“Psychological effects can include euphoria, anxiety, increased libido, alertness, concentration, energy, self-esteem, self-confidence, sociability, irritability, aggression, psychosomatic disorders, psychomotor agitation, grandiosity, excessive feelings of power and invincibility, repetitive and obsessive behaviors, paranoia, and with chronic and/or high doses, amphetamine psychosis can occur.”

I’d say increased “alertness” and “concentration” are directly related to “focus.” In what way are those effects, along with increased “energy, self-esteem, self-confidence,” etc., not performance-enhancing?

Worth considering.

Wrong. That’s exactly what greenies allowed fatigued players to do. These attempts to draw a bright line distinction between greenies and steroids are without merit and without any science to back it up.

I don’t think that is the real question for many voters, though. For them it is a question of integrity: if PEDs-use amounts to cheating, then it doesn’t matter if a player would have been Hall-worthy in any case. For an analogy, imagine a very intelligent student who cheats on an exam. Would we ever say, “Well, he would have gotten an A even if he hadn’t cheated, so give him the grade.” Of course not. Whether the student would have done well in any case is beside the point, because cheating is a moral problem.

Obviously, you can go on to argue about whether PEDs-use really does constitute cheating, whether cheaters should be kept out of the Hall of Fame, and so on. But I think it’s important to note that, at least for many people, the salience of PEDs-use doesn’t have anything to do with whether it really turns merely-good players into great ones. It’s not a question of efficacy.

There are definately degrees of cheating and PED is right at the top of the list behind throwing a game. Greenies and spitballing as they were referred are occassional boosts not an wvery game, every pitch, every at-bat occurance. While a “greenie” might get you up for a game, it didn’t make you stronger, more focused, run faster and a spitball might help you out of a jam but you can’t throw it every pitch to every batter and it didn’t give you endurance to maintain your velocity over the game or the season.

And yet, if we follow the cliche that baseball is a marathon and not a sprint, greenies and other forms of speed would be the precise type of PED a person would want to take. Players have/had to deal with nagging injuries, day/night doubleheaders, extra inning night games followed by early day games, etc. The ability to take something, be it speed or steroids or anything else, to get back to their usual playing ability is the issue at hand. Why we feel the need to dice it up into separate groups is beyond me.

But you don’t know, and you can’t know. You’re just guessing. This is not a fair and just way to go about it.

You don’t have to be fair, and of course it’s just fine if you don’t consider those particular guys worthy of your personal standard. At the same time, I think it’s appropriate for baseball fans to encourage the actual Hall of Fame voters to be fair, by abandoning biases and conjecture.

The real question is did it take a Mark McGuire or Rafael Palmeiro from good to great to be considered for the Hall of Fame and in my mind, IT DID. Now for Bonds and Clemens, they were already pretty great before so what do you do with them? I don’t know that any “greenies” put a Mickey Mantle or Pete Rose from good to great, they already were. Maybe the one exception MIGHT be Gaylord Perry but who really knows how many spitballs or emery board scuffed balls he threw-10%, 20%, 40%? Even 10% seems too high for me otherwise he would have be caught more than he was.

Caple can’t lump “cheaters” into one category just like criminals can’t be lumped together-a tax cheat vs. felony armed robbery are two different categories…

I’m pretty sure that calling something you disagree with groupthink is the new calling someone a socialist. Which is the new calling someone a flip flopper.