Friday, May 24, 2013
MLB: Don Sutton never shy about voicing his opinion
(mlb.mlb.com)
Sutton: Because that’s where the defaced money is.
Read More...The outspoken Sutton—who came up with the Dodgers in 1966 and pitched with them for 16 of his 23 seasons—has his own opinion about everything.
He said in an interview last week that he hates pitch counts.
“I say it with a laugh in my voice when I broadcast: ‘That’s 100 pitches. On the next one, he’s going to turn into a troll.’ At 101, you just disappear. Poof, you’re gone,” Sutton said.
...MLB.com: Did you cheat?
Sutton: No, I never got ...
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< 1 2player A was don mattingly.
player B was darryl strawberry.
Like smileyy said, Andruw Jones for sure. How about Nomar Garciaparra? Dwight Gooden? Darryl Strawberry? Eric Davis?
There are other players who just fell apart. When Dale Murphy was winning MVP awards, I think a lot of people thought of him as a HoFer. Heck, I'd put Jim Rice in this category except that they went and elected him anyway.
Garvey is certainly number one on the list, right?
Pete Rose, though he doesn't really count.
In addition to those already mentioned, maybe Fred Lynn and Juan Gonzalez (who were both already named tangentially). Tony Oliva surely had some supporters, possibly Dave Concepcion (9 All Star Games by age 34), maybe Bill Madlock (after 1983 he had 4 batting titles and a .317 career average, when that still meant something -- I don't think people were ever crazy about him, but they might have reluctantly acknowledged a "Hall of Fame path" at that point).
Before my time -- so I don't know what the popular perception was -- Elston Howard (9 straight All Star Games, MVP, 4 World Series titles) and Harvey Kuenn (8 straight All-Star Games, MVP votes in 8 straight years, led league in hits four times) seemed to be cruising to the HOF after 10 or so years.
Part of it is perception, of course. You can easily say that the best players in the game during Dawson's career were always Morgan, Schmidt, Rickey, Raines, Boggs.
That much of the management structure didn't think steroids enhanced baseball performance. It's dead easy to document this. There was a widely held belief that adding upper body strength slowed bat speed. Sparky Anderson was the most public on this, but he was far from alone.
At which point we're at the mid-90s. That takes us to roughly the labor wars of the mid-90s. I have little doubt that had they broken the PA, MLB would have put Vincent's memo into practice -- along with off-season testing. But they lost. And had poisoned the relationship with the PA. Precisely zero chance of them getting any kind of testing. They were busy negotiating away potential punitive damages from their bad faith bargaining.
So we come to the first post-strike negotiations. Selig (and others) are not interested in anything contentious. And the PA (with good reason -- remember, Selig's lied to congress, MLB's been found guilty of bargaining in bad faith. All in the not too distant past) doesn't trust MLB.
Maybe they'd have agreed to some kind of testing if MLB threw out a big enough bone. But remember -- the strike did an awful lot of damage. MLB as a whole probably still hadn't recovered completely. Selig spent the time coalition building. And building a substantially less confrontational relationship with the PA.
All in all, I think it fair to say that MLB got testing as soon as it was possible given what happened in 1994.
I should note that the NHL had even even stranger stance on steroids. That they were nothing to worry about because Canadian boys don't use steroids. Swear to God that was their official position.
Yes, no question that there is a cadre of true fanatics here at BTF that is apparently content to spend the rest of their days on this earth discussing this topic. The overwhelming majority of them are enablers who can't get over the fact that they have been soundly routed in this debate.
Unfortunately, this has come at the expense of driving away a broader base of baseball fans who aren't quite as obsessed with the topic as the dead-enders. That's why the Game Chatters are now basically dead, where many of them were quite active up until a couple of years ago.
I think you are right about the casual fans being driven away, I suspect it is the policy of forcing them to click and read all the steroids threads (and the penalties for not posting in those threads are bad to, I bet that is why you had to post). If only we didn't do that the site would be so much better and they would not have been driven away.
Soundly routed? We won on the only battleground available to us: this forum. The point of view of the minority who still sees a meaningful distinction between steroids and amps - expressed most vocally by Andy - is not taken seriously by the vast majority of people here. That point of view may have won the day in the mainstream, but it has decidedly lost in this forum, and in any forum where the arguments have been given a serious hearing.
And yet the content of the site remains almost exclusively tailored to the fanatical ultra high volume posters.
So the circle jerk is still circle jerking to the dulcet tones of "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GREENIES!!!!". Wow. Impressive.
In the broader world, of course, this meme is losing traction, not gaining it. Plenty of writers read this site and not a one is carrying the meme's water in print that hasn't carried it from day one. Mark McGwire's vote has gone down by a third over seven years. Comtemporaneous opinion in the Amp Era barely pondered the notion of amp use bearing on HOF worthiness; on the contrary, every faction of the sport, right down to HOFers themselves, has vetoed the HOF case of two of the sports' best all-time numbers generators for HOF membership based solely on their roiding. Bonds and Clemens got barely over a third of the vote.
But congratulations -- like the modern liberals, the anti-anti-roiders will always have each other.
To be fair to the original proposition (10 year no-doubt guys who didn't make it), Davis only had 7-8 years before injuries took their toll, and the shine started coming off of Strawberry after about 9 years.
Won? (and bear in mind my position is pretty much the same as yours) Doubtful.
Obviously I believe in the arguments I've made, but I've seen precious little evidence that the arguments have swayed anybody.
The anti-steroid voters just don't care about what was done in previous years. They don't care to go into whether some drug available to Mantle, Mays, and Aaron was used or what the effects might be.
Now if you had a player today get suspended for such use, I don't think they'd make much distinction between the types of drugs, and such player would suffer just like the roiders. That or HGH. It's all PEDs, and everyone with a taint is a cheater. If strong evidence came out that Craig Biggio was a speed freak during his playing career, his HOF chances would be toast.
We don't have a test case though, as there are no HOF caliber players on this ballot or coming up who are known users of greenies but not suspected of steroids. If Carlos Ruiz had 12 years like 2012, he'd be in that category, but he doesn't, and would never sniff the HOF anyway.
That's true but it's not an excuse for not making serious efforts to ban them while all other sports were. And is only slightly more rational than "Canadian boys don't use steroids."
Look, it's like somebody proposing to build a bar across the street from a school and the local zoning board denying it. After the bar builder points out that there is no law in that town restricting bar locations, the zoning board responds "well, we never thought anybody would ever propose to do so." The bar builder then points out that every town within 100 miles has such a restriction, the local council has twice voted down proposed legislation with such restrictions but has passed a law saying bars can't be operated across the street from churches. That would be clear evidence that bars across the street from schools is A-OK in that town.
Anyway, you're just making my point. It wasn't that MLB leadership was ignorant of steroids, it's that nobody cared until the post-BALCO PR nightmare began. You're just trying to wave off this disinterest as ignorance of its potential effects which I don't really buy. But if management was A-OK with steroid use and players were A-OK with steroid use and fans loved the product supposedly produced by steroid use -- where is the cheating?
If management considered steroids to be cheating, they could have gone after them more aggressively. They did not. If the Union thought steroids were a danger to the players and/or the game, they could have gone after them more aggressively. They did not. If a large group of players felt cheated by steroids, they could have complained more loudly through the media. They did not. If the media considered steroids to be cheating, they could have gone after them more aggressively. They did not.
What conclusion can we possibly draw other than steroid use in baseball was A-OK with damn near everybody?
We do have a known user of greenies whose use is almost completely forgotten in favor of his suspected steroid use. That's close.
I'm a convert on the issue of greenies vs. steroids. I didn't think the two were comparable, but I've come around to the other side. The only difference I see now between them is how the players themselves viewed usage, but that minor distinction isn't enough to overcome the overwhelming similarities between the two acts.
Really? I can't name anyone off the top of my head, but that's not the impression I've gotten.
Because he has been one of the faces of this - and in the cross hairs of the ant-steroids crusaders - for many years now. And was blackballed from the game. And of course fell short of this year's HOF election.
The argument Kiko and I have made (and he's done the heavy lifting on supplying the evidence) is against the oft-stated contention that the steroids story (frenzy, witchhunt, whatever you want to call it) was all about Bonds, or that he was a major driving force in it.
Both he and I would and have acknowledged that he has since become the unmistakable face of steroids (with Rocket as his unwilling sidekick). But in terms of driving the story, the evidence simply doesn't support the idea that Bonds-mania was a signicant factor. Kiko's laid out a pretty compelling timeline, which has basically been refuted with, "yeah, but you know it was REALLY about Bonds," type of silliness.
Pretty much the only media coverage of greenies in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, was Bouton writing about them in Ball Four, for which he was raked over the coals. "Everyone may have known", including players, writers, and management, but there was most certainly a code of silence about them to outsiders. Kind of just like steroids.
Point taken, but pretty much nobody remembers those trials and your casual fan has never even heard of them. Whereas I suspect it will be a very long time before the steroids debate disappears from the national scene or that someone can say "Barry Bonds" and the first thought that comes to everyone's mind is PEDs. Certainly those trials resonated not one whit when it came time to vote Steve Carlton into the HOF, nobody called for Willie Mays to be removed, and were Pete Rose on the HOF ballot he would have sailed in with barely if any mention of them.
That may be so (is it? Molitor went in on his first year, Jenkins on his 3rd but it was going to take him a few years regardless) but the question was of amps and steroids and the general larger question of PED use. The reason Joe Fan and the baseball establishment (writers, etc.) are ticked about PEDs is very different than the reason they were ticked about cocaine, despite the fact that they both involved drug use.
People keep throwing greenies into the discussion like a little boy presenting a little girl with a gift box containing a mouse.
Ok, well, I can't weigh in having not seen the evidence. It's not my recollection of events.
And Sports Illustrated put amphetamines, steroids and other drugs on its cover in 1969. The fact is, those stories were covered like flareups. The press duly noted the Pete Rose testimony or the Willie Mays "red juice" at the time, and then wished them away. Because the writers were selling "say hey" and stickball in the street and Charlie Hustle and diving headfirst into third base, not aggressive and ongoing drug coverage and opinion.
What gives the lie to the response typically given when these questions are asked about steroids? Namely, why would so many players use them if they didn't help?
Actually Walt they couldn't have. That much was settled in the series of arbitration hearings on recreational drugs.
One can draw a somewhat different conclusion. PEDs were by Vincent's own admission a lower priority than recreational drugs in the early 90s. MLB wanted recreational drugs (and PEDs more or less on a "since we're testing ..." gone but were not willing to bargain this point. IOW they were not necessarily "fine" but were unwilling to pay the price to bargain them away.
And it's worth noting that MLB never really did pay any price to get PED testing. Or to get stronger penalties
"amphetamines decrease reaction times, improve resistance to fatigue and improve performace in quite a few sports related tasks. There is good reason to believe that amphetamines can help people hit a baseball. That is obvious from the medical literature.
see
Tokish, Kocher and Hawkins Am.J.Sp.Med 32:1543 (2004); and references cited therein. "
Again, nobody's specifically studied greenies and baseball, but then nobody's studies steroids and baseball. (I have seen a documentary of a true clinical trial of testosterone and track and field. "High Performance")
Yes. And I believe that bothered Miller, particularly the latter part.
You do realize that, for much of that period, amphetamines were commonly perscribed as a diet pill?
-- Moises Alou, Astros outfielder, on how many players use steroids or amphetamines. August 20-26, 2000.
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