The steroid post to end all posts

Ok, it seems sports cannot survive one day without talk about steroids. Yesterday it was Andy Pettitte, today it was Miguel Tejada.

Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about steroids. I'm sure you as a reader are probably sick of me talking about them. So tonight I vow this will be the end of their discussion on SpeakGood (though I do reserve the right to cover a huge breaking story). It will be for the better.

Let me start by saying steroids and other performance enhancing drugs exist in ALL sports. Baseball is only a small slice of the pie. The Olympics are riddled with them. The Tour de France, the NFL, etc all have problems with these drugs.

Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and a ton more players took steroids. Roger, it's time to admit it. Pettitte seems to have come off fairly cleanly in my eyes, but now Clemens can't go back on his word.

It is time for Bud Selig to do something to step up and curb this problem. The Mitchell Report was a good start, but it doesn't go far enough.

The Mitchell Report is a joke. Though it gives a lot of good information the investigation was poor to say the least. It relies heavily on only a couple questionable sources and is actually a pain to read. Try reading it, I dare you.

Perhaps the biggest question that needs answering is what do we do to those who took performance enhances. My solution: Let it go. It is in the past and we cannot go back in time. When comparing hitters and pitchers of this time period, compare them with the fact in mind that it was the juiced era. There is no need to prosecute any of the people involved.

That concludes my little finishing rant on steroids. Hopefully I do not need to bring it up again.

Knoblauch subpoenaed, witchhunt continues

Former Yankee Chuck Knoblauch was subpoened today to testify before Congress about this whole steroids "issue" that Major League Baseball has going on.

I say that sarcastically because this whole steroid thing is getting pretty ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the winter break downtime of SpeakGood did not allow me to discuss the Mitchell Report and the corresponding fallout. To sum up all of my aggression, I am not a huge fan of the report, and I have not heard many that are. A lot of the report is based off singular testimony from a questionable source (read down in the article) and it almost seems to be a witchhunt.

And, what is most frustrating is that Congress is continuing to investigate all of this. Though they do need to have some hand in this, they are biting off more than they SHOULD chew. It is the MLB's responsibility to govern itself. Many of these supposed steroid infractions hardly warrant prosecution.

Moreover, besides some side testimony about Roger Clemens and Andy Petitte, ESPN commenter Stoney2183 summed Knoblauch's role in the investigation the best:

why do they have to use the pic of chucky while he was with the royals? if the royals condoned steroids, they wouldn't have been in the cellar for so many years.

That is all.

Bonds’ indictment finally comes

Barry Bonds was finally indicted this past week on perjury charges. If convicted, Bonds could spend up to 30 years in jail.

Okay, time for me to get blasted again. I still am not convinced that Bonds knowingly took steroids. Hopefully, this trial will give the world some hard evidence that he did. It better, or else the perjury charges are going to fall faster than Lloyd Carr’s approval rating in Ann Arbor. All it is going to take is a small seed of reasonable doubt to get Bonds off too. Don’t believe me? OJ Simpson was found not guilty of much more serious crimes, and got off scotch free in the criminal trial, all thanks to reasonable doubt.

Maybe Bonds did take steroids. But, there is still a big elephant in the room. He has never, I repeat, NEVER tested positive for any steroid, stimulant, etc. Many other players have. Why is Bonds a scapegoat? Why not pick on players that have tested positive for banned substances. It makes no sense.

Regardless, I am eagerly awaiting the trial, much like I am awaiting the Michael Vick trial. Two great sports trials in the next year or so. Yay.

And anyways, Bonds will probably get stuck with a couple hundred hours of community service. That’s what most celebrities get. And we all know the problems with celebs in prison. Paris Hilton anyone?

Steroid (witch?)hunt in baseball

***Edit: Since writing this article in the afternoon, Byrd has admitted to using HGH for a medical condition. His explanation does NOT change my views of the subject.***

Sometimes I wonder how legit steroid allegations are.

In game four of this year’s ALCS, Cleveland Indians pitcher Paul Byrd went 5 innings, giving up only 2 runs. His strong performance was key in securing the Cleveland victory.

Less than a week later, Byrd has been accused of buying human growth hormone (HGH).

I do not condone steroid use, period. However, I find all these accusations a little fishy.

Sure, it’s pretty hard to deny that Barry Bonds took steroids. I mean, he even says he never knowingly took steroids, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t take them unknowingly. But what really gets me about the Byrd accusations is that they come only after he has been placed into the spotlight.

Why release such information only now? It’s obvious whoever released it wanted a story. And, of course, all this information comes from an unidentified source. Hmm, even things that have supposed good sources can turn out to be false. Why should we believe this one?

And this isn’t the first time this has happened either. Just over a month ago, Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel was accused of purchasing HGH as well. It just so happens that this occurred less than a week after he homered twice in a game. Why is that a big achievement you ask? Because Ankiel was a pitcher, and this season was his first since coming back up from the minor leagues.

I just think it’s rather ironic that all these steroid allegations come out following the success of a player. It seems like it would be very easy to fake these accusations just for the sake of news. Hopefully, the results of the Mitchell Investigation will sort all of this nonsense out. Until then, I will be taking everything with a grain of salt.

Steroids "effect" on home run totals

With Barry Bonds blasting his record setting 756^th home run this season (the ball, by the way, is headed to Cooperstown with an asterisk on it), his supposed steroid use has been brought more and more into the public eye. And baseball’s recent foray into investigating the use of performance enhancers throughout the MLB has called into question the achievements of several big name players.

The recent increase in home run production is often attributed to these performance enhancers. But, if you examine statistics from the past 60 or so years, the numbers tell a different story.

If you compare the top home run totals in each league from 1940 to 2007, the numbers seem to prove steroids have had little effect on home run production. In that time span, 5850 home runs were hit by league leaders (multiple league leaders were not included). If you do the math, that works out to an average of 43 home runs a year.

Let’s assume that the steroid era began in 1986 (Jose Canseco’s first full season), so we’ll remove the numbers from ’86 and beyond. Evaluating and comparing these totals against the ones from our first calculations should tell us how much of an impact steroids have had on home runs.

From 1940 to 1985, 3724 home runs were hit by league leaders (again, multiple league leaders were not included), which equates to an average of about 40.5 home runs per season.

In essence, home run production has increased a mere 2.5 home runs on average since 1940. 2.5 home runs do not justify the argument that steroids bloated home run totals. Other factors, however, do account for this small jump.

For one, players are in much better condition today than back in the 40’s and even the 80’s. Though Babe Ruth’s career took place before the 40’s, his lack of conditioning is well known. Who knows how many home runs he could have hit if he was in top shape like today’s athletes. They spend hours conditioning to get stronger and faster. At one point, weightlifting was discouraged among baseball players, and it has now become common practice.

Hitting technique has also evolved since the 40’s. Today, people teach the rotational hitting approach, which basically involves dipping the back shoulder and having a slight upper cut. Barry Bonds, for example, employs this technique. Rotational hitting places an importance on the home run and numbers have risen accordingly. Before the rotational approach, people taught linear hitting, which results in more line drives and ground balls. Had the great hitters of the past used a rotational swing, it’s very likely that more home runs would have been hit.

Though it is often said that home run production has been extremely high in the past two decades, numbers say otherwise. A small increase in production is not the sole result of steroids, but one of better conditioning, technique, and other factors.

Ecko: Please don’t do it…

Barry Bonds’ record setting 756^th home run ball sold for more than $750,000. So it only makes sense that the ball would be the centerpiece to someone’s baseball collection right?

Wrong.

Fashion designer Marc Ecko, who bought the ball, has decided to leave its fate up to an online poll on his website Vote756.com (http://www.vote756.com/). On the site voters can choose to send it to Cooperstown unblemished, brand it and then send it to Cooperstown, or blast the ball into outer space. The voting results will be revealed next week.

“I bought this baseball to democratize the debate over what to do with it,” Ecko wrote on the site.

Regardless of whether or not it’s the democratic thing to do Marc, please, PLEASE, don’t do it. Bonds has never been proven guilty of anything, yet. You could very well be sending a legit piece of history into space based only on speculation.

By now you’ve probably realized I’m in the group that appreciates the record, or at least the group that doesn’t necessarily feel Bonds was helped immensely by steroids. I really can’t deny that he ever took them, but still, if you look at his numbers, there are no real jumps in any statistic, other than that he was very productive in his late 30s. Until I am proven otherwise, I believe Bonds is an outstanding player, and may be the most well rounded player ever.

Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe Ecko is too.