bad news for baseball

Daddycool · Mar 7, 2005

PHOENIX(AP) Commissioner Bud Selig said Sunday that no records will be taken away from players suspected of steroid use.

"That would be unfair to do that," said before a game between the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels. "In fairness to those players, no one has been convicted of anything. And we can't turn history back.

"My job is to protect the integrity of the game. Each era, each decade has had situations where people said there were unfair advantages."

Also Sunday, Rep. Tom Davis confirmed reports that the House Government Reform Committee is prepared to subpoena players and officials who turn down invitations to appear at a March 17 hearing on baseball's steroids policy.

Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Frank Thomas, Selig and union head Donald Fehr are among those who have been invited, along with baseball executive vice president Sandy Alderson and San Diego general manager Kevin Towers.

"We'll use the subpoena to get them there if that's what we have t

what bullshit! That means that a juiced steriod user is about to become the all time home run leader. Way to protect Henry A and Babe Ruth and all the other non-steriod people on the home run list and what they accomplished!

daengman · Mar 7, 2005

Where is Jeff Gillooly now that he is really needed????

Mr. User Name · Mar 7, 2005

Most Valuable Player Award

is correctly named "The Kenesaw Mountain Landis Award".

As major league baseball's first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944) cleaned up a sport that had been almost fatally corrupted by ties to organized gambling. Ruling with an autocratic hand, Landis saved baseball from squabbling owners and miscreant players and presided over the sport's ascendancy into American's undisputed national pastime during the era between the two World Wars.

Is there anyone today who has balls ?

biglarry1 · Mar 7, 2005

Should Gaylord Perry,Whitey Ford and many other pitchers be removed because they used an illegal pitch(Spitball,scuffball, Vaselineball etc) to gian an unfair advantage.?

biglarry1 · Mar 7, 2005

Re: Most Valuable Player Award

Not to defend Bud Selig's record, but todays conditions in baseball was never faced by Landis.
Landis never had to deal with a strong players union,free agency, work stoppages that ends a season,network demands that control the game. and the fact that baseball is NOT the national pastime.

The two major reasons that steroids were not stopped in baseball was that the union was not going to allow it and the owners liked the fact that all the homers were bringing back fans after the 1994 strike that canceled the WS

Daddycool · Mar 8, 2005

using a shine ball as they used to call it is no way near the level of taking a substance to improve you physcially. That shine ball may have had more break on it, but how can you say that it is the same as injecting something that will make you hit a ball 500 feet. The shine,spit,vasiline ball didn't make anyone who threw 85 mph all of a sudden throw 95.I think if it added say just 10-25 feet we all would not be talking about it.

biglarry1 · Mar 8, 2005

If a pitchers pitch breaks an extra two inch,that the difference between a batter lofting a long fly ball or hitting a line drive and weakly grounding out.

Cheating is cheating.

karnevel9 · Mar 8, 2005

Larry is right.
This is all about $$
The owners were thrilled to have competing steroid enhanced gorillas Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa knocking down the fences and pulling in the fans.
They knew HOW they were hitting all those home runs.
Now that the fans aren't happy about it, they are all out for a witchhunt.
Poor Jason Giambi. Stienbrenner knew he was juiced up, and was perfectly happy with him that way. He didn't get bent until Giambi STOPPED the juice, and stopped hitting homers.

Daddycool · Mar 9, 2005

You are still not changing your natural ability. You are still throwing that curve at 70-75 mph. A good hitter as all good hitters do, they will adjust to those 2 inches. What we are talking about here is that you are changing your natural ablility into something you are not.

With all those picthers, nothing phsycially changed. They still all threw their pitches exactly the same way they did. With these hitters all of a sudden, you go on the juice and like you said now that long fly ball is a 500 foot home run. When all those hitter could do is hit a 400 foot home run. Or go from a 25 home run hitter a season to 60 home runs a season.

Daddycool · Mar 9, 2005

I do not know if you ever played the game, but baseballs get scuffed all the time during a game. What if a baseball has a higher seam on one side and the pitchers can get a better grip on that higher seam and it enhances his curve? Is that cheating? Why do you think pitchers ask for the same ball back? There is something about that ball that he feels is enhancing his pitches. Is he cheating for asking for the same ball back?

You can throw out that ball and get a new one.

Sosa is a double offender to me. One, he got caught with a corked bat and secondly he is on the juice.

biglarry1 · Mar 9, 2005

From what i have read steriods strength would only add approx 15-20 feet to a fly ball which would increase a warning track ball to a home run. What is probably causing even more home runs are the tighter balls and smaller ball parks like CBP in Phila and whatever they are calling that park in Houston.

Daddycool · Mar 10, 2005

more info

B. Does Strength Help In Hitting A Baseball?

This is really the crux of the argument. It is often said that you can't take a drug to help you hit a curveball, which is true but totally beside the point. The issue isn't whether steroids will help you or me become a major league ballplayer; the issue is whether guys with the pre-existing skills to play professional baseball will have those skills enhanced. To deny that, among other things, you have to argue that strength has no impact on the ability to hit for power. Of course, this is ridiculous. Since the introduction of the home run as a regular part of the game in the 1920s, it has always been the case that big, strong guys with powerful chests and arms have tended to be home run hitters, and skinny little guys have not. To deny that steroids have an impact on hitting for power in particular, you have to look at all the home runs hit by the Gehrigs and Foxxes and Mantles and Kluzewskis and Killebrews and all the singles hit by the Willie McGees and Vince Colemans and Nellie Foxes of the world, and argue that it is just a coincidence that physical strength has always been so strongly correlated with home run power. You have to not only look at Bonds and Giambi and all the other guys who have been placed under one sort of cloud or other and say that whatever they took or were given didn't matter; you actually have to say that all the muscle Barry Bonds has added has had nothing to do with his power surge, that Jason Giambi's increased power production as he gained muscle was just a coincidence. Sorry, I'm not buying that.

Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a v****ble affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed. But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?

All this increase in bat speed and strength does not equal another 20 feet,but far more than that. More like 50 feet if you do the math.

While I do agree that smaller parks are helping the increase of home runs on average in both leagues, that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about players who should not be able to break records because of the use of steriods.

How fair is it to Henry A that Bonds is going to break his record?

daengman · Mar 22, 2005

It has been announced that Barry Bonds will miss most or all of the season due to a knee operation or perhaps this is just a screen due to the fact that he cannot perform on the same level without his steroids.

In any event "thank you Jeff Gillooly!"

oddfellow4870 · Mar 22, 2005

Let's hear it for the splendid splinter who hit for power and average and had the dimensions of a rubber band .....

I hope Bonds comes back from his year off clean and is able to prove he can do it without the drugs. If not, I hope he never hits another tater .....

biglarry1 · Mar 22, 2005

I just watched an interview with Bonds conducted earlier today and apparently he is TIRED. Must had said he was tired at least 10 times in about a 3 minutes span. Apparently going to take a year off so that he can spend time with his family.

biglarry1 · Mar 22, 2005

I always thought Ted Williams was the greatest hitter ever. Had over 540 home runs with a lifetime average of.340+ . How many more homers would he had hit without the 5 years he missed to military service or if he played in NY with that short right field porch in Yankee Stadium?

Ozzy · Apr 4, 2005

A few notes while I'm here...

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis..... was a corrupt Illinois federal district court judge who conspired with baseball during the Federal League's antitrust suit, which was heard in his court. A Federal League victory would have destroyed baseball's unique monopoly status, and Landis won the owners' gratitude by stalling his decision until the Feds had collapsed and their suit was withdrawn. As a reward for his dishonesty baseball handed the cushy lifetime job of commish with a hefty raise in salary for his work in squashing the competition and his help in obtaining the anti trust exemption sometime later. The man was dishonest and did more harm to the game in the long run.

Juice don't make you hit the ball harder or farther (if you understand physics you'd know that).... What juice does do is it allows you to stay in the prime condition needed, and for a longer period of time so your career totals (like Bonds) show no significant drop off when your 40 as when you were 30. That's CHEATING!

Not to take anything away from Ted Williams... but he played with a pretty short porch in RF at Fenway (Pesky corner). Wonder how many less HR's he'd have hit if he were a righty and hit into Yankee Stadiums death valley as Joe D had to do his entire career. But yeah.... Ted didn't cheat to accomplish his feats. And if he'd played on juice he prob could have had two or three more productive years and hit close to 700 hr's. Now imagine what Ruth, Mays or Aaron would have done on roids and three or four more productive years.

WWF wrestling which no one considers a sport and even less take seriously took it upon itself to ban steroid use in the mid 90's..... It took baseball lots of pressure from the public, the medical community and the govt and till 2002 to ban steroids themselves..... and even then with ridiculously weak penalties.............. what's that say about the game of baseball?

When for the last 5 years on this board I've said baseball is more corrupt and dishonest than boxing, wrestling and harness racing, I knew what I was talking about.... yet everyone thought I was joking...... ain't no one joking now is there?

ITYS.

Baseball is headed down the same path as the NHL which I predicted two years ago would change forever as we knew it, not have a 04-05 season and probably never return. So far I'm two thirds right.

Daddycool · Apr 4, 2005

Juice don't make you hit the ball harder or farther (if you understand physics you'd know that).... What juice does do is it allows you to stay in the prime condition needed, and for a longer period of time so your career totals (like Bonds) show no significant drop off when your 40 as when you were 30. That's CHEATING!

Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a v****ble affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed. But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power?

Steriods definately make you hit the ball farther. No question about it. Using your physics. If you are stronger you hit the ball longer because your bat speed is faster and the strength ( force) you are swinging the bat is greater.

Now if you said juice doesn't make you hit the ball then I'd say you are right. But it for sure makes you hit the ball farther

Ozzy · Apr 4, 2005

Muscle mass does not make you swing the bat any harder….. actually most muscle bound guys tend to have slower bat speeds.

argleby · Apr 4, 2005

Re: A few notes while I'm here...

I agree that steroids help you play longer and that that's cheating. But I think you're wrong when you say they don't make you hit the ball harder or farther (which is also cheating).

Well, I hope you're wrong about that. One important difference is that baseball isn't facing the same financial difficulties that hockey is.