Reminder that throughout October — as the baseball playoffs kick into gear — I’m going to do a bunch of quick hits that I hope will bring a little joy to your mornings.
Joe it is the Selig Steroid Era. Seriously if we call it that, maybe that is incentive for future commissioners not to look the other way.
And, are the Yanks also going to vacate the WS titles when Clemens and Petitte used? Although the Mitchell report is the product of a HUGE conflict of interest.
I wonder if we should asterisk any player whose home team plays with a Little League distance RF wall? i guess Jimmy Foxx/Hank Greenberg would have the Authentic AL record then.
There’s a whole generation of baseball fans who came of age during the steroid era. We saw Bonds and McGwire as heroes-- they were the reason we fell in love with the game. And these veteran writers seem to delight in telling us that our memories Don’t Count.
I'm glad Judge finally got the AL record as I was worried he might end up tied. There is nothing more exciting in sports than a record chase in an important statistical category.
Part of me thinks that's why there is so much anger towards Bonds / McGwire etc because they put the record too far out of reach. If they'd just hit 62 or 63 then the record would still be within reach since we've seen others (Stanton) come close in recent years.
The same issue happened in Hockey but the reason was the WHA merger (added 25% more teams) diluted the talent levels rather than steroids. As a result Gretzky put virtually every single season and career record out of reach because for almost 10 years scoring was off the charts high. Interestingly when hockey fans talk about those records they invariably acknowledge the insane scoring levels as the reason why the records are out of sight (That Ovechkin even has a chance at the career goals record is very under appreciated) and instead move on to talk about the greatness of today's players relative to their peers. Perhaps we should do more of that in baseball.
We should all be grateful, especially younger fans that we got to see a home run record chase this year. Now maybe we can convince Pujols to come back for another year or two and take a run at Bonds HR and Aaron's RBI records...
I agree with Roger Maris' son. There's a major difference between a longer schedule and cheating by adding Super Power with illegal steroids. McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa's marks are phony accomplishments that would not have been achieved but for taking Performance Enhancing Drugs. How much did it enhance these players performance? Enough for all three of three guys to crush Babe Ruth and Roger Maris' honest accomplishments. There's plenty of evidence that these three players were taking PEDS/Steroids if anyone wanted to put the effort into checking.
Maris/Mantle chase came when I was 8 and just getting interested in baseball. Sobering to think that someone who was my age now -69- during that 1961 home run chase had been born not just last century but in the 19th century well before Babe Ruth ever hit 60. Congrats to Judge. And to the 8 year old today who makes it to the 61st anniversary in 2083.
Yup pretty tired of the steroid talk by this time, the problem is when a player does something extraordinary today they are often suspected of cheating without any evidence of such……. Maybe reading about Barry Sanders will be more fun.
Do you think it's fair to assume that people are more likely to consider the PED-era home runs as inauthentic because they're conditioned to see disqualification as a remedy in olympic sports like cycling, weight lifting, and track and field? Baseball doesn't have the disqualification mechanism available as a remedy, for obvious reasons, but for PEDs specifically we're used to seeing first place DQ'd and the next man up considered the winner in his place. We're simply not conditioned to react in the same way to unfairness caused by segregation, bat corking, or spitballs.
I think that’s a good point. We don’t really know what else to do with it but decide it’s invisible and look at who/what is up next. Even in another sport with rampant “cheating”: college football and basketball, the official punishments are for teams caught paying players pre-NIL to disappear and become invisible to the record books by vacating titles and achievements.
What are the alternatives?
How about the single season RBI example? Hack Wilson set it in 1930, at 191. We don’t consider it often because nobody has come within 25 of it in more than 80 years. As I look through the list of player, RBIs, year, I’m explaining away and rationalizing the different eras I see. The top 12 are all between 1921 and 1934 - oh, that’s offensive explosion baseball. Then I see a year that starts with 18 - that doesn’t count, that’s pre-modern. Then I see MannyBManny’s 1999, which was during my lifetime and I remember but also was during the steroid era. More 1930s… Sammy Sosa 2001 (brain: “steroid era”)… Hey, a year that is after 1939 and not 1997-2003: #22 on the list is finally something interesting. Ted Williams and Vern Stephens at 159. Both in 1949. Both for the Red Sox… umm WTF was going on in Boston that year? But we are already 32 RBIs down the list from the leader, through eras that my brain just looks past because everyone was getting High Scores during those times.
I don’t have an answer or a definite point. I think it takes a lot of context to see and understand what numbers are good relative to their own times, and it’s hard earned sports fandom to get there.
And I didn’t write it explicitly but anything that happened in 1930 is hard to take very seriously because offensive explosion (juiced ball?) - the NL hit .301 that season.
Sosa took steroids and corked his bat. Not a player to be emulated or spoken of as a great player. A great cheater is where it stops for him. He went all out to cheat his way to break Ruth's record.
What about records set when the ball was juiced? Authentic??? The Twins- I say again, the Twins- had 307 home runs in 2019. Look at that lineup full of Hall of Famers!!! Nelson Cruz (OK, he might be considered), Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Eddie Rosario, Mitch Garver, CJ Cron, Jonathan Schoop, Jorge Polanco!!! What a murderers row.
Oops. (oh, the top 4 HR teams all time were in 2019...just saying)
Looking at the All Time Team Home Run Records, 33 of the top 38 teams are from the 21st century. The other 5 spots are all after 1995. The 1961 Yankees are the only team not from that period in the top 40 spots. No wonder Strike Outs are necessary to get batters out. If the ball is hit fair, it's a Home Run. Baseball was much better before the steroid ERA and juiced balls. Seeing the ball in play was far more interesting to me.
I do go back and forth on this because while Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa were fairly obvious, think of the pitchers they faced who were juiced up.
I'm also reminded of a Daily Show skit where Rob Corddry reports that he asked Bonds if he was using steroids. What happened, asked Jon Stewart. Corddry said he didn't say, but he bellowed like a bull, tore a phone book in half, and then ------ a Coke machine. Stewart said, "My God. Is everything all right." Corddry said, "I'm fine, but now that machine only gives exact change."
I think what this shows is that baseball has entered the same zone as football, where we have records and its kind of neat to know or talk about them, but they've lost a lot of their larger control over our imagination. When I grew up in the 90s, it mattered sooo much whether McGwire, Sosa, or Bonds broke that record? Now? Judge is kind of a neat story, but he's taken a back seat to so many others.
I also think the reason people care so much about the steroid users and what they did or didn't do is that they broke the baseball space-time continuum, where people compared players across different eras despite the differences. And McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds hit so many homeruns and exceeded the performance that was previously humanly possible that it broke that chain and ruined part of what made baseball fun for people. Whatever other considerations there might be, Judge's season is less fun that it should have been because of what those guys did in the past and that makes people who love baseball upset.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think that advanced stats, and the *ability* to put different eras in context, had something to do with that as well.
As much as I love Joe's writing, I wish he'd never write about PEDs and the steroid era again.
I get that it comes from a deep love of the game and he can't bear to think that his memories are tarnished and so he trots out the same tired ways of trying to explain it all away. It's the only blemish on his otherwise impeccable body of work.
It seems to me that we have no real way to know definitively that someone is not using PEDs. The ways of avoiding detection stay ahead of the tests, so only careless users get caught.
I’m not making any judgment about Judge one way or the other, just saying that it seems like a leap of faith to make the kind of claims Heyman and Verducci are making.
Also, while I get the general point that every era had its different advantages for home run hitters, that doesn’t necessarily mean that steroids and the like have the exact same impact as amphetamines. Nor does it mean that players today can’t/aren’t using some kind of stimulant themselves.
Try our best. Let those who come after judge us. This piece is a bit of a whine (for about 8 paras.). Author’s been arguing for over a decade steroid and non steroid should be treated as the same. Article is a bit of Festivus ‘list of grievances’ (nod to Frank C.), less Aaron Judge celebration. I.E. Verducci was one of author’s steroid foils back in blog days. ?Grist may go back to their time together at SI? Bit of a cheap shot at Maris son. Feelings aside, most folks recognize steroid players were as much the same as other players as Hulk to Bruce Banner. And majority of players that era didn’t use them (if we go off various reports). Moreover, MLB did have rules on books banning use. In author’s favor, the game is so different now it’s laughable we compare numbers of eras at all. Most recent example? I.E. wo DH, Pujols wouldn’t have 703 HRs. So is a DH league accomplishment the same as a no DH league accomplishment? And that’s not even the start. MLB rests its bonifidas on records. Is it time to change ‘HoF’ to ‘HoRecords’, and segment the records of eras? Author’s not there yet, but seems like he’s headed there.
"Judgmental Nostalgia" is a great term (and even includes a pun.)
Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire used steroids, and that helped them hit dingers. They also faced a lot of pitchers who were on steroids, and that hurt their chances of hitting more dingers.
That part is ignored, even when Clemens is kept out of the Hall because he cheated and used steroids and got an advantage from them.
As many readers have already commented here, it's difficult to compare any two players' performance (especially a raw stat like HR) across eras, or even across ballparks within a given season. Every player's performance requires context to evaluate. I fully believe that Bonds used steroids. But Barry Bonds from '01-'04, in context, is the most incredible hitter ever. It's not particularly close.
What records were set with corked bats? Players caught with cork are typically ejected and fined and shamed, etc.
Joe it is the Selig Steroid Era. Seriously if we call it that, maybe that is incentive for future commissioners not to look the other way.
And, are the Yanks also going to vacate the WS titles when Clemens and Petitte used? Although the Mitchell report is the product of a HUGE conflict of interest.
I wonder if we should asterisk any player whose home team plays with a Little League distance RF wall? i guess Jimmy Foxx/Hank Greenberg would have the Authentic AL record then.
There’s a whole generation of baseball fans who came of age during the steroid era. We saw Bonds and McGwire as heroes-- they were the reason we fell in love with the game. And these veteran writers seem to delight in telling us that our memories Don’t Count.
I'm glad Judge finally got the AL record as I was worried he might end up tied. There is nothing more exciting in sports than a record chase in an important statistical category.
Part of me thinks that's why there is so much anger towards Bonds / McGwire etc because they put the record too far out of reach. If they'd just hit 62 or 63 then the record would still be within reach since we've seen others (Stanton) come close in recent years.
The same issue happened in Hockey but the reason was the WHA merger (added 25% more teams) diluted the talent levels rather than steroids. As a result Gretzky put virtually every single season and career record out of reach because for almost 10 years scoring was off the charts high. Interestingly when hockey fans talk about those records they invariably acknowledge the insane scoring levels as the reason why the records are out of sight (That Ovechkin even has a chance at the career goals record is very under appreciated) and instead move on to talk about the greatness of today's players relative to their peers. Perhaps we should do more of that in baseball.
We should all be grateful, especially younger fans that we got to see a home run record chase this year. Now maybe we can convince Pujols to come back for another year or two and take a run at Bonds HR and Aaron's RBI records...
I agree with Roger Maris' son. There's a major difference between a longer schedule and cheating by adding Super Power with illegal steroids. McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa's marks are phony accomplishments that would not have been achieved but for taking Performance Enhancing Drugs. How much did it enhance these players performance? Enough for all three of three guys to crush Babe Ruth and Roger Maris' honest accomplishments. There's plenty of evidence that these three players were taking PEDS/Steroids if anyone wanted to put the effort into checking.
Maris/Mantle chase came when I was 8 and just getting interested in baseball. Sobering to think that someone who was my age now -69- during that 1961 home run chase had been born not just last century but in the 19th century well before Babe Ruth ever hit 60. Congrats to Judge. And to the 8 year old today who makes it to the 61st anniversary in 2083.
Yup pretty tired of the steroid talk by this time, the problem is when a player does something extraordinary today they are often suspected of cheating without any evidence of such……. Maybe reading about Barry Sanders will be more fun.
Do you think it's fair to assume that people are more likely to consider the PED-era home runs as inauthentic because they're conditioned to see disqualification as a remedy in olympic sports like cycling, weight lifting, and track and field? Baseball doesn't have the disqualification mechanism available as a remedy, for obvious reasons, but for PEDs specifically we're used to seeing first place DQ'd and the next man up considered the winner in his place. We're simply not conditioned to react in the same way to unfairness caused by segregation, bat corking, or spitballs.
I think that’s a good point. We don’t really know what else to do with it but decide it’s invisible and look at who/what is up next. Even in another sport with rampant “cheating”: college football and basketball, the official punishments are for teams caught paying players pre-NIL to disappear and become invisible to the record books by vacating titles and achievements.
What are the alternatives?
How about the single season RBI example? Hack Wilson set it in 1930, at 191. We don’t consider it often because nobody has come within 25 of it in more than 80 years. As I look through the list of player, RBIs, year, I’m explaining away and rationalizing the different eras I see. The top 12 are all between 1921 and 1934 - oh, that’s offensive explosion baseball. Then I see a year that starts with 18 - that doesn’t count, that’s pre-modern. Then I see MannyBManny’s 1999, which was during my lifetime and I remember but also was during the steroid era. More 1930s… Sammy Sosa 2001 (brain: “steroid era”)… Hey, a year that is after 1939 and not 1997-2003: #22 on the list is finally something interesting. Ted Williams and Vern Stephens at 159. Both in 1949. Both for the Red Sox… umm WTF was going on in Boston that year? But we are already 32 RBIs down the list from the leader, through eras that my brain just looks past because everyone was getting High Scores during those times.
I don’t have an answer or a definite point. I think it takes a lot of context to see and understand what numbers are good relative to their own times, and it’s hard earned sports fandom to get there.
And I didn’t write it explicitly but anything that happened in 1930 is hard to take very seriously because offensive explosion (juiced ball?) - the NL hit .301 that season.
Excellent points. You said you had no definite point, but I thought you made excellent ones.
Sosa took steroids and corked his bat. Not a player to be emulated or spoken of as a great player. A great cheater is where it stops for him. He went all out to cheat his way to break Ruth's record.
What about records set when the ball was juiced? Authentic??? The Twins- I say again, the Twins- had 307 home runs in 2019. Look at that lineup full of Hall of Famers!!! Nelson Cruz (OK, he might be considered), Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Eddie Rosario, Mitch Garver, CJ Cron, Jonathan Schoop, Jorge Polanco!!! What a murderers row.
Oops. (oh, the top 4 HR teams all time were in 2019...just saying)
Looking at the All Time Team Home Run Records, 33 of the top 38 teams are from the 21st century. The other 5 spots are all after 1995. The 1961 Yankees are the only team not from that period in the top 40 spots. No wonder Strike Outs are necessary to get batters out. If the ball is hit fair, it's a Home Run. Baseball was much better before the steroid ERA and juiced balls. Seeing the ball in play was far more interesting to me.
Good point. But please don't take that away - it's something the Twins actually beat the Yankees at!
LOL...Don't worry, I've zero power to do anything about MLB.
I do go back and forth on this because while Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa were fairly obvious, think of the pitchers they faced who were juiced up.
I'm also reminded of a Daily Show skit where Rob Corddry reports that he asked Bonds if he was using steroids. What happened, asked Jon Stewart. Corddry said he didn't say, but he bellowed like a bull, tore a phone book in half, and then ------ a Coke machine. Stewart said, "My God. Is everything all right." Corddry said, "I'm fine, but now that machine only gives exact change."
I think what this shows is that baseball has entered the same zone as football, where we have records and its kind of neat to know or talk about them, but they've lost a lot of their larger control over our imagination. When I grew up in the 90s, it mattered sooo much whether McGwire, Sosa, or Bonds broke that record? Now? Judge is kind of a neat story, but he's taken a back seat to so many others.
I also think the reason people care so much about the steroid users and what they did or didn't do is that they broke the baseball space-time continuum, where people compared players across different eras despite the differences. And McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds hit so many homeruns and exceeded the performance that was previously humanly possible that it broke that chain and ruined part of what made baseball fun for people. Whatever other considerations there might be, Judge's season is less fun that it should have been because of what those guys did in the past and that makes people who love baseball upset.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think that advanced stats, and the *ability* to put different eras in context, had something to do with that as well.
That's a great point. Steroids did more damage than I thought.
As much as I love Joe's writing, I wish he'd never write about PEDs and the steroid era again.
I get that it comes from a deep love of the game and he can't bear to think that his memories are tarnished and so he trots out the same tired ways of trying to explain it all away. It's the only blemish on his otherwise impeccable body of work.
I'd like it if no one wrote about it again (at least without an actual novel point-of-view).
But as long as people with an audience are going to spout utter BS, then others with an audience calling people on their utter BS is just fine.
It seems to me that we have no real way to know definitively that someone is not using PEDs. The ways of avoiding detection stay ahead of the tests, so only careless users get caught.
I’m not making any judgment about Judge one way or the other, just saying that it seems like a leap of faith to make the kind of claims Heyman and Verducci are making.
Also, while I get the general point that every era had its different advantages for home run hitters, that doesn’t necessarily mean that steroids and the like have the exact same impact as amphetamines. Nor does it mean that players today can’t/aren’t using some kind of stimulant themselves.
Try our best. Let those who come after judge us. This piece is a bit of a whine (for about 8 paras.). Author’s been arguing for over a decade steroid and non steroid should be treated as the same. Article is a bit of Festivus ‘list of grievances’ (nod to Frank C.), less Aaron Judge celebration. I.E. Verducci was one of author’s steroid foils back in blog days. ?Grist may go back to their time together at SI? Bit of a cheap shot at Maris son. Feelings aside, most folks recognize steroid players were as much the same as other players as Hulk to Bruce Banner. And majority of players that era didn’t use them (if we go off various reports). Moreover, MLB did have rules on books banning use. In author’s favor, the game is so different now it’s laughable we compare numbers of eras at all. Most recent example? I.E. wo DH, Pujols wouldn’t have 703 HRs. So is a DH league accomplishment the same as a no DH league accomplishment? And that’s not even the start. MLB rests its bonifidas on records. Is it time to change ‘HoF’ to ‘HoRecords’, and segment the records of eras? Author’s not there yet, but seems like he’s headed there.
"Judgmental Nostalgia" is a great term (and even includes a pun.)
Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire used steroids, and that helped them hit dingers. They also faced a lot of pitchers who were on steroids, and that hurt their chances of hitting more dingers.
That part is ignored, even when Clemens is kept out of the Hall because he cheated and used steroids and got an advantage from them.
As many readers have already commented here, it's difficult to compare any two players' performance (especially a raw stat like HR) across eras, or even across ballparks within a given season. Every player's performance requires context to evaluate. I fully believe that Bonds used steroids. But Barry Bonds from '01-'04, in context, is the most incredible hitter ever. It's not particularly close.