Long Gone Summer

[cumberlandreds]

I was pretty excited by the whole thing as it was happening. I was clueless about steroids and had no idea somebody could take a pill that would make them hit Home Runs. I was attributing it to juiced balls, small parks and diluted pitching, but I was excited by it all anyway. By the time Bonds set the record, I was wise to what was going on and it was no big deal.

As far as the 30 for 30 goes, I remember what happened when it was happening, so I'm not all that interested in watching it.

I too was totally ignorant of steriods and such things. I just thought the players had more advanced work out routines and techniques. It wasn't until a couple of years later when all things started coming to light that I understood what was going on. My wife kept commenting on how big some of those guys were but I shrugged it off as people are just bigger heading into the 21st century. I enjoyed, at the time, the HR race. It was exciting and it brought me back to the game as I had become somewhat disinterested after the 94 strike. In the end it was a fraud. It got the baseball records out of whack and it seems no one wanted to take responsibility for ignoring all of this while it was happening.

[MillerTime58]

I'll pass. I'm still upset about two cheaters stealing national spotlight while the team I supported struggled to find a five-tool player that Leatherpants could use to compete with them.

You're acting like those players knew what they were doing was "cheating" but did it anyway. Nobody knew much of anything at the time and certainly nobody thought of it as "cheating" at the time, that didn't come until after the fact. It's really hard to blame the players for any of it.

[Chip R]

You're acting like those players knew what they were doing was "cheating" but did it anyway. Nobody knew much of anything at the time and certainly nobody thought of it as "cheating" at the time, that didn't come until after the fact. It's really hard to blame the players for any of it.

That's a good point. It was against the rules much like betting on baseball was against the rules before the Black Sox scandal. However there was no stated punishment for players who did it and, in the case of the juicers, there was no testing. It's like a parent telling their child they have to get all As or else but not specifying what "or else" means and not asking to see a report card. What they did was ethically wrong and, depending on your point of view, morally wrong.

[westofyou]

You're acting like those players knew what they were doing was "cheating" but did it anyway. Nobody knew much of anything at the time and certainly nobody thought of it as "cheating" at the time, that didn't come until after the fact. It's really hard to blame the players for any of it.

Exactly right a great example of that is Russ Ford



https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/russ-ford/

At first he used a broken pop bottle to scuff the ball deliberately. After his teammates missed hitting the ball by as much as 12 to 18 inches in practice, Ford began employing the scuff ball during games, using a small piece of emery he carried in his glove. Throughout the season, Ford worked on various ways of concealing the pitch, which helped him strike out 189 Eastern League batters.

Ford’s solid performance in Jersey City earned him another shot with the Highlanders at the start of the 1910 season. Now armed with the emery pitch–which he continued to disguise as a special kind of spitball called the “slide ball”–Ford authored one of the finest rookie pitching seasons in baseball history. In his first major league start, Ford struck out nine batters, walked none, and shut out the Philadelphia Athletics, 1-0. By the end of the season, Ford ranked second in the league in wins (26) and tied for second in shutouts (8), while posting a brilliant 1.65 ERA, seventh best in the league. With 209 strikeouts and 70 walks, he also boasted the fourth best strikeout-to-walk ratio in the league. Ford’s 26 victories also established the American League rookie record, which still stands. Thanks in large part to Ford’s dominating performance, the Highlanders finished in second place with an 88-63 record, their best showing in four years.

Ford continued to guard the secret of his new pitch, boasting to the press that he had 14 different versions of his “spitball.” “Ford worked cleverly,” umpire Billy Evans recalled. “He had the emery paper attached to a piece of string, which was fastened to the inside of his undershirt. He had a hole in the center of his glove. At the end of each inning he would slip the emery paper under the tight-fitting undershirt, while at the start of each inning he would allow it to drop into the palm of his glove.”

In 1911 the Highlanders slumped to sixth place, but Ford continued to rank among the best pitchers in the league, posting a 22-11 mark with a 2.27 ERA. On July 24 Ford also pitched for the all-star team that played a benefit game against the Cleveland Naps in the wake of pitcher Addie Joss’s death, hurling four innings in relief of Joe Wood and Walter Johnson. Another measure of respect came the following spring, when Ty Cobb spoke to a Baseball Magazine reporter about his participation in a vaudeville tour through the South. A month of one-night stands was worse than facing Walter Johnson or Russ Ford 154 games in the season, Cobb said.

But opposing batters had a much easier time handling Ford’s deliveries in 1912, as the pitcher lost a league-high 21 games, though his 3.55 ERA was still slightly better than the league average. By the following year, the secret behind the emery pitch had also made its way around the league, and the delivery was picked up by Cleveland right-hander Cy Falkenberg, who used it to win 23 games in 1913. That year, Ford battled through a fatigued right arm to post a 12-18 record with a solid but unspectacular 2.66 ERA. In a sign of his reduced strength, Ford struck out just 72 batters in 237 innings, a distant cry from the dominance he displayed as a rookie three years earlier

When New York offered him a cut in pay in 1914, Ford moved to the new Federal League, where he went 21-6 and posted a 1.82 ERA (second best in the league) with Buffalo. Ford’s .778 winning percentage led the league, as did his 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio and his six saves. It proved to be the last great season of his career, however, as the emery ball, already illegal in the American League, was banned by FL President James Gilmore in 1915. Deprived of his signature pitch and again nursing a sore arm, Ford struggled to a 5-9 record for Buffalo before the club released him on August 28, ending his major league career.

YEAR TEAM         AGE W   L   PCT   G    GS  CG  SV  GF  IP     H    R    ER   BB   SO    ERA  RSAA
1909 Yankees      26   0   0          1   0   0   0   1    3      4    4    3    4    2   9.00   -2 
1910 Yankees      27  26   6  .813   36  33  29   1   3  299.2  194   69   55   70  209   1.65   36 
1911 Yankees      28  22  11  .667   37  33  26   0   4  281.1  251  119   71   76  158   2.27   48 
1912 Yankees      29  13  21  .382   36  35  30   0   1  291.2  317  165  115   79  112   3.55    1 
1913 Yankees      30  12  18  .400   33  28  15   2   5  237    244  108   70   58   72   2.66    9 
1914 Buffeds      31  21   6  .778   35  26  19   6   9  247.1  190   63   50   41  123   1.82   47 
1915 Buffeds      32   5   9  .357   21  15   7   0   5  127.1  140   74   64   48   34   4.52  -21 
     TOTALS           99  71  .582  199 170 126   9  28 1487.1 1340  602  428  376  710   2.59  118 
     LG AVERAGE       82  82  .500          105   4     1487.1 1429  744  546  493  683   3.30    0

[Bruce Berenyi]

actually bob bailey , terry crowley and mike lum saved baseball

[Big Klu]

actually bob bailey , terry crowley and mike lum saved baseball

If the 1976 Yankees had started a left-handed pitcher instead of all righties, would Bob Bailey have been the Reds' first DH?

[Bruce Berenyi]

great point, he certainly would have been ahead of bill plummer

[M2]

You're acting like those players knew what they were doing was "cheating" but did it anyway. Nobody knew much of anything at the time and certainly nobody thought of it as "cheating" at the time, that didn't come until after the fact. It's really hard to blame the players for any of it.

100% of everybody knew it was cheating. That's why they hid it and lied about it.

[foster15]

If the 1976 Yankees had started a left-handed pitcher instead of all righties, would Bob Bailey have been the Reds' first DH?

Yep, and Doug Flynn would've started at 2nd base.

[NachoMan]

I thought it was OK, but the tone was just wrong for a time period that everyone now associates mainly with controversy. The score by Jeff Tweedy was great, though.

[Ron Gant]

Just how juiced was that era? In 1999 Larry Walker recorded 37 HR, 115 RBI, to go along with a .379 average an OPS of 1.168 (.458 OBP, .710 slugging). He finished 10th in the MVP voting.