Thanks to years of research into the effects of performance enhancing drugs in baseball we now know everything about the drugs except whether or not they enhance performance.
Steroids and other so-called performance drugs were really at the center of this year’s Hall of Fame vote, which was announced on Wednesday night. Three very good players – first baseman Jeff Bagwell, catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, and outfielder Tim Raines – all surpassed the requisite 75% of votes needed to get a plaque in Cooperstown.
Worthy as those three are, however, there was more talk about the elephants who didn’t make it into the room. Barry Bonds is the greatest player in baseball history, at least on paper, with a record 762 home runs and seven MVP awards. Roger Clemens is, arguably, the greatest pitcher with 354 wins and seven Cy Young awards.
Not only didn’t Bonds and Clemens fail to make the cut, they weren’t all that close. Clemens got 54.1% of the votes needed, while Bonds stalled at 53.8% (although their percentage of votes did increase from last year). As everyone knows, the reason is PEDs.
PEDs are a subject on which everyone has an opinion, but few have hard facts. Many sportswriters who have taken the most intractable positions on PED use aren’t even sure what they are. The naturally occurring human growth hormone (HGH) has been associated with numerous players, but it is not an anabolic steroid and no study has revealed that it has even the slightest performance enhancing effect; it is prescribed by doctors for a variety of purposes including stimulating cell reproduction to promote healing.
There has been much research into whether PEDs or not really do boost a baseball player’s performance. A study by the Journal of Sports Medicine and Doping Studies published in May 2015 reported no statistically increased in the number of home runs … no significant change in batting averages.”
Except for a handful of players who have been caught and punished since the 2004 Basic Agreement instituted rules against banned substances, we have no way of knowing which players up for Hall of Fame consideration used PEDs because no one else has tested positive. Testing is random, so it’s possible someone has used but not been caught.
Only one player up for Hall of Fame consideration is known to have used PEDs, and Barry Bonds is a case entirely unto himself.
For one thing, he is the only player known to have used PEDs under the direct supervision of a laboratory, and that laboratory happened to be the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative – Balco – the state of the art facility for the creation and testing of performance enhancing substances. (One wonders how most players who tried to purchase PEDs even knew what they were getting.)
Bonds’ first year in major league ball was 1986. In 1999, his 14th season, at age 34, he batted just .262. He was still a very good player with 34 home runs and an excellent on-base percentage of .389. Nonetheless, he seemed to be slipping, as indeed most players do as they approach their mid-30s. But, the next year Bonds’ career exploded: he hit a career high 49 HRs. The next season, 2001, he batted .338, the second highest of his career, and hit 73 home runs to shatter all previous major league records. In 2002, the 37-year-old Bonds had one of the greatest seasons of any player ever with a career-high .370 and 46 HRs – and he would have hit even more homers had pitchers not been so terrified on him that he was walked an eye-popping 198 times.
I know of no other baseball player – indeed, no athlete in any professional sport who after the age of 35 became better than his under-30 self. And Bonds didn’t simply get better between the ages of 35-40, he became one of the greatest baseball players ever – bigger, stronger, faster, just plain better than his young self in every way, and also statistically better than Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays at any age of their careers. And Bonds’ career ascendancy began at the same time he got involved with Balco.
Bonds did admit he took steroids, but scientifically there’s no way to prove that was the reason for his incredible performance after he was 35. We can’t prove it, and anyway, what are we going to do about it?
For one thing, in the 14 seasons between 1986 and 1999 Bonds established himself, without question, as a Hall of Fame player – an eight-time All-Star who led the National League in walks five times, OBP four times, and slugging three times. He was a three-time MVP before he hooked up with Balco.
How, on the basis of those early seasons, can he be kept out of the Hall of Fame? For that matter, how can he be kept out on the basis of those incredible seasons between 2000 and 2003 since whatever he was taking wasn’t yet banned in the Basic Agreement between MLB and the Players Association?
But Bonds is the big, big exception to the known facts about baseball and PEDs. I’ve been looking for the effects of PEDs on baseball players for years now, and I have no clear sense that any of them have had any impact at all on the game. At least, no impact that can’t also be explained by changes and fluctuation in tactics, strategy, equipment, rule changes and ball parks. (For instance, in 2002, the Rockies started storing baseballs in a humidor to keep them moist as the dry air of Colorado was resulting in an unnatural number of hits and home runs.)
In fact, most of the claims that have been made about PEDs dissolve under scrutiny. Jose Canseco, who started much of the fuss about steroids with his 2006 book, Juiced. Canseco boasted that he bulked up his 6ft 4in frame to 240lbs using steroids, which enabled to hit more than 40 home runs in three different seasons. Well, Henry Aaron, who was four inches shorter than Canseco and played for most of his career at around 180lbs, hit more than 40 home runs seven times. Who juiced Henry? (Do you appreciate irony? Consider that if Canseco had never bragged about using drugs, he might be in the HOF today.)
The case against Clemens being kept out of the Hall is that he could not have pitched so well into his late 30s and early 40s without some help. In 2001, at age 38, when most starting pitchers are just hanging on or considering a career move to the bullpen. Clemens won 20, lost just three, and led the major leagues with an impressive won-lost percentage of .870. What most analysts overlooked was that Clemens was a very good but also a very lucky pitcher that season with high run support from Yankees hitters; normally his 3.51 ERA that season would only be good for perhaps 13 or maybe 15 wins – a respectable number but certainly not one that would prompt accusations of getting an artificial boost.
At age 42, Clemens had a fine season, 13-8. At the age of 42, in 1963, Warren Spahn was 23-7. Over the last seven seasons of Clemens’ career, he won 98 games; over the last seven years of Spahn’s career he won 117 games. Who juiced Spahn?
In the long run, I’m sure, Bonds and Clemens will make it into the Hall of Fame. When Mike Piazza was voted in last year, it was the first time a player rumored to have had an association with PEDs was elected, a sure indication that voters were softening on the subject. This year, two of the inductees – Bagwell and Rodriguez – had clouds of alleged steroid use hanging over them and the third, Tim Raines, was known to have a drug problem, though with a recreational drug, cocaine, not PEDs.
Bonds and Clemens, too, will one day be there, if not next season then probably the one after that. Ultimately, what other choice is there? Making suspected or even admitted PED users wait for a year or two for selection seems like the only sane and humane response we have to the whole sad question of PEDs.
What else are we going to do, ostracize them permanently and enter our old age lecturing future generations on why PEDs demanded a lifetime ban? If the Hall of Fame is for the greatest players, then surely someday we’ll come to the understanding that it was a greater crime to keep them out than to forgive them.
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