Canseco's Latest: On Papi, Manny and..... Dare We Say It-- Rickey??

Rickey had an even better quote on roids:

“They kept that s—- a secret from me … I wish they had told me. My God, could you imagine Rickey on ’roids? Oh, baby, look out!” — Henderson on steroids, The New Yorker, Sept. 12, 2005

My all-time favorite from him:
“If they’re going to pay me like [Mike] Gallego, I’m going to play like Gallego,” — Rickey, on contract negotiations with Oakland

Look, I feel like I’m able to distinguish levels of use reasonably well. So anybody disagreeing with the following, please have at me:

Canseco: Built a career on use.
Sosa/Palmeiro: Ditto

B. Boone: Transformed himself into 40 HR man

B Anderson: Biggest joke of all.

Caminiti: Owed the MVP to it.

McGwire: Stopped precipitous decline and set records by using

Big Papi: Likely build career on them

Bonds: Got even better (and, as Game of Shadows documents, used out of righteous bitterness at lesser players getting more attention)

Manny: Got even better

A-Rod: Got even better

Clemens: Got even better, allowed for longer career

Rickey: if you’re even right, got even better.

Most all, if not all, of those are undoubtedly correct. I’m leaving out other guys who also had big or bigger careers. But I’m mainly trying to include players who were great.

The last group, the “got even better” group, are the ones I don’t care as much about. And, in fact, the player I forgive the most is Bonds. His bitterness was understandable.

You bring up some very valid points. 1990 Rickey went from 6, 3, and 9 home runs the past 3 years to 28 (followed by 18, 15 and 17). Granted he also had 16 with Oakland in 1984 followed by 24 in 85 and 28 in 86, so 1990 doesn’t look like that much of an anomaly. Unless steroids were also prevalent on the 85 and 86 Yankees.

I’m still withholding judgment, but this post brings up some interesting points, and it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say that Jose is implicating Rickey.

I really don’t. There’s enough evidence out there to conclude that both position players and pitchers were hitting the juice. Lots of em. So it sounds like a level playing field to me.

If you look at the 13 or so players who have reached the 500 home run plateau as of late, about 11 of them have been found to be PED users. They weren’t cheating, at least by MLB standards, until those drugs were banned (at least in a memo by then commissioner Fay Vincent) in 1991.

Canseco says that about 80 percent of all major leaguers were using PEDs. Caminiti says about 50 percent. If you look at statistics of home runs hit per game, those estimates are probably the upper and lower bounds on what actually was happening. Those statistics also suggest that players are likely still using PEDs although not as much as they did in the 1990s; they just aren’t getting caught.

Imagine being a player in MLB in the 1990s. People are ripped. They are hitting all kinds of home runs. You want to keep your job. What do you do? If I were a player back then I have no doubt I would be using. It would be, at the very least, a matter of survival. To not take drugs at the time would have been the equivalent of trying to play poker honestly when at least half the table is cheating.

I have no doubt that some people already in the HOF used steroids. The use of drugs was simply too rampant. I have no doubt that a good number of players continue to use PEDs; their careers depend on it.

Not to change the subject, but when bicycling underwent its first rigorous tests of blood doping, the person in charge of the new analysis thought the procedure must have been faulty because he was getting no negatives at all. Then he had his ah hah moment. There were no negatives because everyone was using. MLB wasn’t that bad, but it was close.

The idea that certain MLB players in certain circles didn’t really know about steroid use seems unbelievable.

The use of steroids was so pervasive that it seems silly to try to single out certain players simply because they excelled relative to others. Most of the players who didn’t particularly excel, but were hanging onto their jobs as AAAA kind of players, were probably using too.

In my opinion players like McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa, Sheffield should all be in the HOF. They were the best of their generation. That their generation used PEDs should be noted. Their records should have asterisks. But it would be silly to completely ignore a generation of players. Most players cheated, yes. But they did so with the full encouragement of MLB. Chicks love the long ball. So do fans. Bud Selig was happy to see all those people in the stands.

My own view is that the voting members of the HOF are voting thumbs down on players like McGwire not because they cheated. Rather it’s because those voters are simply embarrassed by all the ridiculous things they said in the 1990s about players being bigger and stronger because they worked out more. Sports writers were stupid in the 1990s. They want to blame someone for their stupidity. So they blame McGwire and Sosa and others. They should blame themselves.

If you stood next to McGwire in the 1990s, you knew he was using. The guy was like a mountain. No one gets that big without PEDs. If you saw Canseco’s freaky power, you knew he was using. He was hitting line drives that would shoot out of the Coliseum like they came out of a canon.

I guess a suitable compromise is to have a separate wing in the HOF for the 1990s players. They could have a little statement at the entrance saying steroid use was rampant. But those players definitely belong in the HOF.

We live in a culture where cheating isn’t viewed with the same shame as it once was. Students, politicians, corporate executives, you name it. No one seems to care to play by the rules. They don’t seem to pay much of a penalty when they are caught. If anything, those that play by the rules are viewed as saps and Boy Scouts. Why should we expect different from ballplayers?

OK, this is too long. Sorry about that.

Really thinks Ricky is on the roids…….