Davidoff's ballot was excellent but his thought process was even better. Process vs results in everything. His thoughts here are also spot-on; the willingness to change a position is admirable.

the willingness to change a position is admirable.

But not based on principle.

Sorry - Newsday has a pay wall….

Nuf sed. He's just preaching to the choir here, anyway.

I think the Hall of Fame ballot is about something else. It’s about judging a player’s performance against his contemporaries, and it’s about considering and understanding the times in which they played.

When a player and his contemporaries aren't playing by the same rules, however, this becomes a bit difficult. I also don't really understand the 'times in which they played' argument as applied here. It's one thing to take that position with respect to an official policy, such as segregation, but how many players have to use PEDs before it becomes 'just part of the times'? 5%? 10%? 50%?

The entire debate has gone far afield.

Votes (or non-votes) for PEDers should never have been about moralizing, but instead about putting their numbers in context and adjusting them for the "performance enhancement" obtained from PEDs.

Had that happened, as it should have, we wouldn't have been subjected to these newfound "appreciations" of "history, fairness, and consistency" and other such drivel. The answer isn't to be found in placing 'roiding within the historical narrative of major league baseball.

Votes (or non-votes) for PEDers should never have been about moralizing,

For the umpteenth million time, the voters are required to consider the character clause when voting.

Votes (or non-votes) for PEDers should never have been about moralizing, but instead about putting their numbers in context and adjusting them for the "performance enhancement" obtained from PEDs.

Which gives you 500 different adjustments for 500 different voters, each and every one of them based on guesswork. Whether you want to call it "morality" or a case of wanting to see a playing field unaffected by steroids, the question should be whether or not a player who used steroids is worthy of even being considered for the honor of enshrinement, regardless of his statistics.

Of course that still leaves it up to the individual writers, but at least this way there are only two possible answers to the question, not 500 of them. If you answer "yes", then you don't have to make any stab in the dark statistical adjustments, you simply judge a juicer the way you would any other player. And if you answer "no", that's the end of the story. I don't think that any of them belong in the Hall, but if they're going to admit Bonds or Clemens, I can't see much argument for keeping McGwire or Palmeiro out.

For the umpteenth million time, the voters are required to consider the character clause when voting.

Sure, but they're also required to consider the "playing record," and that's where 'roids had their biggest impact. The better approach is to bemoan the distorting influence on what happened on the field, not the purportedly poor character users demonstrated -- which is overstated anyway. Should we care more about Ben Johnson's "poor" character ... or should we care that 'roids helped him run 9.79 at Seoul?

Making your decision based on whether 'roiders "belong" in the Hall of Fame is a lazy approach using too blunt an instrument.

Which gives you 500 different adjustments for 500 different voters, each and every one of them based on guesswork.

As opposed to the "precision" to be found in blowin' in the wind "appreciations" of "history, fairness, and consistency"?

Please.

the question should be whether or not a player who used steroids is worthy of even being considered for the honor of enshrinement, regardless of his statistics.

That is, one supposes, the threshold question. After that, the analysis gets tougher -- making it pretty clear why the writers want to stick to the threshold question.

I think the Hall of Fame ballot is about something else. It’s about judging a player’s performance against his contemporaries, and it’s about considering and understanding the times in which they played.

Which is exactly what we're doing if we adjust the known 'roiders stats down for the advantage they gained.

My attitude is that if you knowingly took steroids/assorted PEDs, and hid it from the world, you clearly though you were gaining a performance edge. If the player thought that, I'm going to dock him for that advantage in assessing his career.

Votes (or non-votes) for PEDers should never have been about moralizing, but instead about putting their numbers in context and adjusting them for the "performance enhancement" obtained from PEDs.

Concur.

I don't think that any of them belong in the Hall, but if they're going to admit Bonds or Clemens, I can't see much argument for keeping McGwire or Palmeiro out.

There's a very good argument.

I think Bonds and Clemens would have been clear HoF players w/o steroid/PED help, so I'd vote for them on or about their 10th ballot. I also think they were humongous asses who brought lots of shame to baseball, so should suffer for a good while before being honored.

With McGwire and Palmeiro, I don't think they put up HoF #'s w/o PEDs, so they don't go in.

For the umpteenth million time, the voters are required to consider the character clause when voting.

Which is true but this is the ONLY area that they have done that historically. Not only have long ago issues like segregation and racism been ignored but pretty serious crimes of a more recent nature (e.g. cocaine and other hard drug usage) has also been ignored.

I'm fine with writers employing the character clause but I'd like to see more consistency to it. I can't understand a vote for Tim Raines but a no vote for Rafael Palmeiro for example (not a comparison of who the better player was, just a quick example of two players who would be clear Hall of Famers absent the character clause).

Sugar, trying to parse how players would have done if they hadn't used is a fools' errand. There are just too many unknowns.

Which gives you 500 different adjustments for 500 different voters, each and every one of them based on guesswork.

As opposed to the "precision" to be found in blowin' in the wind "appreciations" of "history, fairness, and consistency"?

Who said anything about any of that? But how in the hell can you make any kind of statistical "adjustments" beyond saying that "they helped him"? All you know about the juicers in question is that they juiced. You have no idea for exactly how long each of them juiced, how intelligently they worked out, and in the case of home runs, how many of them got that extra distance from the effects of the juice as opposed to other factors.

Ray-Ray's position is that we can't know for sure that Bonds or any other juicer even got one extra home run as a result of his juicing. That's seems totally bizarre to me, but at least by doing that he's comparing apples to apples on the basis of the perfectly known reality of the record book, and not by comparing two or more sets of conjectured "adjustments". We may know for certain that McGwire was a juicer, and we may feel pretty damn sure that he wouldn't have hit all of those home runs without the aid of the juice, but how the hell you can say that he would have hit 400 or 500 or 580 home runs instead of the 583 he actually hit, is totally beyond me.

the question should be whether or not a player who used steroids is worthy of even being considered for the honor of enshrinement, regardless of his statistics.

That is, one supposes, the threshold question. After that, the analysis gets tougher -- making it pretty clear why the writers want to stick to the threshold question.

As should any reasonably sane person who doesn't want to get bogged down in impossible statistical "adjustments".

I'm fine with writers employing the character clause but I'd like to see more consistency to it. I can't understand a vote for Tim Raines but a no vote for Rafael Palmeiro for example (not a comparison of who the better player was, just a quick example of two players who would be clear Hall of Famers absent the character clause)

The consistency involves whether or not you think that the character breaches in question helped a player's performance on the playing field in a way that was a serious detriment to the game's integrity. That question will be answered differently by different voters, but within each voter's mind it's going to be a fairly straightforward point. Cobb's individual racism** and Raines's moronic cocaine use may have reflected on their general character, but it had nothing to do with helping their on-the-field performance.

**Of course the racism of the game in general benefited all the players in the Jim Crow era by padding their statistics against artificially restricted competition, but Cobb's individual racism in itself was a total non-factor.

Ray-Ray's position is that we can't know for sure that Bonds or any other juicer even got one extra home run as a result of his juicing.

There are a lot of things in modern analysis we don't know "for sure." How many debates have we had about how precise WAR is?

Indeed, there are imprecisions in every cross-era comparision we do. OPS+ is premised on peer comparisions, and contains park and era adjustments, all of which lend imprecision to the most fundamental of serious metrics. Pitchers' ERAs are adjusted for their home park even though one starter may have pitched 12 games at home and another 20.

How should the Negro League guys be judged? How should Ichiro's time in Japan be judged?

Imprecision everywhere.

Not only have long ago issues like segregation and racism been ignored but pretty serious crimes of a more recent nature (e.g. cocaine and other hard drug usage) has also been ignored.

If doing cocaine helped your on-field performance, it'd be in the mix. I don't think it's inconsistent to ignore behaviors that aren't reputed to enhance athletic performance.

If one's personal racism made one's team worse somehow, then it should be in the mix. Often tough to separate it from the institutional racism, though.

Davidoff really gives Pos a run for his money as my favorite baseball writers...

...and as for the whole 'morality clause' thing - that ship sailed a loooonnnngggg time ago. The only weight it would have for me would be for nominal deterrent impact (i.e., gambling).

I mean, even in context, Cap Anson was a racist jackass who probably contributed as much as any individual (this side of what... maybe Landis?) to baseball's segregation. But - he's a HoFer and probably should be.

Ty Cobb may have been a complex individual, but I think you can also say that he probably breached the whole morality clause aplenty - and he should certainly be in.

Even the cutesy wink-wink at Gaylor Perry and the spitter.

The morality aspect of PEDs would have zero impact on my HoF votes.

Imprecision everywhere.

I'll grant that point, but this is the only case where the imprecision is mixed with the character question, and where there are no precedents or contexts that can be said to affect equally all of the players in question.

That said, my objection to your idea is more practical than philosophical. As a purely philosophical matter, I can see an evaluation distinction (though not a moral distinction) between a slam dunk HoFer even without the juice, and one where a statistical "adjustment" might drop him below the line. I just can't for the life of me figure out how you'd even begin to calculate such an adjustment, let alone figure out how you'd get to a coherent ending point. Which is why I draw the line with a simple "according to the best available evidence, did he or didn't he?"

There is simply not enough data to make any quantitative conclusions about the effect of any pharmacuetical: legal, banned, or other on baseball performance.

As a trivial example: there is no "with" and "without" steroids (or, for that matter amps or caffeine) that are reliable.

Look at the bright side. If the "Fab Four" stay ostracized, somebody can start a renegade "Hall of Phame" with them in it, along with Shoeless Joe and Petey-Poo. And they can add in all of the HoM guys who are currently on the outside looking in. (All except Dick Allen, of course.)

Davidoff really gives Pos a run for his money as my favorite baseball writers...

He certainly seems to have the same moral turpitude.

When a player and his contemporaries aren't playing by the same rules, however, this becomes a bit difficult. I also don't really understand the 'times in which they played' argument as applied here. It's one thing to take that position with respect to an official policy, such as segregation, but how many players have to use PEDs before it becomes 'just part of the times'? 5%? 10%? 50%?

They all had the right to use PEDs, just as they had the right to lift weights. Their rights under the CBA superseded any recommendations by the Commissioner (since the Commissioner did not have the power under the CBA to ban them).

My attitude is that if you knowingly took steroids/assorted PEDs, and hid it from the world, you clearly though you were gaining a performance edge. If the player thought that, I'm going to dock him for that advantage in assessing his career.

Obviously players who took or lifted or worked out, thought they were getting performance edges. But when McGwire causes a firestorm because he's got Andro in his locker, a "legal" substance, I think you can see why they might not publicly acknowledge they used greenies, steroids and other things the Commissioner recommended agains.

I think we "know" spitballs, steroids, and greenies provide a performance advantage, yet the HOF is full of players who used them, from Mantle (steroids), Mays and Aaron (greenies) to half of the pitching wing.

My attitude is that if you knowingly took steroids/assorted PEDs, and hid it from the world, you clearly though you were gaining a performance edge. If the player thought that, I'm going to dock him for that advantage in assessing his career.

How does this differ from amphetamine use?

That is, one supposes, the threshold question. After that, the analysis gets tougher -- making it pretty clear why the writers want to stick to the threshold question.

I'm more with you than agin' you in this thread but the HoF vote is, by definition, a threshold question and solely a threshold question. Voters don't have to decide where anybody ranks among HoFers, just whether you cross that threshold or not.

Which, in its way, simplifies the "statistical adjustment" approach. Especially for guys like Bonds and Clemens, you don't need to come up with a precise statistical adjustment for their stats, you simply have to believe that there's no way the steroids could have had such a great impact that their "true" performance wasn't still HoF worthy. In simple WAR terms, Bonds has 172 WAR. Unless you think it's possible that PEDs added (at a minimum) 100 WAR, you can pretty safely conclude that Bonds would be an HoFer without PEDs. It doesn't get you around borderline cases (like maybe Palmeiro) where it's reasonable to think that PED usage may have pushed him over the HoVG to HoF threshold.

Sugar, trying to parse how players would have done if they hadn't used is a fools' errand. There are just too many unknowns.

Too many known unknowns, or too many unknown unknowns? Or both?

Look at the bright side. If the "Fab Four" stay ostracized, somebody can start a renegade "Hall of Phame" with them in it, along with Shoeless Joe and Petey-Poo. And they can add in all of the HoM guys who are currently on the outside looking in. (All except Dick Allen, of course.)

That's a great idea, and I can think of several Primates I'd recommend for high positions within such an institution, provided that the position didn't allow for internet access between 12:01 AM and midnight.

For those who believe that PED use is irrelevant to getting into (or being kept out of) the Hall of Fame, at what do you draw the line? If a player admits after retirement to using a spitter during the second half of his career, and his career is neatly divided: 25 WAR in the first half, 40 WAR in the second half, does he go in? What if instead of a pitcher he's a position player and admits to using an illegal bat, with similar results?

How does this differ from amphetamine use?

Amphetamine use was a much more open secret? You see, writers knew about greenies. They just didn't care, so that is why it is okay.

I can't understand a vote for Tim Raines but a no vote for Rafael Palmeiro for example (not a comparison of who the better player was, just a quick example of two players who would be clear Hall of Famers absent the character clause).

Raines and Palmeiro are different cases. Raines was the equal of Tony Gwynn. Had he gotten on base the same amount with more singles and fewer walks (and less power) he’d have been a first ballot HOFer because of the 3000 hits. I don’t think anyone is keeping Raines out because of the cocaine. They just don’t quite get it as to how great a player he was.

Steroids are the only thing keeping Raffy out. Those who point to his never being truly great, just very good for a long time, have a point. But without steroids that concern would be just a few dissenting voices as the 3000 hits and 500 homerun combination got him in on the first ballot.

I think we "know" spitballs, steroids, and greenies provide a performance advantage, yet the HOF is full of players who used them, from Mantle (steroids),

Really? What and when?

If doing cocaine helped your on-field performance, it'd be in the mix. I don't think it's inconsistent to ignore behaviors that aren't reputed to enhance athletic performance.

Taking something to make you play better = bad

Taking something to make you play worse = good

#30, Mantle allegedly used a steroid from a quack doctor late in 1961. If true, it improved his performance so much that the contaminated needle that was used caused an infection and an abscess in his leg that made him sit out most of the rest of the season and all but a token appearance in the World Series. Some PED that was.

Thanks, Andy, for proving #31 and demonstrating the arbitrary nature of PEDs moralizing.

For those who believe that PED use is irrelevant to getting into (or being kept out of) the Hall of Fame, at what do you draw the line? If a player admits after retirement to using a spitter during the second half of his career, and his career is neatly divided: 25 WAR in the first half, 40 WAR in the second half, does he go in? What if instead of a pitcher he's a position player and admits to using an illegal bat, with similar results?

I'd vote for both of them.

You see, writers knew about greenies. They just didn't care, so that is why it is okay.

If you added players, coaches, managers, the commissioner, and any fan who wasn't completely naive to the word "writers", I think you could say the exact same thing about steroids in the '90's.

#30, Mantle allegedly used a steroid from a quack doctor late in 1961. If true, it improved his performance so much that the contaminated needle that was used caused an infection and an abscess in his leg that made him sit out most of the rest of the season and all but a token appearance in the World Series. Some PED that was.

McGwire hit 49 home runs in only 150 games with a 164 OPS+ as a 23 year old rookie who was much skinnier than in his prime. Canseco wrote about introducing Big Mac to steroids right after that, and Big Mac went on to put up 4 straight seasons of declining results, and was on the verge of washing out of the league at age 27.

Some PED that was.

I guess since we can now judge what specific "results" a PED creates, we can put Big Mac right alongside Mantle for guys who didn't get as much help from steroids is it hurt them.

Assuming of course that Mantle "only used Steroids that one time" and presumably stuck to greenies almost his entire career.

Excerpted from this book:

The spitball is different because it's cheating. I'd throw it, though, if I thought it would be to my advantage.
...
But I did actually throw it for one game. It was against the Mets, and I just wanted to see if it would work. It was nasty, all right.

Dave Ricketts was catching me. I used to work on it on the sideline, and one day I said, "Dave, I'm gonna throw a spitball today, and I'll tell you what I'll do. Whenever a guy gets two strikes on him and he fouls one back, I'm gonna throw a spitball the next pitch. Because when he fouls the ball back, everybody cranes their neck to see where it's going. Nobody's watching me, so that's when I'll spit into my glove and I'll load it up when the umpire tosses me a new ball." So that's what I did. Jesse Gonder was the catcher for the Mets, and he was ######## and moaning to the umpire about it. I forget who the umpire was, but he finally said to Gonder, "Come on, Gibson doesn't throw a spitball."

I did that day. And I won.

Ted Lyons learned his spitter from Red Faber. Faber, Coveleski and Grimes got to throw it legally when almost nobody else could — talk about an advantage! Drysdale used to throw it regularly, and if you complained to the ump about it, he'd hit you in the neck. Sutton was famous for throwing it during his career. Perry titled his biography after it, and Whitey Ford wrote extensively about spitters and scuffing in his bio as well. Jim Bunning's spitter was so blatant batters would rate it openly. Phil Niekro complemented his knuckler with a spitter, as did Hoyt Wilhelm. Early Wynn not only threw it as part of his repertoire, but lobbied to have it legalized. A 1953 issue of Baseball Digest listed Robin Roberts, Bob Lemon, and Warren Spahn along with Ford and Wynn among the great ball doctors of their time.

Hall of Famers, ever single one, and all admitted cheaters. The PEDs moralizers don't care.

Do sportswriters not care as much about marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines as they do about steroids because they are familiar with marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines through personal use or their friends were frequent users?

For those who believe that PED use is irrelevant to getting into (or being kept out of) the Hall of Fame, at what do you draw the line? If a player admits after retirement to using a spitter during the second half of his career, and his career is neatly divided: 25 WAR in the first half, 40 WAR in the second half, does he go in? What if instead of a pitcher he's a position player and admits to using an illegal bat, with similar results?

You haven't given me enough information to make a decision; 65 WAR isn't an automatic induction for me (although it puts a player pretty strong in the discussion). If the player was a clear HOF candidate before this revelation, then he's still a clear HOF candidate; if he's clearly not a HOF candidate before the confession, then he's still out.

To be fair, I don't really have many borderline candidates. If I think a player is close enough where it's not clear, I usually wouldn't vote for him unless there's some remarkably positive push (Keith Hernandez' defense comes to mind). My idea of a borderline candidate that I would vote in is a guy like Dave Winfield.

I don't think my voting process is precise enough to care about a difference of 15 wins over the second half of a player's career unless I'm convinced that most of those wins are solely due to an illicit advantage. (Even if the player believes that it creates such an advantage, I'm not convinced that a large part of the gain doesn't come from increased confidence rather than the cheating itself.)

There are really two problems that I have with any sort of precise steroid penalties, generally speaking:

1) It assumes that the competition is clean, rather than (at least partially) tainted by unknown users.
2) It attempts to quantify something that defies precision.

I think the best solution is to let baseball solve the problem, and make my decisions based on what we know happened. Now baseball has a pretty good system in place. If a player gets caught, there's a serious hit to his career just by nature of the suspension. If a player gets caught twice or more, he needs to be particularly awesome to be able to weather that hit.

That said, if you're considering a borderline candidate, and you want to use known PED use as a negative part of the narrative, I think that's pretty reasonable. Not saying "Palmeiro would never be a HOF-level talent without PEDs," because that's impossible to know. Saying "Palmeiro is a borderline player that needs more than his raw numbers to put him in cleanly, and this is a mark against him that is sufficient for me to err on the side of exclusion."

Hall of Famers, ever single one, and all admitted cheaters. The PEDs moralizers don't care.

Rather than assuming bad faith, I think it is more likely that people believe that this sort of cheating represents a vastly different type of advantage. (Certainly Andy does.) I don't think the evidence bears this out once you take into consideration the other changes in the game (the volume of international players, smaller parks, better equipment both in-game and for workouts, a more tightly wound ball, etc.) but those are more complicated than "muscles add HR." I'd imagine that if this had been an issue that came out in the 1960s, the general perception would have been that steroids "obviously" provide massive pitching advantages.

Think about how many people still believe that corked bats add power, even though it has been well-studied and the result is actually marginally increased contact with reduced power.

You see, writers knew about greenies. They just didn't care, so that is why it is okay.

If you added players, coaches, managers, the commissioner, and any fan who wasn't completely naive to the word "writers", I think you could say the exact same thing about steroids in the '90's.

I think it's more accurate to say that faced with the choice of outing a player or living with the knowledge that this player was cheating, most players (and managers/coaches/front office people) would choose the latter course, whether out of fear or respect for the clubhouse code. More than a few players have voiced their disgust with players they viewed as cheaters, but given the unwritten (and probably wise) rules against ratting, there's absolutely no way to measure the degree of "caring".

Do sportswriters not care as much about marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines as they do about steroids because they are familiar with marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines through personal use or their friends were frequent users?

Because no one ever hit 70 homers via a combination of marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines.

Because no one ever hit 70 homers via a combination of marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines.

I'd say these things helped a lot of people make it WAY past first base, though. In numbers easily approaching 70 or more.

I remain outraged that Pud Galvin and his monkey juice were admitted.

Rather than assuming bad faith, I think it is more likely that people believe that this sort of cheating represents a vastly different type of advantage.

The people who believe that are trying to create distinctions without differences, to say that one type of cheating can be overlooked while another cannot. Cheating is either acceptable or it's not, and for people to throw tantrums over steroids only to say, "Yeah, but..." when it comes to everything else is garbage. Did Whitey Ford cheat? Yes. Did he admit it? Yes. Did he do it often? Throughout his entire career. Did he profit from his cheating? He said as much in his autobiography. Do the PEDs moralizers care? No, they don't give a ####. They didn't with Ford, or Perry, or Bunning, or Lemon, or any cheating pitcher, so they obviously don't actually care about actual cheating at all.

Taking something to make you play better = bad

Taking something to make you play worse = good

If a player takes cocaine, other players don't feel pressured to take cocaine in order to keep their jobs. The same can't be said for PEDs.

Similarly, spitballs and corked bats they're cheating, but they're not putting other players in the position of thinking they need to take untested and potentially dangerous substances to keep their jobs.

The sportswriters probably feel like they don't want to out any ballplayers when public opinion can turn on them quickly.

If someone knew a baseball player wasn't the perfect little schoolboy and some columnist ratted him out, it would be quicker for the columnist to be made the pariah than the pro athlete.

Also 'extra curricular' activities like marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines probably fall under what ballplayers do away from the stadium - if that was happening what incentive would some 'well paid' columnist have in digging dirt that maybe best suited for tabloids at best.

Do sportswriters not care as much about marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines as they do about steroids because they are familiar with marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines through personal use or their friends were frequent users?

Similarly, spitballs and corked bats they're cheating, but they're not putting other players in the position of thinking they need to take untested and potentially dangerous substances to keep their jobs.

They're also subject to immediately enforced penalties if they're discovered**. Until the advent of random in-season testing, that sort of instant enforcement isn't available to be used against juicers.

**The lax enforcement and relatively light penalties for those offenses also shows how they're viewed as relatively small potatoes. For better or for worse, most baseball people don't see steroids in the same category of cheating as those relatively trivial offenses any more than they see a drunken driver in the same light as a commonplace interstate speeder.

They didn't with Ford, or Perry, or Bunning, or Lemon, or any cheating pitcher, so they obviously don't actually care about actual cheating at all.

If Ford had won 30 games a couple of times, or had an ERA of 1.00 some year, or otherwise made a mockery of the game, people would have cared. You're more than welcome to cheat if it doesn't create zany-looking numbers.

The only problem with steroids is that they work too well.

You're more than welcome to cheat if it doesn't create zany-looking numbers.

What? Many - if not most - of the Mitchell Report names were absolute nobodies, and people definitely cared when the names came out, I think.

I think it's just they they were all so lame there was nothing to take away. "Your .795 OPS+ is now .735! Take that!"

What? Many - if not most - of the Mitchell Report names were absolute nobodies, and people definitely cared when the names came out, I think.

Because they cared that McGwire had hit 70 and that Bonds had hit 73. That's what made steroids dangerous, so people had to start caring that people like Larry Bigbie were using them too.

Nobody cared that Canseco and Caminiti had won MVPs while on steroids.

You're more than welcome to cheat if it doesn't create zany-looking numbers.

What? Many - if not most - of the Mitchell Report names were absolute nobodies, and people definitely cared when the names came out, I think.

Well, Lisa must have complained close to 500 times that nobody cared about the Manny Alexanders, which isn't totally true, but is pretty close to it.

I think it's just they they were all so lame there was nothing to take away. "Your .795 OPS+ is now .735! Take that!"

Even more to the point, how many of those players even had name recognition that extended more than 50 miles from the stadium they wore white in?

The quack who gave Mantle that ill-fated injection eventually lost his license for -- wait for it -- amphetamines.

Nuf sed. He's just preaching to the choir here, anyway.

True, but it's nice to see at least one baseball writer who isn't a functioning moron.

When a player and his contemporaries aren't playing by the same rules, however, this becomes a bit difficult. I also don't really understand the 'times in which they played' argument as applied here. It's one thing to take that position with respect to an official policy, such as segregation, but how many players have to use PEDs before it becomes 'just part of the times'? 5%? 10%? 50%?

considering that the writers developed code words in their papers to indicate probable roid users, considering that there are more than enough underground rumors(you know the same rumors that have already convicted Sosa and Bagwell) that GM's were telling their borderline players to roid up or not make it, considering that owners refused to seriously attempt to regulate roid usage(basically roids to the owners was pure profits, why in the heck would they oppose their use?) and considering that the only scientific studies on PED has pretty much concluded, that only greenies actually improve a players ability to hit the ball, there is no reason to think that roids wasn't part of the game. There is no reason to think anyone wasn't using. In fact to assume any particular player was clean is absurd on the face of it, whether that player was Griffey, Dimitri Young, Frank Thomas or Bonds.

For the umpteenth million time, the voters are required to consider the character clause when voting.

Yes, and what is your point? that players who used illegal performance enhancing drugs are considered to have violated the character clause? then why is such well known ped users like Mays held up as the paragon of the sport...maybe there is more to the character clause than you are giving credit. I mean just ask Gaylord Perry, Ty Cobb, Cap Anson etc.

Votes (or non-votes) for PEDers should never have been about moralizing, but instead about putting their numbers in context and adjusting them for the "performance enhancement" obtained from PEDs.

god no, that is the absolute worse way possible to enter into the discussion. First off you can't account for the pitchers that the players face, and as testing has OVERWHELMINGLY shown, it's the pitchers who are doing roids. So how do you put their numbers in context when they themselves were facing cheaters?

Go with Andy's line, and at least you are being honest and fair. You either be smart and don't care, it's the business of MLB to police it's products, and the penalties of being caught are figured into the players numbers. Or you can be pedantic and say I refuse to vote for any confirmed user, ever.

Any other option is unreasonable, arrogant, and petty.

There is simply not enough data to make any quantitative conclusions about the effect of any pharmacuetical: legal, banned, or other on baseball performance.

exactly. Just to go to the cork bat, most studies have proven that a corked bat doesn't add any distance to the ball... but of course those studies are based upon not the ability to hit the ball squarely, but the ability to measure the difference in bat speed versus mass of the bat. It's very likely that a slightly lighter bat, adds a coors field effect to the bat, making it easier to make solid contact more consistently, which of course results in more well hit balls. It's an impossible thing to measure to be honest, and the same applies to pharmacueticals. We don't remotely know what it changes in the players performance, heck it could be a trade off, better numbers today for a shorter career.

I mean it's very arguable that at least 50% of the known commonly used substances are basic placebos. (and of course it's been scientifically proven, that patients who knowingly take a placebo, still perform better than taking no pill at all, so it's possible that ped's for a lot of users is just a confidence boost)

@32: Thanks. Did some looking around and it seems somewhat specious although perhaps it's better supported in the book.

Similarly, spitballs and corked bats they're cheating, but they're not putting other players in the position of thinking they need to take untested and potentially dangerous substances to keep their jobs.

But ultimately it's still the adult players choice, and if you honestly think others using greenies didn't encourage the next generation to use greenies, then there is a bridge in brooklyn I would love to sell you.

#46 You know better Andy. The initial penalties for a positive PED test were precisely what a pitcher caught scuffing a ball gets -- 10 games.

Baseball didn't see PED use as more significant -- at least by the standards you cite -- the howling mob did.

Again I remain unrepentant about the use of that phrase.

Incidentally as for relative dangers of steroids and greenies, I know one of the more knowledgeable guys (Yesalis IIRC) argued that not only are greenies more dangerous, they're far more dangerous. Checks -- found the quote:

(Bear in mind that Yesalis is one of the strongest and most long-standing voices against PED use)

From an interview with T NATION

Selected parts:

Testosterone: So steroids pose less of a health risk than most people believe?

Dr. Yesalis: As I mentioned in my book, the health risks have been greatly overstated. Hypertension, for example, is widely claimed to be a side effect of taking androgens. This is one of the most exaggerated claims. And as for users becoming sterile, there has never been a single reliably documented case of irreversible infertility as a result of androgen administration.

Think about it: medical science has been using steroids safely in a clinical setting for the last 70 years. Anabolic steroids can be used relatively safely, but at even low doses they can have side effects. No drug, supplement, or substance is totally "safe." Heck, you can even overdose on water.

My personal opinion is that if one uses these drugs at high dosages, over a long period of time, then yes, they're too powerful to fool Mother Nature. And it's the oral (hepatoxic) steroids that can potentially be the most harmful. But should they be placed in the category of "killer drugs"? Absolutely not. Not even close.

(also debunks 'roid rage, and also says it would be dishonest to say that he doesn't think an adult male can safely take steroids)

and later

The drug problem has always been with us, and it always will be. Athletes have always used performance-enhancing substances, from amphetamines to steroids, and amphetamines are by far more dangerous.

and to wrap up:

Testosterone: Okay, last question: do you see a real solution to the drug problem in sports today?

Dr. Yesalis: No, I don't think so. The only real solution is for the fans to stand up and say "we don't want to see any more doping in sports." This hasn't happened, and probably won't. What this is about, pure and simple, is entertainment. We like seeing bigger-than-life people doing bigger-than-life things. The fans have arguably created the market for these drugs.

So we can't totally place blame on the athletes for the drug use in sports: it's part and parcel of the business of entertainment. And the drug testing policy of professional sports organizations amounts to little more than a policy of plausible deniability. I've said it before: I could take an M-1 tank and drive it, at night, through the loopholes in NFL drug testing, without even scratching the armor plates.

These organizations, all they do is create facades and special effects worthy of a George Lucas film: just sophisticated ways to convince the average fan that there is no issue to be seen.

Who said anything about any of that? But how in the hell can you make any kind of statistical "adjustments" beyond saying that "they helped him"? All you know about the juicers in question is that they juiced. You have no idea for exactly how long each of them juiced, how intelligently they worked out, and in the case of home runs, how many of them got that extra distance from the effects of the juice as opposed to other factors.

Ray-Ray's position is that we can't know for sure that Bonds or any other juicer even got one extra home run as a result of his juicing. That's seems totally bizarre to me, but at least by doing that he's comparing apples to apples on the basis of the perfectly known reality of the record book, and not by comparing two or more sets of conjectured "adjustments".

If you're not sure how much steroids helped him, how can you be sure that they helped him at all?

We may know for certain that McGwire was a juicer, and we may feel pretty damn sure that he wouldn't have hit all of those home runs without the aid of the juice, but how the hell you can say that he would have hit 400 or 500 or 580 home runs instead of the 583 he actually hit, is totally beyond me.

Well, Andy, when you throw in with the crazies, you're in with the crazies. You think there is a distinction for these purposes between steroids and amps, which is a crazy position; then you go around telling other people that what *they're* doing (judging a player based on hat size; making "steroid adjustments" of his stats) is... crazy. Well, that ship sailed for you long ago.

But it's amusing watching a man take irrational positions on a subject and then continually point out that other people have taken other irrational positions -- as if he is the voice of sanity.

#30, Mantle allegedly used a steroid from a quack doctor late in 1961. If true, it improved his performance so much that the contaminated needle that was used caused an infection and an abscess in his leg that made him sit out most of the rest of the season and all but a token appearance in the World Series. Some PED that was.

So we've learned that no "juicers" should be in the Hall of Fame except for Mantle, since he was one of Andy's boyhood idols.

Well, that was informative.

Similarly, spitballs and corked bats they're cheating, but they're not putting other players in the position of thinking they need to take untested and potentially dangerous substances to keep their jobs.

They're also subject to immediately enforced penalties if they're discovered**. Until the advent of random in-season testing, that sort of instant enforcement isn't available to be used against juicers.

**The lax enforcement and relatively light penalties for those offenses also shows how they're viewed as relatively small potatoes. For better or for worse, most baseball people don't see steroids in the same category of cheating as those relatively trivial offenses any more than they see a drunken driver in the same light as a commonplace interstate speeder.

This is either a dishonest argument, or a seriously uninformed one.

Last I checked, Congress wasn't holding hearings over the punishment for being caught using spitballs.

But ultimately it's still the adult players choice...

Choosing to sacrifice your health for money, and forcing others to make the same decision, seems like a not very adult choice to me. It's a rather childish one, in fact, and the very reason why sports need supervisory bodies to police their adult players.

...and if you honestly think others using greenies didn't encourage the next generation to use greenies, then there is a bridge in brooklyn I would love to sell you.

I never said that it didn't. I fact, I purposely wrote "PEDs" because it is a blanket term including amphetamines, HGH, and other non-steroids.

**The lax enforcement and relatively light penalties for those offenses also shows how they're viewed as relatively small potatoes.

Well, there was NO enforcement or penalties for roids in the 90's, so by this logic they must've been viewed as completely insignificant.

What? Many - if not most - of the Mitchell Report names were absolute nobodies, and people definitely cared when the names came out, I think.

Not about all of them, they didn't. Only the big ones. No one has suggested that Manny Alexander or Ryan Franklin's numbers be deleted. Just the likes of Bonds, McGwire, etc. Of the 100+ players who allegedly tested positive in that "anonymous" test of 2003, how many names have been released? A-Rod, Manny, Sosa, and Ortiz are the only ones I remember hearing about. Which players have been called into court to testify about PED's? Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Giambi, etc. No fringe players.

People only care when stars use.

For the umpteenth million time, the voters are required to consider the character clause when voting.

For the umpteenth million time, they have never done so, and there's no reason on earth they should start now, 70 years after the HOF was created.

They've never limited themselves to the printed rules; for instance, nothing in the rules permits them to make a voting decision based on whether it's the first year a player was on the ballot, but many openly do so.

**The lax enforcement and relatively light penalties for those offenses also shows how they're viewed as relatively small potatoes. For better or for worse, most baseball people don't see steroids in the same category of cheating as those relatively trivial offenses any more than they see a drunken driver in the same light as a commonplace interstate speeder.

Once more: there was "lax enforcement and relatively light penalties" for steroids, too. Until the Kim Jong Il fan club in Washington decided to stick its nose in and threaten to violate the constitution unless they increased that enforcement and those penalties. For better or for worse, most baseball people do see steroids in the same category of cheating as those relatively trivial offenses.

For the umpteenth million time, they have never done so, and there's no reason on earth they should start now, 70 years after the HOF was created.

I don't know, maybe a desire to hold yourself to a higher standard than you predecessors. Not feeling bound by mistakes made by others in the past, and doing the best job at the task asked of you. Wanting to improve the institution you represent. Generally wanting to make a positive difference, and leaving a better legacy than those that went before...

There are many perfectly valid reasons to change the way things have historically been done. In fact, "because we have always done it this way" is an extremely weak reason to keep doing anything, and it is a small mind that thinks otherwise.

For the umpteenth million time, they have never done so, and there's no reason on earth they should start now, 70 years after the HOF was created.

They're already applying it to McGwire, I'd say.

For some crazy reason, I don't think the BBWAA is bound to stare decisis, so a big enough outburst of righteous indignation (and god knows the PED controversy has provided plenty of that) should be more than enough reason for a gaggle of sportswriters to change their minds.

Choosing to sacrifice your health for money, and forcing others to make the same decision, seems like a not very adult choice to me. It's a rather childish one, in fact, and the very reason why sports need supervisory bodies to police their adult players.

I don't see a lot of people arguing for the free use of PEDs in baseball. By all means, enforce the rules as agreed upon in the CBA.

I never said that it didn't. I fact, I purposely wrote "PEDs" because it is a blanket term including amphetamines, HGH, and other non-steroids.

But nobody's throwing righteous tantrums over greenies, spitters, scuffed balls, and the like. It's the selective application of the "character" clause that's so disgusting. Some media-friendly white dude can scuff and spit his way to the Hall of Fame, and sportswriters chuckle. An surly black dude hits 73 homers, and it's baseball armageddon.

I'll give Andy this much: He's been very open about being in it to protect the record book he grew up with. He's never cared a whit about the fair and equal application of the rules. Andy's basically taking the Newt Gingrich approach to law here: it's good when it suits him.

#66 There's no meaningful definition of "character" that can allow for the inclusion of (not limited to) Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby and the automatic exclusion of anybody else.

At the same time, it's reasonable to argue that it's been applied (as a modifier if you will -- basically deducting points) to Hal Chase and perhaps Carl Mays (certainly there's nothing in his sat line to separate him from a number of other pitchers), Dick Allen, Sherry Magee (maybe -- Deadest ball players have always had a tough time with the voters)

Basically the only time character may have mattered is among the guys who were marginal on the stat line alone.

I'm leaving out the Black Sox. There was a pretty clear understanding that you simply couldn't vote for them.

If you're not sure how much steroids helped him, how can you be sure that they helped him at all?

I'm on your steroid side, mostly, but this reasoning is not compelling in the slightest.

When a player and his contemporaries aren't playing by the same rules, however, this becomes a bit difficult. I also don't really understand the 'times in which they played' argument as applied here. It's one thing to take that position with respect to an official policy, such as segregation, but how many players have to use PEDs before it becomes 'just part of the times'? 5%? 10%? 50%?

They all had the right to use PEDs, just as they had the right to lift weights. Their rights under the CBA superseded any recommendations by the Commissioner (since the Commissioner did not have the power under the CBA to ban them).

If they had the clear right to use them, one would think it would have been done openly, but no matter. Although I'm in the 'they cheated so they're out' camp, if you aren't there is still the issue of how to compare steroid users to non-users.

The closest analogy I can come up with is this: say that in the 1940s, MLB instituted the policy that teams could use black players in a particular game only if the other team consented. Now, let's say a handful of teams, five or so, adopted the policy that they wouldn't play against black players, and that policy continued until the late 70s. You'd have a bunch of players on those teams whose stats would be inflated by the fact that they weren't playing against the best possible competition. On the other hand, every black player would have their stats depressed by the fact that they couldn't play a full 162 games in a season.

If that were the case, would you just take their stats at face value? Accept that there was an unlevel playing field, but since it was countenanced by MLB, that yours is not to reason why? Or would you take that into account when making out your HOF ballot?

I don't know, maybe a desire to hold yourself to a higher standard than you predecessors.

In very many cases, they _are_ their predecessors.

And if they were actually holding themselves to a "higher standard than their predecessors," they would agree that by these same standards, amps players should not be in the Hall of Fame. But they never agree to that. Do you know why? Because our newfound moral leaders are dishonest.

Choosing to sacrifice your health for money, and forcing others to make the same decision,

There was no forcing.

There was no forcing.

Forcing wasn't perhaps the best word. Coercing is probably better. But it amounts to basically the same thing. If your peers are outcompeting you by using illegal substances, you will have to make the unenviable choice to either take them too to keep your job or lose your job. Nobody should be coerced to have to make that decision.

Incidentally as for relative dangers of steroids and greenies, I know one of the more knowledgeable guys (Yesalis IIRC) argued that not only are greenies more dangerous, they're far more dangerous.

Since my concern about steroids has been almost exclusively about maintaining a level playing field and not about players' health, the point you're making is both acknowledged and irrelevant. It's not that I'm not glad to see a side benefit of the current ban of both steroids and greenies, but the health part has never, ever been my focus.

-----------------------------------------------

I'll give Andy this much: He's been very open about being in it to protect the record book he grew up with. He's never cared a whit about the fair and equal application of the rules. Andy's basically taking the Newt Gingrich approach to law here: it's good when it suits him.

If we're playing campaign politics here, your doppelganger would be Mitt Romney, whose specialty is putting words and thoughts into Obama's mouth.

But since you want to channel Romney, I'll reciprocate: I'll bet you $10,000 that you can't find a single post I've made here---and you've got over 20,000 to choose from---where I've said that "protect[ing] the record book grew up with" was the primary reason I care about steroids. I expect that sort of BS from little Ray-Ray, who does that sort of thing for a living, but AFAICR that's the first time I've heard it coming from you.

I'll repeat it one more time: I'm a "steroid hardliner" for one basic reason: They distort the game on the field. They gave Barry Bonds an thumb on the scales whenever he faced a non-juicing pitcher, just as they gave any juicing pitcher an unfair advantage over a non-juicing hitter. That's all I need to know about steroids.

That this steroid advantage may have resulted in Roger Maris's record being broken is both unprovable and beside the point. That's a symptom of the problem, but in itself it's unimportant. Roger Maris has been dead for 26 years, and nothing Barry Bonds ever took affected Roger Maris's playing career. This is about the living, not the dead, and the record books are the least of my concerns.

And tempting as I'm sure it'll be to try to say that I "really" care about Roger Maris's record**, but "just won't admit it", which is Ray-Ray's usual style of argument, here's a bit of friendly advice: Don't throw good money after bad, and give this line of argument a well-deserved rest. There are plenty of coherent arguments for saying that that steroids shouldn't be singled out for punishment or HoF exclusion, and you shouldn't have to resort to distorting someone else's position to make your own case.

**In fact I've spent infinitely more energy arguing that Roger Maris didn't break Babe Ruth's record than I have even thinking about what Mark McGwire's and Barry Bonds's juice-propelled jolts did to Roger Maris.