Comments on: So who's the Hall of Fame 'roider Tom Boswell mentioned last night?

By: walk

walk — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:13:19 +0000

The way the above quote reads to me “who hit more home runs after Jose Canseco arrived in the league than he ever had before”, seems like he could also be talking about total hr’s not just peak.

By: btberry

btberry — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:31:43 +0000

Love the postmodern libs who don’t realize they’re criticizing people for having critical opinions. This joker even uses the word ‘hypocrite’ which makes it that much better.
Saying that known cheaters should continue to be disallowed does not equal pontificating, just so you know. It’s merely having an expressing an opinion. Now slamming people for having opinions while denying any possibility that those opinions are at all reasonable would be pontificating.

By: Professor Longnose

Professor Longnose — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:48:01 +0000

It turns out that that’s exactly what he did, as you posted in a later post. But in that post, you say even that isn’t enough.
I really don’t understand what you’re driving at. I know you think we should simply accept PEDs but why should whether someone knew about it or not 20 years ago matter to me on the issue of how we should treat players we suspect of using PEDs? And why should a PED user in the Hall of Fame change whether PED users SHOULD be in the Hall of Fame?

By: Largebill

Largebill — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:33:16 +0000

SouthofHeaven,
You’re nuts! Ruth from all accounts was rather fond of his genitals and not likely to approach his crotch with a sharp object. Also, he didn’t need anymore homers. He had no worries of someone breaking his record. He had about twice as many as anyone else when he retired. When he died there was not a single active player with over 400 homers. Heck, if Ruth wouldn’t work out or stick to a decent diet to lengthen his career he darn sure wouldn’t stick a needle into his favorite toy.

By: The Rabbit

The Rabbit — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:15:12 +0000

After 40 years of experience in both politics and the financial arenas, I saw a disturbing trend: He who spent the most time pontificating about morals, rules, and values would screw his mother for an extra 1% commission. Corollary: Those that understood human frailities (and put things in perspective) tried to avoid making those mistakes and just lived their lives with the values that the aforementioned hypocrites promote.
I won’t bore you with the multiudes of studies by sociologists that confirm this and because you’re probably unaware of them, I’ll forgive your ignorance.

By: The Steve Jeltz Experiment

The Steve Jeltz Experiment — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:29:35 +0000

If is Cal, then the consecutive games streak looks a little different, no? Wonder if the purists will start hunting for an asterisk.

By: ThatGuy

ThatGuy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:22:16 +0000

He also turned into a giant balloon when he retired. That is likely the cause of his early demise, the guy had to be pushing 325-350 lbs.

By: Kiwicricket

Kiwicricket — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:42:46 +0000

I mentioned him a month ago regarding this subject, and I still stick by it. What age did he play to again? PED’s and homers are still a debate for some reason. PED”s and athletic performance have never been in doubt.

By: Alex K

Alex K — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:18:18 +0000

They don’t erase the guys from the history of the game, they just don’t get a plaque with their likeness. There is plenty of mention of Pete Rose in the Hall.

By: Jonny5

Jonny5 — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:34:35 +0000

“Founded in 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is the oldest and most well known sports museum and Hall of Fame in the world. The Museum is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit educational institution dedicated to fostering an appreciation of the historical development of the game of baseball and its impact on our culture by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting its collections for a global audience, as well as honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to our National Pastime. ”
Then they need to stop acting like they’re a museum and educational institution if they’re going to give the revisionists history of the game by excluding great players they banned. I don’t like Hitler and what he did, should we exclude him from history books?

By: Steve C

Steve C — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:18:48 +0000

Rickey does not seem to really fit.
Canseco played in Oakland from 85 to mid way through the 92 season. Rickey did not come back to Oakland until the 90 season. 1990 was his most prodigious season at the plate (.467 wOBA, 28 HR). Rickey also hit 28 back in 1986.
If you check out Rickey’s isolated slugging over the years, the only season that stands out is 1990.
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=194&position=OF&page=6&type=full
IF he used the data seems to point to a single season.

By: Joe in NYC

Joe in NYC — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:06:56 +0000

Rickey is the easy choice — he played with Canseco in Oakland, he’s a maniac who tried to keep playing baseball into his 50s and clearly would have done anything to stay on the field — and he always had the worst acne!
But I have to say the Puckett possibility also fits. He was super skinny when he came into the league (http://blogs.citypages.com/sports/2006/03/kirby_puckett_tribute_spaceope.php), bulked up a lot over the years, ended up leaving the game with a bizarre health problem (glaucoma) that could be a consequence of corticosteroid use (and I am sure that back in the 80s, they were juicing with steroids, rather than hormones, which are expected to be much safer), and was notorious for having a bad temper. And then he had a stroke and died in his mid-40s — how many professional athletes die from strokes in their 40s? There are guys in their 40s still playing!
All of this evidence is circumstantial, but it the shoe certainly fits.
And he was so highly-regarded around the game, everyone loved him, that you could see why Boswell wouldn’t push an investigation on him.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:06:05 +0000

I won’t bite on the retarded and irrelevant political stab; but no ones said that it “doesn’t matter” that people cheated, just there’s never going to be a way to have a comprehensive list of who did and didn’t cheat. Therefore punishing them is wrong because there are many who won’t be caught and will get “unfair” praise relative to their cheating peers.
So in the end all you’re doing is punishing people for getting caught.

By: Detroit Michael

Detroit Michael — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:03:58 +0000

Presidential politics have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Stick to baseball.

By: Detroit Michael

Detroit Michael — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:01:37 +0000

Follow the link to the wezenball article in Craig’s post.

By: Detroit Michael

Detroit Michael — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:00:45 +0000

The goal of a professional athelete is to help his team win championships. Joe Jackson conspired to intentionally lose the World Series. It’s not introducing a tangential moral judgment to believe that Joe Jackson should not be in the Hall of Fame.

By: Rob Abruzzese

Rob Abruzzese — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:57:47 +0000

Jose Canseco has said for a few years now that there ALREADY IS a player in the Hall who has taken steroids. So this really confirms that statement.

By: matt

matt — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:53:46 +0000

I would say Ricky Henderson. When the hall of fame stuff was going on when Ricky got in last year there was a story on TV with Ricky and another player who was already enshrined (cant remember who it was). The other player was going off on steroid players and saying they shouldnt be in the hall, etc. Then they show Ricky’s part of the piece and he says something to the effect of “we need to move on… people don’t understand that players back then didnt know what they were putting in their bodies…they thought they were just trying to stay competitive with everone else”. As I heard him saying this stuff it struck me that he was essentially giving an excuse to all the steroid players and I thought it honestly sounded like he was defending himself. So anyway the story ended and I didn’t think about it again until a day or so later when Canseco made the statement that the Hall of Fame has now enshrined a known PED user. Right away Rickys defense of steroid users in the piece he did came right to my mind. I thought it made sense. He was a former teammate of Canseco. He had a tremendously muscular body well into his 40′s. That may all be coincidence but it seemed to fit.

By: smokehouse

smokehouse — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:52:23 +0000

The same morons on this comment board that say it doesn’t matter that they cheated are the same ones that voted for someone like Obama. There is a segment of our society that have no standards or character.

By: mcsnide

mcsnide — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:26:49 +0000

Right. I’m not accusing Dawson of doing PEDs. I don’t think Boswell’s comment proves anything other than that it was widespread knowledge that Jose was on the juice. I just think of the candidates discussed, Dawson fits the best in that conversation.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:21:59 +0000

I didn’t see this but I find this evidence to be massively underwhelming.
Everyone who knows anything about steroids will tell you that you need to get your nutrition in line to have any effect – and if your goal is to gain weight you have to be at a caloric surplus. A professional athlete expends far more calories than an average person and needs a LOT of calories to put on strength if that’s their goal (steroids or no steroids). Everyone in the weightlifting community knows one of the easiest way to down a lot of calories is shakes where you throw a bunch of stuff in a blender.
What I’m saying is Canseco roided and clearly knew a lot about nutrition to look the way he did – he probably had developed some damn good shake recipies over his years of trainings that were simply mixes of yogurt/milk/peanut butter/protein powder/oil etc. etc. etc. Him handing another guy a shake IN FULL VIEW OF THE MEDIA means nothing.

By: BC

BC — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:20:20 +0000

I would think if Dawson was a user, he’d have hit about 700 home runs. He kept breaking down. If he used, he either wouldn’t have broken down as much, or he would have recovered faster. Think Mark McGwire. In ’93-’94 the dude could barely stay on the field. And then, hello Newman. Better living through chemistry.

By: BC

BC — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:17:24 +0000

Ray Liotta is an odd duck.

By: Chipmaker

Chipmaker — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:16:21 +0000

I found that Boswell comment very intriguing as well, and played it back a few times to make sure I understood it. Now, Boswell is a gifted writer and we could parse what he said very carefully, but at face value, he is claiming there is a HOFer who used Canseco’s special homebrew recipe, and had a peak HR season after the Joser got called up to the majors.
That’s a small population, HOFers who played in 1985 or later. I checked — there are 29 such men. Some were teammates of Canseco, but Boswell didn’t specify anything about that.
Let’s winnow the bunch down to the likeliest suspects:
First, throw out the pitchers — Carlton (who had the biggest HR season of these nine, three in 1977), Eckersley, Fingers, Gossage (zero), Niekro, Ryan, Seaver, Sutter (zero), and Sutton (zero).
Next, toss out the men who had their peak HR season before 1985 (and, note, some of these guys were done by 1985-86): Jackson (peak season in 1969), Perez (1970), Carew (1975, ’77), Rice (1978), Schmidt (1980), Winfield (1982), Yount (1981), Murray (1983).
We’re left with:
Brett (30 in 1985)
Carter (32, 1985)
Fisk (37, 1985)
Smith (6, 1985) — we can probably exclude Ozzie.
Puckett (31, 1986)
Henderson (28, 1986 & ’90)
Boggs (24, 1987)
Dawson (49, 1987)
Sandberg (40, 1990)
Ripken (34, 1991)
Molitor (22, 1993)
Gwynn (17, 1997)
Considering these peak seasons just on how much they appear incongruous to the rest of the player’s career, Boggs’ 24 is very curious, and Dawson never got close to 49 again, though in 1987 everyone was going yard frequently.
Puckett made a BIG jump in 1986.
And … well, this is already long and not the best forum for speculation. I don’t know to whom Boswell might have been referring. Could be any one of these. But it’s intriguing to think what the fallout might be if the name becomes known, and if the name does become known, which one it is will inspire different reactions. If it IS Ripken, heads will explode. If it’s Puckett, well, he’s already deceased, so we cannot even learn more first-hand.
I wonder if Boswell voted for the player when his name came up on the Hall ballot.

By: Kevin S.

Kevin S. — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:04:49 +0000

Ray Liotta had such a weird laugh after that line, but it was pretty frickin’ funny.

By: mcsnide

mcsnide — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:03:53 +0000

Based on Boswell’s comments, I think it has to be someone who hit his career high in 1988 or BEFORE. “It was already spreading by 1988.” Andre Dawson would be the logical choice. It also would make sense that Boswell would mention now that Dawson’s safely in the Hall.
That said, how do we know the player in question was actually using? If it’s widespread knowledge that Canseco’s using, it seems that it’d be the kind of thing guys would joke about when mixing a protein shake.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:00:36 +0000

Interestingly, my local station in Chicago lost its signal for a few minutes during the 1996 WS portion. Too bad for Craig he doesn’t live up here.

By: Trevor B

Trevor B — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:58:15 +0000

Regardless he should tell us. It isn't like he is flatout saying, "such player took a steroid shake" he is saying the player called it a Canseco milkshake.

Now I just want to see Jose Canseco do a remake of the milkshake song.

By: Jonny5

Jonny5 — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:56:40 +0000

” (b) who hit more home runs after Jose Canseco arrived in the league than he ever had before”
I think Craig just admitted to us that he does think taking steroids makes you hit more home runs than before you did them. This is quite a revelation here. ;>P

By: minnesconsin_ad

minnesconsin_ad — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:50:31 +0000

the only reason i can see for boswell not naming names would be if it was actually Ripken. It makes little sense to me, but Boswell was a shameless homer for the orioles, so who knows? it’d be pretty damned ironic if ripken was outed at this stage… would put a lot in perspective at least.