Posted by
Bill Crawford on Sunday, July 17, 2011 8:01:59 PM
The steroid era is over, thank God. Many players fell to the temptation, and their statistics showed it as well as their forearms did. Of those who were good enough and obvious enough to garner attention, a few (like Jose Canseco) simply admitted it,and many took the non-denial denial choice, followed by a humble plea for mercy, a la Mark McGwire.
But not the two giants of our time, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. They are daring us all to prove it, and playing it out like Mother Teresa. And thanks to some incredibly stupid prosecutors (Roger) and a trainer team that is willing to do jail time (Barry), they are getting away with it.
How bad does their act stink? Go through their numbers. Pitchers are quirkier than hitters, sometimes a thrower learns a new pitch or finds a niche in a bullpen later in life and has a resurgence in their 30's. Clemens was a power pitcher the whole way, though. No real difference in style from beginning to end.
The point being, the statistical peak of a player's career is almost always the ages 27-28. Clemens had a consisent streak between 24 and 30. Then he hd the best year of his life in Toronto at the age of 35, and had a very effective streak with the Yanks between the ages of 39 and 43. How does that happen?
Same with Bonds. His best season was at the age of 28, his first year with the Giants. He declined slowly (but was far and away the best player in baseball) through the 1990's, and then what? Between the ages of 36 and 39 he puts up numbers that can only be matched by the peak of Babe Ruth. How does that happen?
Next year, both become eligible for Cooperstown, and here is where the fun starts. Even without their late rebirths, they both would have been first ballot cinches. Will they be punished? Yes, but for how long? If there weren't a Commisioner edict against Pete Rose, he would have been voted in by now.
Then the new debate will be: was the steroid era a contiguous part of the game? The argument goes, the teams either couldn't detect the new substances, didn't have the will to, or didn't have the power to make the Player's Union cave, why punish the players who were, by the letter of the law, still following the rules?
I am thankful Bonds started late. He was a glorious example of what steriods do to the most talented player out there. You could make a plausible argument that he was the second best player, ever. In order to do better than that, he would have to step on a pitchers mound and be the best left handed pitcher in the league for three years- something Ruth accomplished at the age of 24.