The Obligatory Steroid Post: Sammy Sosa

As has been reported across much of the media, it was revealed that Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids back in 2003, bringing up the obligatory talking heads talking about how past accomplishments are tarnished, these guys would be scrubs if they never touched steroids so on and so forth

In light of today's revelations, the time is right for me to discuss my take on steroid coverage and discuss my two biggest gripes with how it is covered by the media.

1)If preventing steroid abuse was a higher priority, this "scandal" would have broken in 1998 and not after Sosa and McGwire were past their respective peaks


To begin my argument about why I feel the "shock and horror" about players in the juicing in the 90s is not geniune can be traced back to the 1994 strike. Obviously, baseball struggled in the ensuing years after and needed something to draw the fans in....

Well to many this equates to players having the ability to hit a baseball long distances on a regular basis and wham! four years later Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa go on an epic chase for Roger Maris' single season home run record and baseball's popularity spikes big time.......

Now if MLB really didn't want players using steroids, we would have been hearing about all-star players juicing up before the home run records were being re-written.....not several years after the players involved retired.

2) The implication that the guilty parties would be scrubs NOT hall of famers if they did steroids......

Alright so juicing up may add a few years to your career, help you bounce back from injury hit a ball harder blah, blah, blah........what it does NOT do is give players better judgment on pitches to swing at, increase baseball IQ, know the difference between pitches, etc.......

How many of you people have heard about the exploits about juiced up players such as Manny Alexander, Chris Donnels or Jim Parque? Trick Question....you haven't heard about them b/c despite their steroid/PED use they were unable to attain substantial playing careers

I could list others who were juiced up but still did not reach the promised land...point being if some of these talking heads are to believed that steroids are some magical pill....these players would put up first-ballot hall of fame numbers.....However, since steroids are not some magic pill the only way these guys are getting in to the hall of fame is if they pay the cover charge......


Furthermore, while it was unfortunate steroid use was a product of the 90s....hitters were juiced....pitchers were juiced......so the steroid use likely balanced out on both sides......so yeah that's how I feel about steroid coverage and the end of my first (and hopefully last) post about steroids

Note: I found the player names (non-Hall of fame juicers) from the mitchell report page from http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/mitchell-report-players.shtml


P.S. Artie Lange 1 Joe Buck 0

Also: I'll post my streak of the cash pick of the day tomorrow as the A's/Dodgers game is still in progress