Palmeiro just digging his grave deeper

[mweb]

The East German Olympic team....the women....er the men...er the it's would strongly disagree with this as would their performances.

Umm, ok. The evidence backs up my position. Again, I'm not saying they didn't help them or anyone else, but people tend to exaggerate the impact or at least ignore or dismiss some or all of the other reasons for the increase in hr's. Many also have this weird moral thing against it because they think they are worse for you then they really are, yet are willing to give a pass on many other things like greenies, corked bats, doctoring baseball, stealing signs, using cocaine, and doing awful things in ones personal life. Many are also willing to give football players much more of a pass for steroids.

[Flosman]

Umm, ok. The evidence backs up my position. Again, I'm not saying they didn't help them or anyone else, but people tend to exaggerate the impact or at least ignore or dismiss some or all of the other reasons for the increase in hr's. Many also have this weird moral thing against it because they think they are worse for you then they really are, yet are willing to give a pass on many other things like greenies, corked bats, doctoring baseball, stealing signs, using cocaine, and doing awful things in ones personal life. Many are also willing to give football players much more of a pass for steroids.

My experience is they don't seem to have much in the way of long term effects on players. The caveat is the mentality a lot of guys have is if 200 MG is this good imagine what 500 MG will do. Guys end up taking 10 times or more of the Max dose.

[mweb]

My experience is they don't seem to have much in the way of long term effects on players. The caveat is the mentality a lot of guys have is if 200 MG is this good imagine what 500 MG will do. Guys end up taking 10 times or more of the Max dose.

Sure, but if taken properly, they (well many of them at least) really aren't bad for a most people and obviously have their benefits.

[scOtt]

I don't think he's claiming they have no benefit, just that the benefits are often overstated and there's a lot of evidence that supports that.

BTW, corked bats have been shown to be no better than normal bats, yet players have used them throughout history anyway.

Greenies also have benefits, but most don't care about them for some odd reason. There's been plenty of other ways of cheating including the corked bats I just mentioned, but people are also willing to give a pass on them. It's all very odd.

I'm seriously jaded by East German women Olympians from my childhood ('70's)...

[El Gordo]

There have been a lot of studies on this , notbly CalDavis and Hofstra.

Hofstra physicist Roger Tobin.

Tobin, a specialist in condensed matter physics with a long-time interest in the physics of baseball, will publish his paper "On the potential of a chemical Bonds: Possible effects of steroids on home run production in baseball" in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Physicsstitutions that have tested this.

Tobin reviewed previous studies of the effect of steroid use and concluded that muscle mass, the force exerted by those muscles and the kinetic energy of the bat could each be increased by about 10 percent through the use of steroids. According to his calculations, the speed of the bat as it strikes the pitched ball will be about 5 percent higher than without the use of steroids and the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat will be about 4 percent higher.

To determine the ultimate impact on home run production, Tobin then analyzed a variety of models for trajectory of the baseball, accounting for gravity, air resistance and lift force due to the ball's spin. While there was considerable variation among the models, "the salient point," he says, "is that a 4 percent increase in ball speed, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, can increase home run production by anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/83119.php

Then how come Bonds only increased his production only by 25%, from 32 to 40 average per year? Give me one example of a player who increased their HR production by 100 %, over the course of a significant sample size. Roger Maris and Brady Anderson wouldn't qualify because one year is a SSS for this circumstance. I would like to see how he arrives at the conclusion that steroids increase bat speed. No doubt they increase body mass and that will contribute slightly to distance. Bu I would like to see how he demonstrates that bat speed is increased.

[El Gordo]

I have my own personal experience playing college football and coaching for ten years. I wonder if you can find a site that still says smoking is not bad for you? The effects are huge, period. I will tell you why. When you are competing at an elite level the true skill difference between levels of success are very small. So if you can get a 1 or 2 percent improvement it can and will really set you apart. No it can't make someone without talent successful. But it will make any player better than he would otherwise be. The improvement is always on the margin and it is why I don't get holier than thou when players get caught. I know when I played I was offered from a University related Doctor and turned them down. But if god had given me the tools to play in the NFL I most certainly would have said yes. But the case you and the links you provide are making is faulty because you fail to realize while the gains are small they are very real and they did and still are effecting the numbers. But guess what they probably have for a long time. Using Tony's logic Aarons numbers should be in question. He played at a high level too long and these drugs were available.

I'm not saying they don't have some effect. I am saying it's being exaggerated. I think MLB has had a far greater impact on the numbers during the so called steroid era, by not only turning a blind eye to their increasing use, but by lowering the mound, shrinking the strike zone, polluting the quality of SP through expansion, allowing smaller parks, and most importantly, juicing the ball on at least 3 different occasions. None of these things is fair to the numbers generated by Mays, Mantle, Aaron and Williams, who mostly played without the benifit of these changes. But how conveinient to blame it all on the players who used PED's. No flys on Uncle Bud.:rolleyestf:

[scOtt]

Then how come Bonds only increased his production only by 25%, from 32 to 40 average per year? Give me one example of a player who increased their HR production by 100 %, over the course of a significant sample size. Roger Maris and Brady Anderson wouldn't qualify because one year is a SSS for this circumstance. I would like to see how he arrives at the conclusion that steroids increase bat speed. No doubt they increase body mass and that will contribute slightly to distance. Bu I would like to see how he demobnstrates that bat speed is increased.

Did you include Bonds' 5 HR year in 2005? 2006 and 2007 were a little bit of outliers too. From 2000 to 2004 he averaged 51.6.

[El Gordo]

Did you include Bonds' 5 HR year in 2005? 2006 and 2007 were a little bit of outliers too. From 2000 to 2004 he averaged 51.6.

Did he stop using steroids in 2005? He started to decline and break down, despite the use of PED''s because he was 39. You can't turn back the clock forever, just a couple of extra years. Or do we only count the years when they helped in and not the ones where they didn't?

[boog26]

Wow! It's obvious that a lot of people are going to scratch and claw for any and every little tidbit to defend the impossible.

Just ask yourself why Raffy, a professional-athlete, making millions of dollars-per year, with access to the best doctors and trainers in the Oriole's organization AND with easy-access to Johns Hopkins Hospital AND the UMD Medical System would ask a baseball player from the Dominican Republic (with no medical training) to give him an injection of ANYTHING?

I mean really!!!

[BaltimoreTerp]

Wow! It's obvious that a lot of people are going to scratch and claw for any and every little tidbit to defend the impossible.

Just ask yourself why Raffy, a professional-athlete, making millions of dollars-per year, with access to the best doctors and trainers in the Oriole's organization AND with easy-access to Johns Hopkins Hospital AND the UMD Medical System would ask a baseball player from the Dominican Republic (with no medical training) to give him an injection of ANYTHING?

I mean really!!!

You're right.

And, as has been shown several times in this thread, you're wrong.

That's why this isn't a black-and-white issue, but about as solidly gray as you can find.

[sangar]

Wow! It's obvious that a lot of people are going to scratch and claw for any and every little tidbit to defend the impossible.

Just ask yourself why Raffy, a professional-athlete, making millions of dollars-per year, with access to the best doctors and trainers in the Oriole's organization AND with easy-access to Johns Hopkins Hospital AND the UMD Medical System would ask a baseball player from the Dominican Republic (with no medical training) to give him an injection of ANYTHING?

I mean really!!!

You too? The first sentence was rep worthy, until it was defined by the second sentence. Human nature, people trust their friends.

[Moose Milligan]

One of the things I find interesting is people's definition of what a PED is. Koufax took a bunch of crap-cortisone and other stuff to kill the pain- to go out and pitch...how is that not a PED? If it wasn't for the drugs, there's no way he'd be able to reel off those seasons he did in the mid 60's.

Thats as much as a performance enhancer as anything else, IMO. It might not have afforded him the ability to swat home run records, but it did allow him to go out and dominate hitters at a prodigious clip. If everything was "au natural" as the sportswriters would love for them to be, there's no way Koufax is a Hall of Famer. He'd be a mere blip in the history of the Dodgers, perhaps their Steve Dalkowski.

How come no one ever mentions these things? How come no one mentions a cortisone (which is a steroid, IIRC, just not the big bad boogyman kind) shot as something that's a PED?

[boog26]

You too? The first sentence was rep worthy, until it was defined by the second sentence. Human nature, people trust their friends.

OK! You are my friend. But you still aint getting within a mile of me or my family with hypodermic needle. Jeez!

Imagine:

Raffy: "Hmmm... I sure need a B-12 shot."

Miggy: "I got one from a third-world country I can give you."

Raffy: "Well, the trainer's office is two-doors down and it would be an FDA-approved vitamin and injected by a medically-trained person."

Miggy: Well, I'm a shortstop."

Raffy: "OK! Let me get my pants down."

[sangar]

OK! You are my friend. But you still aint getting within a mile of me or my family with hypodermic needle. Jeez!

Imagine:

Raffy: "Hmmm... I sure need a B-12 shot."

Miggy: "I got one from a third-world country I can give you."

Raffy: "Well, the trainer's office is two-doors down and it would be an FDA-approved vitamin and injected by a medically-trained person."

Miggy: Well, I'm a shortstop."

Raffy: "OK! Let me get my pants down."

As BaltimoreTerp noted, a million shades of grey.

[Bloopandablast]

As BaltimoreTerp noted, a million shades of grey.

So it seems that those against the "moral" argument against PED's are no longer questioning whether they helped, but now it is 1) how much did they really help and 2) remember when uncle Buck played he used to dip his bat in cocoa butter...and that was cheating too.

So we don't disagree that it was cheating just that it is "gray" how much they were cheating and other people did something too.

Eventually it comes back to Greenies and now to Koufax and Coritisone. Well I will tell you why I have not commented on Koufax and his cortisone.....because I never knew about it and probably a lot of fans on this board who never saw him pitch did either.

So let's hear the Greenies argument now.