What if Cal took steroids?

[Spoonless]

Steroids kicked my girl and stole my dog.

[mweb]

Cal did play with quite a few guys who were probably if not definitely users..Tettleton, Segui, Brady, and I'm sure many others.

I'd hate to think of Cal as a user, but at this point, who really cares. It is what it is.

Yep, it wouldn't shock me or upset me much.

[mweb]

This talk of Cal doing steroids is just silliness. Look at Cal's body as he played through his career. Now compare to A-Rod. Now compare to Bonds, Canseco, McGwire, etc... The proof is in the pudding, folks.

People who met Cal talk about lean muscle mass, not bulging biceps. C'mon. Call didn't take juice. If Cal took anything it was cigarettes and amphetamines, the drugs of his day.

You really need to review the list of confirmed steroid users. Many guys who took steroids were less muscular and smaller than Cal.

[YardBirds13]

I HATE when people use the "OH, his body never changed, he couldn't have used" excuse.

Really? How much did Alex Sanchez' body change when he was doping? Did B-Rob's change that much? How about Juan Rincon?

Come on. You can use steroids and not become a cartoon character. Argue whatever you want, but none of us will ever know probably. I tend to believe Cal didn't, but honestly, it wouldn't change how I thought about him if he had.

Cal was my hero. Nothing will change that.

[gtown]

I have no way of knowing. I think Cal did get bigger, but many of us get bigger as we get older.

This thread is all about speculation, but the original question of "what if we were to find out that..." is compelling.

I would not be shocked by any player of that era, Cal included.

[ATO UMD]

Here's what he had to say:

Washington, D.C.: Why did Cal Ripken ALWAYS get a pass regarding steroids? When asked, he declined using. So did all these other guys. The change in physique, the large, bald head, the unbelievable consecutive game record. Isn't it conceivable that all these things smack of "better living through chemistry?" Why is everyone so certain Ripken was clean?

Tom Boswell: Oh, you mean beyond the general evidence of good character in many other parts of this life?

Ripken began his career ('82) pre-steroids. His HR and power totals never went up as he aged. His body never changed. He was 225 the first day I ever saw him in spring training and he looked the same 20 years later. He was never "ripped," never had zits or any other tell tale marks. Nobody inside the game ever, to my knowledge, suspected him of anything. He never had the kind of (frequent) minor injuries associated with steroid users whose bodies tend to get out of proportion.

In theory, anything is possible. But I would put Ripkn in my short list of players LEAST likely. The Streak is actually NOT the kind of record you would associate with a PED user. Just the opposite.

Genetics, not Steroids: Tom,

May I be allowed a response to the person from D.C. who raised the issue of Cal Ripken's baldness as an indicator he may have been "juicing"? I'd advise him to take a look at photos of Cal's father Cal Sr. and Cal's brother Billy. It's not that Cal Ripken used drugs, it's that Cal's got bad hair genes. (Or is Rogaine on the list of banned substances?)

Tom Boswell: Good point.

Knowing Cal, and I have since he was just out of high school, he probably would worry that Rogaine might test positive. Nobody has ever understood his responsibility to "give back" to the game more than Cal.

Very sad that Cal truly is an A-Rod hero. All this stuff is incredibly complex and, probably, worthy of a fine novelist as much as good journalists. Remember when A-Rod made Cal switch places with him before the first pitch of the All-Star game so Cal could start his last Mid-Summer Classic at shortstop __his original position__ rather than third base?

That was A-Rod at his best. I still remember his smile.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/02/09/DI2009020901902.html

[crawjo]

It wouldn't surprise me if he took steroids late in his career...maybe from 1996 to 2000 or so. His 1999 year (with a smaller sample size) was certainly anomalous for him. I remember reading that scouts said of Ripken in '96 that he had a "new body." And he was close with Brady Anderson.

So no, it wouldn't shock me at all. And it wouldn't bother me at all, because steroids don't bother me at all.

[crawjo]

Also, Boswell is wrong to say that steroid use hadn't begun in baseball when Ripken had his rookie year. Tom House has already talked about the prevalence of steroids among pitchers in the 1970s. For some reason everybody seems to conveniently ignore this and pretend that Jose Canseco introduced steroids to the game in the mid 1980s.

[jcroemer]

I'm not saying that Cal did or didn't do steroids, because I'd like to believe he didn't. But Palmeiro didn't exactly have the body type for a steroid user as well. Not all steroids are the same, so you can't just look at body types to determine steroid use.

He didn't have any other symptoms of steroid use, either!

[jcroemer]

Can we kill this thread yet? It's upsetting the children

[jcroemer]

How is it any different now than it was back in 2003. Everyone knew that over 5% of the players failed the test. There's been a cloud over everyone since then. Plus, lets face the facts. Just because someone's name doesn't end up on that list certainly doesn't exclude them from suspicion.

Because now it's for real.

We knew before "Game of Shadows" that Barry Bonds was juicing, but we were still excited when it became news.

103 more names gets us a lot closer to the truth. 103 reputations on the line - players, ex-players, they are going to start talking, we are going to get the truth. They are going to keep leaking name after name until the truth gets out.

[Maverick2143]

Because now it's for real.

We knew before "Game of Shadows" that Barry Bonds was juicing, but we were still excited when it became news.

103 more names gets us a lot closer to the truth. 103 reputations on the line - players, ex-players, they are going to start talking, we are going to get the truth. They are going to keep leaking name after name until the truth gets out.

You want the truth?

You can't handle the truth.

And in this case I don't think the truth matters a whole heck of a lot. Releasing the other 103 names won't make a difference in getting the whole "truth", it will only reduce the list of suspects by 103 names. 2 wrongs in this case do not/will not make a right.

[jcroemer]

You want the truth?

You can't handle the truth.

And in this case I don't think the truth matters a whole heck of a lot. Releasing the other 103 names won't make a difference in getting the whole "truth", it will only reduce the list of suspects by 103 names. 2 wrongs in this case do not/will not make a right.

But we'll be able to piece together the depth of the problem. I am interested to know if it was 40% or 60%. It matters because it determines how we value the records from that time peroid. You know I'm a stats geek and these things matter.

[El Gordo]

But we'll be able to piece together the depth of the problem. I am interested to know if it was 40% or 60%. It matters because it determines how we value the records from that time peroid. You know I'm a stats geek and these things matter.

Releasing the names won't help with that. We know that the 2003 tests indicated that there were under 10%, about 7% I beleive, that tested positive, but we have no idea how many of the rest managed to beat the tests.

[Maverick2143]

Releasing the names won't help with that. We know that the 2003 tests indicated that there were under 10%, about 7% I beleive, that tested positive, but we have no idea how many of the rest managed to beat the tests.

Exactly and at this point what is the benefit of rehashing this crap over and over again.

As of this point I would like to believe that the game is as close to clean as possible, anything prior to testing is suspect. Even, if we find out the names of the 103, are we then going to assume that the others were all 100% clean? Probably not, so there will still be suspicion about the other 1300ish players and the beat will go on.

The best thing that could happen to the game would be that those records would magically end up in an incinerator (Which is what should have happened in 2003).