Baseball’s
“five-strikes-you're-out” policy on steroid cheaters is home run
hypocrisy. Steroids make pennant
races a sham – who knows who the real champs would be if everyone were
clean?
When Ken Caminiti blew the lid off the steroid scandal two years ago,
he confessed he had used illegal drugs in
1996. They helped him win the
MVP. They also helped his team,
the San Diego Padres, move up from fourth place to win the National League
West by one game over Los Angeles.
_____________________________________________________
John B Holway is author of ten books. His latest, TED, will be published in spring 2004.
But does anybody except Thomas Boswell
and me care enough to want to crack
down?
About 100 players flunked steroid
tests this season. If the tests
had included THG, the new “designer” drug, the total would surely
have been higher.
If even one of the cheaters had been
playing for the U.S. Olympic team, he and the whole U.S. team would have
been stripped of their medals and banned for a year or
more.
Baseball will test again next year,
and anyone caught will have a stern finger wagged in his face and will write
on the blackboard 500 times, “I will not take
steroids.”
If he’s caught again, he will have to sit in the penalty box, from a few games up to a year for the fifth offense.
However, I don't think anybody really wants any tougher
discipline.
The players’ union doesn't want to take any money away from
its members.
Will George Steinbrenner hold still
if one of his expensive sluggers is put in the penalty box while the
Yankees’ lead in the American League East slips away and tv revenue
falls off?
The fans don’t want to see stars
snatched off their teams. They
love home runs. I think they'd be happy if we pull the fences in 25
more feet, juice up the ball, cut 12 inches off the pitching mound, squeeze
the strike zone, and give every hitter a cork-filled aluminum
bat.
The rapidity with which they forgave Sammy Sosa for corking his bat in 2003 proves that.
Of course says
matters. Babe Ruth, 212 pounds,
was the top home run hitter of his day because he was the
biggest. Lou Gehrig was second,
because, at 200 pounds, he was the second
biggest.
The reason Mark McGwire beat Sammy Sosa to the magic 62 level in 1998
was because Big Mac could lift Sammy in the air in a bear hug, but Sammy
couldn't lift him.
Imagine Ruth, Ted Williams (175-215 pounds), and Mickey Mantle (175) on steroids! If they posed in a group picture with today's batting stars, who weigh up to 270 pounds, people would snicker, "Who are those three skinny runts?"
McGwire weighed an estimated 250. His longest homer was 540
feet, or about two feet three inches per pound.
Mantle's longest, his roof-shot at Yankee Stadium, was estimated at 600 feet, unimpeded (source: U.S. Missile Proving Grounds, Aberdeen MD). That's three feet five inches per pound. How far could a 250-pound Mantle hit one? About 830 feet.
In Williams' day, the 1940s and
‘50s, the average game produced one home run -- by both teams
combined. Today the average is two per game, and some games go up to
five or six. Ted's average of 35 homers per year would be 70 in
today's homer-happy game. What would Babe Ruth's
be?
One hundred and
twenty?
In the last decade some of the biggest home run stars have developed bull necks and put up explosive numbers late in their baseball lives, at an age many others were on the downward curve to retirement.
Here is how four top home run hitters compare (I use the figure Home Runs Per 550 At Bats in order to eliminate the effect of bases on balls):
Ruth Williams McGwire Bonds
Weight
185-215
175-212
215-250
190-240
Born
2/6/95
8/30/18
10/1/63
7/24/65
Age
20
24
30
-
-
21
12
23
-
21
22
9
45
-
25
23
19
38
46
25
24
37
-
32
18
25
65
-
37
35
26
60
-
41
27
27
47
41
25
40
28
43
33
49
47
29
48
27
59
52
30
38
43
37
36
________________________________________
31
52
32
68
45
32
61
31
68
52
33
55
-
59
37
34
51
79
76
53
35
52
41
69
56
36
47
48
74
84
37
49
33
53
66
38
41
50
-
63
39
48
20
-
-
40
-
51
-
-
_____________________________________
Lifetime
47
37
41
54
Age 21-30 45 35 38 33
Age
31-40
51
40
66
68
Weights are estimated for the beginning
and end of each man's career. A comparison of photos of each one, spaced
15 years apart, would make the point
dramatically.
I saw Bonds hit #70 in 2001.
The last time I had seen him was 1994, when he looked like a lithe, trim
running back and hit 46 homers per 550. Following his move to San Francisco
in 1996, by 2001 he looked like a lumbering linebacker and averaged 84 per
550. I've seen sumo wrestlers smaller than that. Was it
just middle-age spread?
I do not exclude pitchers as potential steroid cheaters; it takes
pounds and muscles to propel a ball almost 100
mph.
In 1952 Bobby Shantz stood 5'6",
weighed 139, and won 24 games. Today he wouldn't get a second
look from his high school coach, let alone a major league scout.
They're looking for pitchers a
foot taller and 100 pounds heavier, like Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens,
who can fire 96-mph bullets.
Florida’s Josh Beckett is 6’5” and already weighs 218;
how long before he tips 228, then 238?
For years,” says sports writer
Time Joyce, the word drugs meant pot or cocaine, which inhibit athlete
ability. All the time the
authorities could have been dealing with the real culprits,
steroids.
“The ‘punishment’
police is ridiculous. It’s
simple to me: A six-month grace period, then,
bam. Anyone caught with
steroids in his system is banned for three
months. Test positive again,
and he’s out for a year. This was the policy for
narcotics. Shouldn't the policy for steroids be
harsher?”
The bash-‘em-out/punch-‘em-out craze has changed not only the size of players. It has also changed how the game is played. Now every shortstop is swinging from the end of the bat. Strikeouts per game have doubled.
Bob Feller, the great pitching star of the 1930s and '40s, weighed
180 and fanned 343 batters one year. In today’s homer-happy
world, that would be over 600 -- without steroids. I don't know how
many he'd strike out after a visit to the corner drug
store.
What
the fans -- and managers – don’t realize is: Strikeouts
kill rallies. Five strikeouts cancel the value of one home run, according
to John Thorn and Pete Palmer in The Hidden Game of Baseball.
Thus Alfonso Soriano's 130 K's for the Yankees this past year canceled 26 of his 35 homers. Derek Jeter's 88 whiffs cancelled 17 homers -- except that he didn't hit 17, he hit only ten; he owed the Yankees seven more homers just to make up for his strikeouts.
These are the Yankees' table-setters, whose
job is to get on base for the big boys to bat in. If those two hadn't
given away so many outs and potential base-runners, the Yankees might be
world champs.
Reggie Jackson hit 573 homers in
his career. He’s also the
all-time king of K’s, striking out 2,600
times. We read about his
game-winning homers, but not about his strikeouts that left potential runners
on base. One-fifth of 2600 is
520. Subtract that from his
home runs, and Reggie's net lifetime value to his teams was 43 homers.
Almost any cross-eyed shortstop can hit that
many.
Jackson shrugged that strikeouts are necessary prices to pay for homers.
Wrong.
In 1941, when Joe DiMaggio hit
in 56 games, he struck out 13 times while hitting 30 home runs.
Ted Williams batted .406 and purchased a league-leading 37 homers with only
43 strikeouts.
In 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 homers with only 67 strikeouts. He made a lot of outs, but they weren’t strikeouts.
Sammy Sosa is second to Jackson in lifetime strikeouts. This year he paid 143 strikeouts for 40 homers (a net of 11 home runs). This means he gives opponents one free out per game. The Cubs are playing with 26 outs instead of 27.
Despite his
homers, Sammy was not an important factor in either of the Cubs' last two
trips to the post-season.
(Maybe that's the Billy Goat Curse.)
To his credit, Bonds doesn’t strike out
much. In 2001 he hit 73 homers
with only 93 strikeouts, which shows that he doesn't have to swing wild –
but he does have to be big. The
reason Mark McGwire beat Sosa is that Mark could lift Sammy off the ground
in a bear hug, but Sammy couldn't lift
him.
McGwire was another member of the whiff-a-game club. That's
a big bite that Big Mac took out of his team's
attack.
I saw Mac hit three homers in one game on his way to 70 in
1998.
But my most vivid memory was another
game that year, when Curt Schilling struck him out three times, once with
the bases loaded. I remember
him standing awkwardly at home, slowly tugging off his batting gloves and
waiting for a teammate to bring his fielding glove so he could break the
embarrassment.
These moments don’t get shown
on the nightly television highlights; only the home runs
do.
It’s not a coincidence that the Cardinals couldn't reach the playoffs until after McGwire retired.
Another big losing play is the warning-track out, which is also a home run gamble that failed.
While the Yanks were playing triple-deck ball this October, the Marlins were playing Cobbean baseball, lining singles and doubles into the gaps. There may be a lesson there.
What baseball has not understood since Abner Doubleday is that the object of the game is to not make outs. If no one made outs, the first baseball game ever played would still be going on.
If I were Yankee skipper Joe Torre, I'd post on the clubhouse bulletin board a running total of each player's strikeouts and long flies. He could entitle the list "Rally Killers."
Williams insisted that "I ain't gonna be the last .400 hitter." But he added that it won't be done again until players learn to choke up with two strikes; he always did.
When Jeter wasn't striking out, he was a .396 batter. He has the potential to be the next .400 hitter if he can only touch the ball with his bat. How many extra wins would it mean for the Yankees? How much would Steinbrenner pay for them? He paid $1.8 million for each win in ’03. Derek could afford to do a lot of dancing in the ritzy New York nightclubs.
Sosa batted 100 points higher (.385 vs .276) when he actually put wood to horsehide.
Soriano and Boston's Nomar Garciparra both suffered post-season slumps. Neither one even considered choking up half an inch and just meeting the ball for a single through the box. Garciaparra claims to be Williams' disciple. Was he listening when the Master was talking?
(Maybe that was the real Curse of
the Bambino.)
I can foresee a future of 300-pound designated hitters and seven-foot pitchers. I also foresee fans jostling each other at the box office, eagerly waving their wallets, to watch them.
Yet I fear that Boswell and I may be the only two who have seen that
future and don’t like it. Why
should baseball listen to us?
The best argument – the one
that Steinbrenner and other owners can relate to – is that baseball
attendance is very sensitive to winning.
The best way to “put fannies in the seats,” in George’s
phrase, is to field a winning team.
One can track a team’s rise and fall at the box office by its
rise and fall in the standings, not by the number of home runs it
hits.
When owners understand this, and pay accordingly, the mania for home runs may subside and with it the frantic hunt for homers in a bottle.
Until then, the best we can expect are a few tsk tsks and some hypocritical slaps on the wrist for cheaters.
Perhaps the best punishment would be to make every man play his entire career in his rookie uniform. When he can't button it any more, he either quits, or he plays in his underwear.
