give it back to maris. then take it away and give it to ruth for using 8 freaking more games (5% of the season, 3 homers on a 60 homer pace) and doing it in an expansion year against expansion year pitching. then take it away from ruth for never facing a black or latin-american pitcher and hardly having to change time zones there were so few teams and so little travel. and then give it to ty cobb for when he held it and then take it away because he was a racist *******. now no one has it. as for mcgwire, is the allegation that he used them for his whole career (since he played with canseco early on, i guess that's what jose is saying) or just in the recent surge of steroids. i mean the guy came straight out of college hitting 49 (though 1987 saw a big spike in homers so it's a little less impressive than it seems, but not much) and didn't just get big one year. he was huge and strong as hell right from the start. i don't even know why he used steroids. how much stronger did he need to be? if anyone used them to help themselves heal quicker from working out, etc i guess it would be big mac. though maybe they were why he always got hurt (otherwise he might already have the record). as for this: uhhh, the guy had 3 mvp's by that time and was pretty much guaranteed, if his health held up at all, to get to 600 homers and 500 steals (while no one else is even in the 400/400 club and i believe only mays has over 300 of each). he hit 34 homers in only 102 games in 1999 and then hit 49 in 2000. the 73 definitely stands out, but that was the year homers just exploded (arod 57, luis gonzalez 57, sosa 64, tons of people over 40) so i assume the balls were juiced more that year than the players. not that bonds wasn't juiced, but outside of that year, he probably hasn't gained all that many homers to roids (though his efficiency has been boosted tremendously) considering he's walked his way out of hundreds of extra at bats. the guy was a first ballot hall of famer in the debate for greatest ever even without the roids. with them i'd say he probably would be the most impressive offensive player ever (though ruth would re-overtake him with the pitching). as for the larger debate about discounting stats from this era, i just can't do it. they seem to have been far too prevalent. i'm not taking away an entire era of stats no matter what and even the guys who did it, so many were doing it i almost just say i don't care, what's done is done. i know you don't have to jump off the brooklyn bridge if everyone else does, but it was so prevalent and essentially allowed by baseball (who had to know it was a problem but did nothing) that i'm just going to pretty much absolve everyone at this point. if they played today, ruth, aaron, and mays would be sosa, mcgwire, and bonds and we'd be talking about how sacrosanct sosa and mcgwire and bonds and all the old-timers were.
it's not a blame game, to begin with. not a matter of blame. Ruth's 60 in 6 less games is more impressive than Maris' 61 in 6 more games.
What Max said. It was 8 more games, and it wasn't an asterisk. What the Commissioner (Frick?) said was that there would be 2 records listed in the record book - Home Runs in 154 Games, Home Runs in 162 Games. That sounds fair to me. A homer per 6 games comes out to about 25-30 homers over the course of a season. Not a good rate.
Leave out steroids for a second but what if they were just taking nutritional supplements and studying Qi Gong or anything else that improves strength and health that Maris didn't have access to in the 1960's? The problem is that there are so many things now that physical performance that are completely legal compared to 45 years ago. For instance would you strip endurance records from players who trained in hyperbaric chambers to increase lung capacity or swimmers who've used hightech swimsuits?
Well I finally got my answer. MLB didn't ban steroids until 2002 after Bonds and McGwire had broken the home run records. So technically they weren't cheating since taking steroids was legal at the time.
Ok, So assume, as he said at the time and still contends, that he was taking dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) a precursor steroid hormone as he claimed. I can still walk into any Walgreens in Houston, and as long as I'm over 18 it's on the counter next to the Vitamin C. In may or may not aid in putting on muscle mass, but was in every health food store on the planet at the time. As long as we're going up the chemical chain what about cholesterol levels? After all, the precursor to all steroids is cholesterol. Maybe MLB could suspend David Wells because his LDL levels are too high. The point here is that steroid is a word with a negative semantic tag attached to it that really means many things. How about the practice of tailoring your diet to maxamize the natural production of natural anabolic steroids? It is done, it's effective, and Babe Ruth certanly didn't have a dietician. I still remember players before 1987, when homeruns began their rise, who wouldn't lift weights because they thought extra bulk would disrupt their swings. Should we discount Ricky Henderson's stolen base record because there weren't surgeon general's warnings on cigarettes or definitive studies regarding the effects before the 70's (or whenever)? On top of all of this, how 'bout the decades old practice of speed use in baseball, which still continues. Quoting the NYT: Finally, did anybody contend that Nolan Ryan's strike out records shouldn't stand after they raised the mound in the 60's? It is a complex issue, and not quite as simple as "steroids are unique and universely dangerous, and have given players advantages that those who came before didn't have". To quote Paracelsus, "The dose makes the poison." Complete removal of anabolic steroids from baseball would require universal castration of players. I think thats a bit extreme.
