I was saying top 20 all time. Position players at any rate. After the juice he was the best player to ever breath air…but it was bulls***.

Does this mean that we can stop calling Brady Anderson a roider without proof now?

Yeah in addition to the expansion year he was also the MVP the year prior which saw an uptick in HR for him because of Yankee Stadium’s short RF. 314 Down the line and Maris hit most of his home runs to right.

Also people were still doing amphetamines in 90′s and 00′s so interms of the numbers the playing field is even on that front. I don’t think people have a problem with steroids because it was a moral issue so much as how it made the records irrelevant. Can anyone tell me the alltime HR record right now? I can’t. I know it was 755, but I don’t care about the new number because it’s irrelevant. Same with the single season record. Is it 73? I’m honestly not sure off the top of my head…because it’s silly no one will ever break that cleanly. It took 40 years for someone to break 60 and it took a few extra games for him to break it by one homerun. Now we’re supposed to expect that it’s possible for someone to hit upwards of 15 more? Clean?

And I know pitching records have always been this way, but there’s a reason you knew the numbers 61 and 755 and why you don’t know 363 (the modern wins record) and 1.12 (the modern ERA record).

That huge 61 right in the middle was in an expansion year. There are a lot of unusual statistical spikes in expansion years.

If the list seems New York centric, it’s because two of the four main sources were formerly employed by New York teams. The members of the Yankees and the Mets weren’t necessarily more likely to be steroid users than the members of the (insert two random team names here), they just were named more often because former members of their training staffs gave evidence.

Two very important things about that ban differ from the way things work today, though. First, it was intended to prevent drugs of abuse rather than performance enhancers, in the wake of the Pittsburgh drug trials. Second, testing worked completely differently. Though there was no random testing, the CBA allowed clubs to test a player if there was a strong enough suspicion of drug abuse (Steve Howe is probably the best example of this rule in practice). Even then, though, the penalties weren’t codified.

It would’ve been within the rights of any organization that suspected one or more of their players to be tested for illegal performance enhancers if they had a reasonable* suspicion that they were using, but AFAIK that never happened between 1988-2005, when the old rule would’ve applied to steroids.

* I don’t know enough about the old policy to say what would’ve been considered reasonable, though. Howe’s abuse was pretty obvious, from what I’ve read about it.

Why couldn’t he have been juicing? Steroids existed back then. After his age 27 season Maris couldn’t stay healthy, who breaks down at 28 except a drug abuser? The whole thing is pretty suspicious, in my opinion far more suspicious than the whole Brady Anderson accusation…

Why stop the PED accusations with the 80′s? We know they were using meth for decades before that, why not anabolic steroids, which were already being used in other sports. Seems silly to assume baseball players didn’t use them, especially with non-guaranteed contracts and low pay…

1) PEDs didn’t originate in the 90s.
2) Aaron did greenies.

Lets just look back and count the bloated steroid faces…… ready ?

Tons of things are illegal according to the Federal Gov’t, chief amongst them is DUI which no one seems to have a problem with. Two, Vincent didn’t have the power to enact that without the approval of MLBPA, and we know how long it took for all sides to agree on it.

However, that’s not the most damning. How the hell can you write about how things were illegal because they were banned by the Federal gov’t, make a comment about how “everyone was doing it” was a rationalization, and COMPLETELY SKIP OVER THE COMMENTS ABOUT EVERYONE USING AMPHETAMINES.

It’s not even worth reading after that.

So a guy who probably wouldn’t have cracked the majors had a 4 year career with the aid of steroids.

A guy who would likely have been an above league average 1B breaks Roger Marris’ record.

A guy who was already a top 20 player became a God king made flesh and put up cartoon numbers into his 40′s.

I don’t think anyone ever said that steroids were the super soldier serum, but is there any doubt that Hank Aaron and Roger Maris are still record holders with out them?