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Whichever side you're on of the Hall of Fame Steroids Debate ...


mobico

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I can see the sides, for and against. I honestly won't be broken up either way if Bonds, Clemens and the rest don't get in...at the same time, I won't be really happy if they get in. More just curious to see the fall-out.

I'd really like to see Pete Rose get in. I've got more feelings about that than any of the PED group.

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We are dealing with an era where numbers were inflated for a variety of reasons. Lowered mound, shrunken strike zone, juiced ball, expansion, smaller parks, and an MLB/media blind eye to PED's. To just focus on the PED's is silly IMO, but it does distract from the other factors. Something Bud probably likes. I say let the numbers from the era speak for them selves, forget the moralizing. BBWAA and Morality is an oxymoron.

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I can see the sides, for and against. I honestly won't be broken up either way if Bonds, Clemens and the rest don't get in...at the same time, I won't be really happy if they get in. More just curious to see the fall-out.

I'd really like to see Pete Rose get in. I've got more feelings about that than any of the PED group.

I agree about Pete Rose. I believe he has paid sufficiently for his crimes since his 1989 ban and I would hope Bud Selig would reinstate him before he retires as Commissioner.

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I can see the sides, for and against. I honestly won't be broken up either way if Bonds, Clemens and the rest don't get in...at the same time, I won't be really happy if they get in. More just curious to see the fall-out.

I'd really like to see Pete Rose get in. I've got more feelings about that than any of the PED group.

Really good documentary on him called 4192, The Hit King. Mike Schmidt is in it amongst others. At the end there's a list of the records he still holds. Impressive.

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Won't happen. If he ever gets elected, it'll be after he dies...another punishment of sorts.

Right. He not only broke the #1 rule, but consistently lied about it and only changed his tune when he could make a buck off the story. It'll be a sad day if they put Rose in while guys like Marvin Miller and Buck O'Neil are out.

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I know other people on here have made the same argument, that steroids in this era is akin to amphetamines in the 50' and 60's and so on. I'm not sure what your evidence is but I'm highly, highly skeptical, that there is/was a similar level of benefit. Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGwire shattered records that stood for 40 years. They didn't break them. They shattered them. It's prettty tough to go back and determine who used greenies and who didn't just as it's tough to go back and determine who used steroids and who didn't. It just looks the poster boys for steroid use were pretty much off the charts.

It didn't hurt that big time steroid use happened at the exact moment stadiums got smaller and Bud almost certainly juiced the ball. It was a perfect storm allowed to happen because of the strike.

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I can see the sides, for and against. I honestly won't be broken up either way if Bonds, Clemens and the rest don't get in...at the same time, I won't be really happy if they get in. More just curious to see the fall-out.

I'd really like to see Pete Rose get in. I've got more feelings about that than any of the PED group.

I agree on this 100%. If Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame, Pete Rose should be in there as well. Rose never threw a game and although what he did was wrong, it not cost him what he earned as a player.

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Right. He not only broke the #1 rule, but consistently lied about it and only changed his tune when he could make a buck off the story. It'll be a sad day if they put Rose in while guys like Marvin Miller and Buck O'Neil are out.

Here's a guy that definitely should get in for his lifetime achievements. I could listen to Buck O'Neil talk about baseball for days on end and not get bored.

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I agree on this 100%. If Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame, Pete Rose should be in there as well. Rose never threw a game and although what he did was wrong, it not cost him what he earned as a player.

You can't convince me that having money on a game in which he was managing might not have effected his managing.

He also didn't bet on all of his games giving gamblers insight into his thought process.

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What objective prove do you have that the ball was juiced during that era any more than it was before and more than it is now?

The "Pill" has certainly been altered and the yarn's composition has been changed. It is debatable if it makes a difference in the performance of the ball.

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What objective prove do you have that the ball was juiced during that era any more than it was before and more than it is now?

There were studies done on various balls and their coefficients of restitution and they concluded that a) the standards were so loose that almost any amount of juicing would be legal, and b) the pre-1994 balls were more lively than those afterwards. I don't have the link handy, but I'd bet El Gordo does. It's not 100% reliable objective proof, but I have little doubt that happened. We know they've played around with the ball in prior eras (see 1911, 1920-ish, 1977, 1987). 1987 is the perfect test case - a one year, off-the-charts spike in home runs. And the only reasonable explanation is they juiced the ball. Just looking at numbers it's eery how similar '86-'87 is to '93-'94, and percentage-wise they're both similar to '76-'77 and 1910-11.

Edit: Obviously I meant exactly the opposite of what I said in the bolded passage.

Here's a guy that definitely should get in for his lifetime achievements. I could listen to Buck O'Neil talk about baseball for days on end and not get bored.

Somebody had an inexplicable vendetta against O'Neil, which is almost impossible to believe. That year they inducted, like, 15 Negro Leaguers and left out O'Neil was a travesty. They inducted owners and executives and players with fairly flimsy credentials en masse but somehow left out the great ambassador of Negro League baseball, who by the way was a pretty decent player himself. To me, that might be the worst thing the Hall has ever done, and it made no sense. And they do some heartless, cruel things, like keeping Ron Santo out for 25 or 30 years, then inducting him after he's dead.

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There were studies done on various balls and their coefficients of restitution and they concluded that a) the standards were so loose that almost any amount of juicing would be legal, and b) the pre-1994 balls were more lively than those afterwards. I don't have the link handy, but I'd bet El Gordo does. It's not 100% reliable objective proof, but I have little doubt that happened. We know they've played around with the ball in prior eras (see 1911, 1920-ish, 1977, 1987). 1987 is the perfect test case - a one year, off-the-charts spike in home runs. And the only reasonable explanation is they juiced the ball. Just looking at numbers it's eery how similar '86-'87 is to '93-'94, and percentage-wise they're both similar to '76-'77 and 1910-11.

Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus has a lengthy section on it.

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