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Originally Posted by registerthis
Yep, that's me, blindly defending Mays and Aaron. 
Cyclone, go back and read my post on the previous page. I'm defending no one and no behavior. That's your own concoction. But your position on this topic seems, to me at least, a bit unreasonable. You present a list of players who doctored balls, corked bats, threw spitters and did other unsavory things. You post an article describing the use of amphetamines in MLB, and present speculative evidence that steroid use was rampant in the 60s and 70s because more home runs were hit then.
Since when does past behavior and prior consequences dictate what can and cannot be said/done/believed about a particular individual? You act as if no one here has a right to be angry at people like McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro and (likely) many more for calling into question the integrity of the statistics they have put up, simply because we do not spew the same vitriol at Whitey Ford. I make no apoligies for my feelings on this issue, nor should anyone else. Whether everyone you have listed was juicing, whether every player in the history of the sport has been a rampant cheater whose records are fraudulent--I'm talking about the game today, and what should be done about it. So what if Mays juiced up, Jackson smeared stuff on his rear, and Aaron gave himself shots of fish tranquilizer? I wasn't alive during the era of the people you have mentioned and described, but I would like to think that an exposure of mass cheating in the majors during that time would have raised my ire as much as reports of the same do today. So knock off the hypocrite talk.
Like I wrote in my previous post, I have no interest in watching a game if the contest becomes who is capable of concocting the most inventive steroid formula. I want to see every effort made to ensure a clean game, from all participants. I'm not willing to grant leniancy or a free pass simply because players have knowingly gotten away with it in the past. Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro et al. used steroids, those steroids helped them achieve record-breaking numbers and statistics, and I have no respect for them because of that. Enough said. |
The game today has a steroid problem, and baseball is rightfully working on it. And yep, it needs to be resolved. All this I agree with you on.
I just find it absolutely stunning that seemingly nobody cares at all about the drug use that occurred in previous generations. Nobody cares about the past? Right, that must be why nobody wants any steroid user of today to break a record from the past.
Greenies are now banned by MLB. Why are people not at all calling into question the statistical records of the players who used them? If the drugs aren't "bad" then why did MLB ban them?
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2357037
There's an article about a list of approved substances coming out. Greenies aren't on it; they're banned.
Willie Mays used greenies, and those drugs likely helped him achieve his record breaking numbers and statistics. The players of today used steroids and those steroids helped them achieve record breaking numbers and statistics. I sense a connection. You've been stating that the steroids are bad, which I agree with, but that the greenies, possible steroid use in the 1960s and earlier records apparently do not matter, which I fully disagree with.
If your answer is you don't care because you weren't alive, that's fine. Roll with it then, but if you don't care how the game duped earlier fans in previous generations then that's sort of laughing in those fans' faces. I'm certainly not going to do that, and neither will baseball ... otherwise guys such as Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, et al would have been reinstated upon their death. Likewise, understand that 100 years from now fans taking your same view will not care about Barry Bonds using steroids. They'll want to put him in the Hall if he's not already there, and they won't care one iota how you believe steroids tarnished the game.
If you don't give a darn how a few men "played with the faith of fifty million people," as F. Scott Fitzgerald phrased it, then you'll never understand baseball's hierarchy of crimes.