Ortiz, ManRam tested positive in 2003?

Good point. The Commissioner's Office hoped the Mitchell Report would put an end to the discussion, too. We saw how well that idea worked out.

 

How do people here know that Ramirez is a freakishly good hitter without PEDs?

I don't get this. We have a generation of hitters (Bonds, Mac, Sosa, Palmiero, Ramirez, etc) who have all pretty much laid waste to career power numbers, all done with PEDs, and I'm supposed to ignore reality and just assume that they were freakishly good hitters? That the real story is an anonymous attorney leaked the names, not the fact that baseball (career records, single-season records, World Series championships) results have been altered completely by PED use?

That doesn't compute with me.

 

Speaking of Jose and more accusations ...

http://thebiglead.com/?p=16461#more-16461

 

I just heard an old Frank deford NPR podcast about grunting in tennis. He complimented the fenway crowd for the creativity of their chant for Arod - "You do steroids". Like Christmas in July - and I'm Jewish.

 

Who told you to ignore reality? Think whatever you like. However, the wrongdoings of the corrupt attorneys who are leaking out this information remain far more egregious crimes. If you want to remain comfortably within the safe little baseball world and worry your pants off about the sanctity of Babe Ruth's pre-integration HR record, knock yourself out.

 

The players need a better union.

 

Outing alert: Cranberry is Jason Whitlock.

Ummmm.... Henry Aaron held the pre-Bonds career HR record.

And Roger Maris held the pre-McGwire/Sosa season HR record.

 

No kidding? The point is that every era had unique characteristics that make era-vs.-era comparisons an exercise in futility. For example, Aaron's record was helped greatly by playing in Fulton County Stadium, aka The Launching Pad, because it had the highest elevation in MLB until the Rockies came along in '93. The "sanctity of the records" argument is bullshit because the records never had any sanctity.

 

None of those, even the segregation, was against the rules. Every player until then was doing the best he could in his own era. These guys had a choice - they didn't have to do it, just because it was the steroid era. This is a widely used, but very poor analogy.

 

Sorry don't understand what you're saying. None of those what? I'm not saying players had to use or didn't have to use, merely acknowledging that many did use. Without assigning good, bad or neutral, it's a characteristic of this era of baseball that makes it different than any other era, just like there were characteristics of other eras that made them unique, whether it was the dead ball, the live ball, the higher mound, the smaller ballparks, the bigger ballparks, the better equipment, the inferior equipment, etc. People like to compare players from different eras. It can be a fun exercise and debate. Ultimately, however, arriving at an apples-to-apples conclusion is ALWAYS elusive.

 

And yet, we compare across eras all the time - it's what the entire HOF process is. Usually the best way to do it is by comparing them to their peers in the same time. Steroids skew that, because unlike a high mound, a juiced ball or an all white league, there's an uneven playing field within the time.

 

Of course. Like I said, comparing players from different eras can be a fun exercise and makes for an interesting debate.

It does make it more difficult to compare players within this generation. No question. Some partook, others didn't. Same for scuffing balls, greenies, corking bats and stationing a guy with binoculars in the scoreboard to steal and relay signs. Not everybody cheated but some did.