Turns in BBWAA card in protest over 'roid cheats

And my point is you play in your era, against players who are also under the same policies and rules. Pitchers prior to 1969 had the benefit of a higher pitching mound. Times change.

A lot of other hitters had the same "benefits" DiMaggio did. They didn't hit in 56 straight, nor did they match his batting average.

Yeah, I know. It's against baseball rules to have too much pine tar on your bat. But it was OK to add 25 pounds of chemical muscle in a single offseason.

If McGwire used steroids (Gee, d'ya think?), he was probably in violation of federal law, which ought to trump Bud Selig's stone tablets.

 

Smasher, I don't think we disagree. The thread is about Newhouse's story/resignation. That's what we were discussing. Newhouse's stated reasoning for quitting the BBWAA was that the game had lost its purity. Dooley mentioned that Newhouse probably voted in greenie users and I added that he also probably voted in racists, wife beaters and child abusers, all of which would demonstrate the speciousness of Newhouse's loss-of-purity reasoning. You seem to believe that Newhouse was limiting his displeasure to the way steroids may have skewed the measurement of performances.

 

Before the current list of banned substances existed in baseball, there was already a general clause prohibiting players from using federally controlled substances.
When steroids became illegal, any player using them was not only breaking the law, he was also breaking the rules.
The argument that steroids weren't banned by baseball is invalid. They were banned as a result of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act in 1990, because they were a federally controlled substance.

I couldn't link to the Newhouse piece, but I wanted to chime in.

 

I can respect Dave Newhouse's decision to turn in his card and help clear his conscience. I'm sure his heart was in the right place. But I can't agree with it because it really doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it. Being a member of the BBWAA does earn you Hall of Fame voting rights (after 10 years), but that isn't all it does. It also gets you into the ballpark and provides you a seat in the press box and entrance to the clubhouses, so you can do the job you were hired to do. Is Mr. Newhouse going to stop doing his job as another protest?

It would have made more sense to me, if he wanted to make a statement, to maintain voting and when the ballot comes, send it in blank, which would make it more difficult for the evil candidates it sounds like he's protesting against to get the 75 percent needed. I will take my ballot and do the responsible thing (in my mind) of voting FOR Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken and Goose Gossage and NOT voting for Mark McGwire.

Again, I don't criticize Mr. Newhouse for doing something that obviously soothed his conscience, I just don't agree with it as a protest against steroids et.al. There would seem to be better ways to protest.


And to answer the question about voting, the NY Times has indeed stopped its members from voting. Other papers are doing it, too. There are still, however, enough voters to complete a valid and good election.

 

that column is the reason i defend bonds... i don't have any doubt bonds used roids... but these idiots who think the game was "pure" before steroids crack me up.

 

But defending Bonds because you disagree with some other columnists sets up a false, and unnecessary, dialectic.
You can disagree with a romanticized notion of baseball's former purity and still think Bonds cheated.

 

Good point. However, when a lynch mob comes after someone for a crime the equivalent of a petty theft that person needs to be defended from the mob. As I've mentioned before, there has been very little sense of perspective and history in the reporting of this story, especially when it comes to baseball and, in particular, Bonds' involvement. Twenty or 30 years from now I think people will realize it.

First you have the fools who talk about the "purity" of baseball. Sorry, never was and never will be. Ever. Some of the biggest scumbags imaginable are enshrined in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.

Then you have other fools talking about the "sanctity" of the records. Sorry again. Records have always been skewed by myriad factors -- ballparks, rules, equipment, training, segregation. It's always been impossible to objectively compare players from different generations based solely on numbers and without considering all of these other factors. Numbers are fun to look at perhaps but they're relatively meaningless without context.

Then you have the folks who are stumbling over themselves, gleeful of the opportunity to "get back" at Bonds because, as we all know, he can be a surly jerk. Never mind that most of these people are basing their hatred on hearsay and have never so much as had a conversation with the man.

Someday people will realize and even understand that this is a period in which people in all sports (not to mention entertainers, models and ordinary people who want to look good) have experimented with these substances.