Segregation-Era Baseball Records Need Asterisk

Before 1947 it was segregation, during the '50s-70s it was "greenies" (aka amphetamines), and apparently from the 80s-today it has been steroids. As far as I'm concerned, the real beauty of the game is that it has evolved around these challenges so well that the numbers from each generation are so comparable with each other. Each generation of fans is naturally going to grow up believing that theirs was the "right" way to play the game and that there is something wrong or shady with the next one that sees all of those records broken. That's the way it has been for over a century, and scapegoating Barry Bonds (or Jose Canseco, whom most of these anti-steroid blowhards owe a MAJOR apology to, just don't expect it to ever happen) is certainly not going to change it.

Bottom line: Barry Bonds is the Home Run King (and Pete Rose is the Hit King,) and there's not a damn thing MLB can, or should, do about it.

I can go on and on about this but will be brief-this time. Well, relatively brief.

1. At the time Bonds is believed to have taken steroids, they were not banned in baseball. Many were illegal, as were greenies for example when Mays's generation popped them like candy. (and by the way alcohol and prostitution when Ruth patronizing speakeasies and whorehouses. No comment on how they affected his records.)
2. Apparently their use was widespread throughout the game, and used as much by pitchers as hitters. The effects were obviously quite different on different people (Sanchez, Lawton) and there is no way to disentangle how they helped or hurt specific players.
3. If we are going to asterisk records because of changes in conditions, then the first great asterisk has to be Babe Ruth since his career home run title came at the start of the lively ball era. The "real" home run king is the man he displaced. (Was it Roger Conner?) I know the claim is that Bonds had an unfair advantage over contemporaries, not predecessors, but the records relate to previous players as well. In the Ruth case, we know that the new ball increased home runs; there cannot be such certainty with steroids.
4. The Rose situation is entirely irrelevant to the Bonds case.

Ok, here is one of the longer pieces I have written about this subject. I posted this on another site a few weeks ago.
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The investigation into steroids is a colossal waste of time and money. It is one of the most overblown non-issues in the history of the game.

It could never happen, but in a perfect world, 100s of ballplayers would state the following:

Yes, we experimented with steroids, Tommy John surgery, eyeglasses and contacts, vitamins and supplements and many other techniques to improve our on-field performance. Some of the things we did were illegal, like the greenies and red juice that Willie Mays and his contemporaries used like candy in the 1960s or the stuff they smeared on Koufax's arm to keep it from falling off. Mostly that reflects on the idiocy of our government's drug laws, and in any case the boundaries between legal and illegal were fuzzy enough not to matter.

Until recently, there was no baseball policy regarding the substances we used, nor is there any evidence of how it affects performance. Obviously some people were totally unaffected while others may have benefited. In any case, the main difference between what we did and what the Mays' generation did is that we combined our practice into a full-scale program of training and nutrition while they popped pills simply to feel the effects. Our dedication was far more admirable.

There is no connection between what we did and what Pete Rose did. The error there is to consider these moral lapses, and neither was. If taking steroids is "wrong", it is purely for medical reasons, and if baseball feels an obligation to ban something because it is detrimental to health, fine. That is now the case and anyone who is caught receives a punishment just as he would for fighting or using a corked bat or any other trangression of a baseball rule.

Rose's case is entirely different and irrelevant. There is no moral issue there either unless you have some objections to gambling or can prove he threw games. The issue there is that Rose DID violate a baseball rule and the penalty was clear and well-known. He has to be banned from the game because the rule demanded it, just as if he would be out on 3 strikes or allowed a base on 4 balls. It has nothing to do with whether gambling is right or wrong but with the fact that baseball prohibited it on penalty of expulsion. If you dislike that rule, try to get it repealed, but so long as it is in effect, Rose is out.

We did not cheat. We did the opposite by trying to improve our performance to please paying customers. The cheaters were those, like Ruth, Mantle and myriad others, who took money on false pretences, playing while drunk or hung over or out of shape. Unlike them, we will continue to try to squeeze the most out of our talents and seek whatever edge we can. If we violate baseball rules, we will accept our punishments and move on, but the essence of competition is seeking that edge, and you cannot stop us from doing whatever we can within the rules that exist to attain that goal.

There is no question that Wickham has a good point.  But it is irrellevant to Barry Bonds.  What Bonds (and others) did was cheating.  

Just because Barry Bonds has been taken to task to a much larger extent than other cheaters is irrellevant.  They have the goods on Bonds and unless the government has a much weaker case than I suspect, you go after the the guy who can convict.  Let's not make Barry Bonds into some weak defenseless indigent. There is no way to make a case against a man of his means without spending millions of dollars.

Whether it violated the letter of the law in baseball at the time is irrellevant.  I sure don't teach my kids to get away with anything that others get away with or look for loopholes in the law to cheat the system.  Steroid use is serious business and can not be excused.

In an ideal world, you administer justice equally.  In this world, we can not afford to ignore the perpetrators that we have caught in the name of justice.  That isn't equal protection, that's just giving up.

If they throw Bonds to the wolves and then stop the prosecutions that would be a travesty.  But for what Barry Bonds did, and for the sake of every player that did not cheat, he must get thrown to the wolves.

Let's not forget Hank Aaron played in the smallest ballparks of his time. Let's just start throowing up asterisks everywhere.

ttnorm, I agree with much of what you say. You do not defend a person by saying others are getting away with it, and I do not want my children to look for loopholes or weasel their way into avoiding legitimate punishments.

My point is different. The one argument I have heard in condemnation of Bonds that makes sense to me is that by violating federal laws he had an unfair advantage over players who would not take that risk or felt constrained from illegal actions. That is a strong argument, but I do not think it overrides the myriad other factors that should affect our judgment.

Aside from the fact that I am not sure other players' reticence was motivated by ethical considerations, the apparently widespread use of steroids leveled the playing field considerably. But I still accept that the above argument has merit.

What I object to is the confusing of health and moral issues. Laws that penalize criminal activity while under the influence (DUI, for example) may be legitimate. So too are certain types of laws that criminalize sale of dangerous drugs as that is akin to foisting poisons on consumers.

But laws that criminalize the use of drugs, in and of itself a victimless act (except for the person involved), are themselves wrong. I am not advocating civil disobedience on this matter, but I think it should alter our judgments of the people who did use such prohibited substances. And of course, the actual list of such products is so arbitrary and so confusing (many legitimate medications include steroids, for example) that the outrage against players who combined steroid use with nutrition, rigorous workouts and tough programs to develop their skills is, in my view, sanctimonious and wrong-headed.

As for cheating, I disagree absolutely. I realize that there is implicit the assumption that anything illegal is prohibited, but aside from the fact that some substances were not even illegal (Andro?), the lack of enforcement and even active encouragement of their use clearly made such laws moot. They were not prohibited in baseball at the time, so there was no cheating. On the contrary, the players were doing everything within the rules of baseball, to play as well as they could.