot Feb 10 2009 07:49 AM

... like his pen is [url=http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8487:ciq2dpff]on steroids or something[/url:ciq2dpff]. Mainly he takes on what he sees as the over-reactions to the ARod news in particular and the steroids hunt in general - and he's been consistent on this issue for a long time now.

dinosaur jesus Feb 10 2009 08:06 AM

I can't go along with an article whose premise is "I don't really care that Alex Rodriguez used steroids." Because I do care that Alex Rodriguez used steroids. Not because I want one more excuse to kick poor Alex around--that's the ridiculous part of this, that he's getting all the abuse that should be spread 104 ways--but because knowing that he did gets us one step closer to knowing what the hell has been going on in baseball since the nineties.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Feb 10 2009 08:09 AM

Good take, and seeing as Sheenhan contributes to SI, you have to wonder what he makes of Verducci's clueless valentine to buffing up published in 1998. I mean, anyone expressing shock these days is full of shit. I'd like to go back in time and fire Verducci. Look at this shit if you dare: [url]http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1012317/1/index.htm[/url] ]Every day this spring a battalion of protein drinks spiked with the muscle-enhancing supplement creatine awaited the New York Yankees after they ended their workouts in Tampa. The white Styrofoam cups with red straws poking through the lids were lined up on a table in the clubhouse like soldiers awaiting inspection. One afternoon, as his players snatched up all the cups, the most powerful of Yankees sucked on his shake while admonishing a clubhouse attendant. "Next time make sure you have a few more made up," said owner George Steinbrenner, dressed in his own uniform of blue blazer and white turtle-neck. "Better to have too much than not enough." So there you have it. The perfect metaphor (albeit a mixed one) for what has happened to baseball near the end of this millennium: The owner of the game's richest team is downing souped-up shakes that promise to make him even bigger. Steinbrenner knows that baseball has become a big man's game-as surely as it belongs to men named Piazza (240 pounds), McGwire (250 pounds), Bichette (260 pounds) and Thomas (270 pounds), it belongs to men named Jacobs ($62 million payroll), Turner ($65 million), Angelos ($67 million) and, yes, Steinbrenner (more than $70 million). Like never before, baseball is about being buff. Anybody hoping to get to the World Series had better come to play with plenty of muscle and plenty of money. Better to have too much than not enough. Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Mike Piazza gained 20 pounds over the winter lifting weights at a gym in Venice Beach, Calif. Baltimore Orioles DH Harold Baines added creatine to his diet as well as a supplement containing fish oil to lubricate his creaking 39-year-old knees. Tampa Bay Devil Rays third baseman Wade Boggs, who turns 40 in June, took creatine while bulking up with heavy weights for the first time in his career. ]Maris's mark is more likely than ever to fall this season. Before 1990 only 10 players had hit 50 home runs in a season; five players reached that plateau in the past eight years. "I think 61 is the one record that is almost certainly going to go," says San Diego Padres 16-year-veteran Tony Gwynn, who has won the last four National League batting tides and eight in his 16-year career. "I used to think no one would ever come close, but the way guys are today it seems like it's going to go. Last year you had 12 guys hit 40 or more home runs. It's not just one or two guys who could do it. There are five to eight guys capable of hitting 61. Among the many players with a shot at surpassing 61, three stand out as most likely to succeed: in order, the Seattle Mariners' Ken Griffey Jr., who hit 56 last season and only now, at 28, is hitting his power prime; the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire, who slugged 58 last year despite having one horrible month; and the Texas Rangers' Juan Gonzalez, who has four 40-home-run seasons even though he has played in as many as 150 games only once. ]In 1994 the career of shortstop Kevin Elster was in decline when Yankees general manager Gene Michael told him, "You're too soft. You can't play with that body. You've got to get a new body." Shortstops—like Michael himself—regularly hung 15-year careers on thin frames. Not anymore. Elster began a weight-training program. In '96 he cranked 24 homers and drove in 99 runs for the Rangers. ]At 35, Mickey Mantle was virtually finished. At 35, Duke Snider was a part-time player, and Ralph Kiner was in his third year of retirement. At 35, Paul O'Neill of the Yankees is coming off a career year (.324, 21 homers, 117 RBIs) and is more fit than ever, his 6'4", 215-pound frame chiseled by weights and creatine. ]"Let's face it, guys get paid for home runs," Piazza says. "If you hit 30 home runs, nobody cares if you hit .250 doing it. That extra strength may be the difference of five to 10 feet—the difference between a ball being caught or going over the wall. Why wouldn't you lift and take supplements? You've got one time in your life to get it right. I want to get it right." Piazza is the prototypical player of this new power generation. He was born 10 days before Denny McLain won his 30th game in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher. Only three major league players drove in 100 runs that season; in '97, Piazza was one of 35 players with at least 100 RBIs. No catcher has ever caught as many games (139) and batted higher than Piazza did last year, when he hit .362 (along with 40 home runs). Then he spent the off-season lifting weights with bronzed bodybuilders while his personal shopper-chef-nutritionist whipped up six meals a day for him: omelettes, pancakes, tuna, chicken, steak and, daily, a creatine shake. He reported to camp at 240 pounds, expecting the rigors of catching to wear him down to 225 by the end of the season. He says, "I want to go out and top last season."

dinosaur jesus Feb 10 2009 08:30 AM

I think there's some truth to what Verducci wrote, though, naive as it is. When baseball players finally realized that working out could make you bigger, stronger, and fitter, it changed the game, and that had nothing to do with steroids. The steroids just took it to another level.

Edgy DC Feb 10 2009 09:19 AM

But he worked the endorsement for Creatine in over and over, without once asking exactly how, suddenly, lifting weights and sucking a shake can make a whole class of men into beasts and it all be perfectly legal and above-board.

Frayed Knot Feb 10 2009 10:46 AM

="dinosaur jesus"]I can't go along with an article whose premise is "I don't really care that Alex Rodriguez used steroids". Because I do care that Alex Rodriguez used steroids. Not because I want one more excuse to kick poor Alex around--that's the ridiculous part of this, that he's getting all the abuse that should be spread 104 ways--but because knowing that he did gets us one step closer to knowing what the hell has been going on in baseball since the nineties. See I read this as Sheehan saying; 'I don't care specifically that Alex Rodriguez did steroids because this game of going back and playing "gotcha" so that we can know which records to strike/ignore and which players to praise or condemn by identifying the supposed bad from the supposed pure is a waste of time' That's different than not caring about the topic of steroids. He supposes - as I do - that MANY players were taking them during an era where the sport non only didn't forbid it but may have even encouraged it to the point where leaking out supposedly protected info as to which ones were caught by a specific test 5 years ago is a whole lot less important than where we go from here.

dinosaur jesus Feb 10 2009 11:11 AM

But he's also suggesting that the drugs may not have made much difference anyway. That may or not be true, but if you take it as your assumption, it's easy to dismiss all the indignation about steroids as so much hot air. But I think there's plenty of reason for real indignation. Hundreds of players cheated. They didn't break the rules, you can't punish them, maybe you can't even really judge them. But we ought to know what they were up to.

Centerfield Feb 10 2009 11:33 AM

[T]he reason we're talking about this in 2009 is that so many "reporters"—scare quotes earned—went ostrich in 1999. We hear every year around awards time that the people closest to the game know the game better than anyone, because they're in the clubhouse every day, and they talk to everyone, and they have a perspective that outsiders can't possibly understand. For those same people to do a collective Captain Renault, which they've been doing since beating up players for this transgression became acceptable, is shameful. Take your pick: they missed the story, or they were too chicken-shit to report it. In either case, the piling-on now is disgusting. In the same way that the reporters who vote for the Hall of Fame are going to take their embarrassment out on Mark McGwire, and probably Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro behind him, and god knows who to follow, they should punish themselves as well. I propose that for as long as a clearly qualified Hall of Famer remains on the ballot solely because of steroid allegations—or for that matter, proven use—there should be no J.G. Taylor Spink Award given out to writers. If we're going to allow failures during the "Steroid Era" to affect eligibility for honors, let's make sure we catch everyone who acted shamefully. Fucking brilliant.

Frayed Knot Feb 10 2009 12:13 PM

="dinosaur jesus"]But he's also suggesting that the drugs may not have made much difference anyway. That may or not be true, but if you take it as your assumption, it's easy to dismiss all the indignation about steroids as so much hot air. But I think there's plenty of reason for real indignation. Hundreds of players cheated. They didn't break the rules, you can't punish them, maybe you can't even really judge them. But we ought to know what they were up to. Or at least that the extent that whatever difference they made is tough to pin down -- which I read as a shot at those who want to use dirty tests to deny HoF inductions, take away previously won MVPs, and, in short, shun those players to the point where we act as if their seasons and accomplishments never existed. It's a bell that can't be un-rung.

dinosaur jesus Feb 10 2009 12:25 PM

It would be pretty stupid to shun just the ones who happened to get caught. And if there really are hundreds who did the same thing, I guess shunning them all doesn't make much sense either. But I want to know they're guilty before I forgive them.

Frayed Knot Feb 11 2009 06:21 AM

I guess I'm just not all that interested in knowing names because it's still not going to distinguish the short-term experimenters from the hard-core junkies and it still doesn't mean that those not on the list are innocent. And I think this is Sheehan's (and my) big problem with how this info is being treated by a good portion of the med-iots; that they're using partials leaks of lists that never should have been public to divide the baseball world into those who should be treated as pariahs (where the ARod's of the world are not only unworthy of the HoF but even of wearing pin-stripes) and those who should be canonized (see the articles about Saint Derek of Jeteria) over nothing more than the results of one test from 5 years ago which (maybe?) separates them. I just can't black-hat/white-hat this situation that easily.

Frayed Knot Feb 11 2009 06:22 AM

. (double post)

duan Feb 11 2009 06:51 AM baseball in the 90-03

was clearly rife with low end pharmaceuticals because there was no drug testing. I don't think there should be any *, because it was too prevalent to deem one person worse then the other, it was what it was and Sheehan is right, the writers knew more or less what was going on, maybe not names but they'd have a sense of the prevalence. Baseball 04-08 could be rife with high end pharmaceuticals and we wouldn't know it. There's no way to guarantee that it's clean, you can only do your best by putting in deterrents and testing. Is there a reason why baseball players couldn't give random blood tests? Is there a reason why they can't all give blood tests once a month and those tests get randomly analysed. No, there isn't. The MLBPA has to accept that it's going to get ugly for their cheating members, but the reality is for everyone of those members there's one guy who didn't at AAA level struggling to get on a 40 man roster. So how do you do it, make it a mandatory 2 year ban, make it clear that blood can be retro-analysed when new tests come out, make it 100% transparent how the testing system works and make it 100% random when it's happening. The players have to accept that anything he puts into his body COULD be a problem and the onus is on him to establish that it isn't, the "but it didn't say it was banned" won't wash.