Comparing steroids to greenies seems to be a red herring
so they were using a banned substance by both baseball and us law. much worse than roids then.
Interesting, although I think if Mantle could have used Roids to recover from injury, he'd have hit 800+ homers.
Griffey Jr too probably, just w/ his beautiful swing alone.
Mantle might have hit 800 hr's if his torn ACL had been repaired after the 1951 season. He played the rest of his career with that tear.
Anyone using steroids after 1990 without a prescription was breaking both US laws and Bowie Kuhn's edict of 1971. Barry Bonds used both steroids from at least 1999 and failed an amphetamine test in 2006.
My interest in baseball waned when I entered college in 1967. The lowering of the pitching mound in 1969(?) accelerated my disinterest.
I have no illusions about the purity of the game pre steroids - I only object when people claim the juiced players were better than those who didn't have access to the same PED's. Your argument seems to be that the players who used greenies are as guilty as those in later years who used greenies and steroids. Maybe they are, but you're nuts if you don't admit that steroids gave the players of your era an additional advantage.
I think baseball players should be judged against the players of their era and not against the entire history of baseball. Too much has changed over the years to do that, IMO.
Indeed.
Edit: here's a link to a description of one of The Mick's several hangover home runs.
http://books.google.com/books?id=w9...le home run while hung over baltimore&f=false
bonds played against fellow juicers. aaron played against fellow amphetemine users. i don't claim that bonds is better because he did or didnt use steroids. my point is that we have to ignore that when talking about who had the best careers. who knows how much worse ruth looks if he played against blacks/latinos. i just think it's inconcistent to ding both the hitters and pitchers who used with out aknowledging that the entire league played under a different set of circumstances (much like integration, mound height, expansion, changes to parks, advances in medicine, etc.). it's intellectually dishonest to hold one set of circumstances against an era but no others. by comparing players against their peers we get a clearer picture of how much they excelled.
Jeter is hard to judge. Not a great base stealer but had to bat leadoff cause he hits too many groundballs into double plays. A great fielder with below average range. Absolute money batter when its is on the line.
IMO his greatest asset is being able to play in NY. Surrounded by good to great players in NY helped his #s.
You seem to be making two arguments (one of which I agree with).
bonds played against fellow juicers. aaron played against fellow amphetemine users. i don't claim that bonds is better because he did or didnt use steroids. my point is that we have to ignore that when talking about who had the best careers. who knows how much worse ruth looks if he played against blacks/latinos. i just think it's inconcistent to ding both the hitters and pitchers who used with out aknowledging that the entire league played under a different set of circumstances (much like integration, mound height, expansion, changes to parks, advances in medicine, etc.). it's intellectually dishonest to hold one set of circumstances against an era but no others. by comparing players against their peers we get a clearer picture of how much they excelled.