Finally, racism in the sports/media world is again extensively documented. We’ve yet to see any scientific proof, a point you acknowledged, on the effects of steroids on baseball players.

Now I need some coffee…

Ah, yes, Brady Anderson. Hell, look at that spike, those must have been powerful steroids. I wonder if he got them from Davey Johnson, who went from 5 in 1972 to 43 in 1973 and ranks ahead of Brady Anderson on the list of players with the single greatest leap in home runs from the previous year.

And, just like Anderson, Johnson’s use of steroids was so successful, that he promptly stopped taking them and never hit home runs with any real frequency again in his career (“non-steroid” high 18) since he had been released and was playing in Japan in little over a year.

Steroids, the scourge of baseball since 1973!

Just kidding, compelling perspectives as always, fellows.

My suspicion is that Seibel was guilty of *insensitivity* and a lack of historical awareness by choosing that particular phrase. I highly doubt he sat there rubbing his palms, twirling his mustache and thinking “yeah, let’s LYNCH THE DARKIE.” Maybe it would have been better if he said “if he did it, fry him.” Is it possible–even remotely—that the degree of anger shown by Seibel was in proportion to the magnitude of the player (breaking the alltime HR record held by the very respected…black man…Hank Aaron), more than because he is a racist?

Now, you could make a reasonable argument that the degree of anger over Bonds was disproportionate, and this reflects a subtle bias against black players—indeed, that seems to be Zirin’s larger point. But that again is a much more nuanced—and non-scientific—argument.

Just replace the statement you made with steroids: so, highly placed announces at powerful sports networks think players juiced and that it impacted the game; many current and former players (e.g. Mike Schmidt) decried the use of steroids. Everyone “knows” that steroids let you hit the ball farther, etc. It’s all in their imagination, right?

You are so hell bent on seeing racism that you are missing the *methodological* argument that I am making.

[33] Interesting! Would like to read more about that.

That’s your incontrovertable, scientific evidence? It’s about as scientific as me thinking that 74 HRs at age 38 or whatever is a bit of a smoking gun for PEDs.

Pretty weak evidence, and certainly not scientific.

How could there possibly be measurable historical evidence of the positive effects (if any) of steroids, if we will never know who used how much for how long, etc. Too many variables.

But sabermetricians love Too Many Variables problems. I think I don’t see your point here. Disentangling variables from one another is exactly what sabermetrics is all about.

There are patterns you would expect if steroids had a significant effect on, say, HR production. You would expect to see the trajectories of players in the steroid era look quite different from the trajectories of players from earlier and later (as soon as we can be confident that we’ve got a ‘later’) era. Taking the collection of players known to have used steroids and then stopped, you would expect to see fall-off greater than usual for their ages.
But these patterns are not seen.

There could be other effects, of course, but so far nobody has found them.

Indeed it does, and another reason why there will never be firm ‘scientific’ evidence of theimpact, if any, on the game. I actually suspect that all great players who used benefited, both pitchers and hitters, and probably disproportionately benefitted relative to average or poor players.

And I have no problem with that method.

How could there possibly be measurable historical evidence of the positive effects (if any) of steroids, if we will never know who used how much for how long, etc. Too many variables.

However, we could begin to get some clinical evidence if someone decided to run a really big lab experiment with lots of subjects and controls over a long period of time. But even then, we would have to make a judgment call as to the applicability of such test results to the historical cases: do high level athletes respond the same, better or worse to steroids? How much would a player’s performance improve v. other juiced players? v. non-juiced players? To what degree of accurace can we measure the statistical impact on the game (i.e., what % of HRs player X hit)?

OK, am getting nasty vibes from Mrs. Jazz now, I must depart!

Betelgeuse.

Betelge…

Anyway, for your information, Pedroia ias half Potugeuse, so be careful with your jokes, Mr. R(ac)I(st)Yank.