[Mick]

There may be a place Bonds an Clemons are discussed in this thread or elsewhere on the board, but I wanted to chime in. This may be an unpopular position, but...

Barry Bonds hit 40 HRs and had 40 SB the same year McGuire and Sosa had their infamous HR chase. Bonds's accomplishment was basically ignored by the baseball industry. At the same time, the "chicks dig the long ball" mentality gripped MLB and they did absolutely nothing to investigate or show even one iota of concern about PEDs in MLB before Bonds decided to get bigger and stronger.

Bonds, seeing what everyone cared about was HRs, and that MLB didn't seem to care about PEDs, said "if this is what the market is telling me to do, I guess it makes sense to bulk up and hit more HRs." Now BALCO and Victor Conte may have been distributing improper supplements or whatever they were doing, but there is no evidence Bonds thought he was breaking any rules.  More importantly, even if he did know he was using something improper, how can he be blamed, if he saw others doing the same thing?

But even more importantly than that, even before Bonds bulked up, he was a clear-cut Hall of Fame player.  To hold Bonds out of the HOF because he did something many others did, in an era MLB ignored or looked at with a wink PED use, is absurd to me. It's not like there was no cheating with amphetamines before the PED era, not like the absence of black players didn't artificially inflate the stats of guys in the HOF.

Put Bonds in the Hall with an asterisk on his plaque, or put several players like Rafael Palmiero and Roger Clemons in a dedicated place to talk about PED use, but put them in or the HOF is kind of a joke.  Harold Baines in the Hall of Fame and NOT Barry Bonds? AYFKM?

As for Clemons, he too was a HOF player before he ever used PEDs.  I can't claim he had the market forces urging him on like Bonds did, but if you are on the opposite side of those guys like Bonds, Maguire, Sosa, Palmiero, it makes a degree of sense that if it's an arms race, you would do what you could to keep up.  And we don't even have any strong evidence to suggest PEDs really have that much value for a pitcher, other than to maybe extend the playing career, which Clemons of course did.  But again, he was a HOF level Pitcher before he touched a PED.

And finally, with all the rage over "Low T" and all these "get your manhood back" I don't know, drugs and supplements today, it seems today's athletes are going to get advantages predecessors didn't get as well.  Hitting a baseball and throwing a baseball so accurately and craftily, is IMO the hardest thing to do in sports.  You might get a little better at it with PEDs, but it's not like a lousy player will turn into a great one by using PEDs or that a great player using them will become lousy when not using them.  It's marginal, and maybe even a bit psychological. We should celebrate talent in the Hall of Fame, not keep guys out who maybe got some advantages from PEDs, but also clearly demonstrated they were all-time great talents even if there was no such thing.

For Sammy Sosa, it was 1998. He was a comparatively light hitter until he was 23 (15 HRs in his best 532 AB season), then hit  between 25 and 40 HRs until he was 29, at which point he hit over 60 HRs three of four seasons, and 50 in the other season.  He then dropped to 49, then 40, then 35, then 14, out of baseball for a year, then came back and hit 21 HRs.  McGuire hit 49 his rookie year, then between 22 and 42 for the next four years, was injured for two years, then hit 39, 52, 58, 34, 24, 70, 65, then 32 and 29.

Interesting thing about Bonds is that he hit over 50 HRs just once, in his 73 HR year.  He hit in the 40s seven times, but three were in the pre-steroid days.

The old interesting baseball trivia question was "Which player had the most All Star appearances, yet is not in the Hall of Fame?"  the answer used to be catcher Bill Freehan of the Detroit Tigers, who was on 11 all-star teams.  Looks like the real answer will be "Barry Bonds" with 14 all-star appearances.  McGuire had 12.  Sosa had just seven.  Sosa hit 40 HRs in two seasons in which he was not named to an all star team.

[Mick]

There may be a place Bonds an Clemons are discussed in this thread or elsewhere on the board, but I wanted to chime in. This may be an unpopular position, but...

Barry Bonds hit 40 HRs and had 40 SB the same year McGuire and Sosa had their infamous HR chase. Bonds's accomplishment was basically ignored by the baseball industry. At the same time, the "chicks dig the long ball" mentality gripped MLB and they did absolutely nothing to investigate or show even one iota of concern about PEDs in MLB before Bonds decided to get bigger and stronger.

Bonds, seeing what everyone cared about was HRs, and that MLB didn't seem to care about PEDs, said "if this is what the market is telling me to do, I guess it makes sense to bulk up and hit more HRs." Now BALCO and Victor Conte may have been distributing improper supplements or whatever they were doing, but there is no evidence Bonds thought he was breaking any rules.  More importantly, even if he did know he was using something improper, how can he be blamed, if he saw others doing the same thing?

But even more importantly than that, even before Bonds bulked up, he was a clear-cut Hall of Fame player.  To hold Bonds out of the HOF because he did something many others did, in an era MLB ignored or looked at with a wink PED use, is absurd to me. It's not like there was no cheating with amphetamines before the PED era, not like the absence of black players didn't artificially inflate the stats of guys in the HOF.

Put Bonds in the Hall with an asterisk on his plaque, or put several players like Rafael Palmiero and Roger Clemons in a dedicated place to talk about PED use, but put them in or the HOF is kind of a joke.  Harold Baines in the Hall of Fame and NOT Barry Bonds? AYFKM?

As for Clemons, he too was a HOF player before he ever used PEDs.  I can't claim he had the market forces urging him on like Bonds did, but if you are on the opposite side of those guys like Bonds, Maguire, Sosa, Palmiero, it makes a degree of sense that if it's an arms race, you would do what you could to keep up.  And we don't even have any strong evidence to suggest PEDs really have that much value for a pitcher, other than to maybe extend the playing career, which Clemons of course did.  But again, he was a HOF level Pitcher before he touched a PED.

And finally, with all the rage over "Low T" and all these "get your manhood back" I don't know, drugs and supplements today, it seems today's athletes are going to get advantages predecessors didn't get as well.  Hitting a baseball and throwing a baseball so accurately and craftily, is IMO the hardest thing to do in sports.  You might get a little better at it with PEDs, but it's not like a lousy player will turn into a great one by using PEDs or that a great player using them will become lousy when not using them.  It's marginal, and maybe even a bit psychological. We should celebrate talent in the Hall of Fame, not keep guys out who maybe got some advantages from PEDs, but also clearly demonstrated they were all-time great talents even if there was no such thing.

For Sammy Sosa, it was 1998. He was a comparatively light hitter until he was 23 (15 HRs in his best 532 AB season), then hit  between 25 and 40 HRs until he was 29, at which point he hit over 60 HRs three of four seasons, and 50 in the other season.  He then dropped to 49, then 40, then 35, then 14, out of baseball for a year, then came back and hit 21 HRs.  McGuire hit 49 his rookie year, then between 22 and 42 for the next four years, was injured for two years, then hit 39, 52, 58, 34, 24, 70, 65, then 32 and 29.

Interesting thing about Bonds is that he hit over 50 HRs just once, in his 73 HR year.  He hit in the 40s seven times, but three were in the pre-steroid days.

The old interesting baseball trivia question was "Which player had the most All Star appearances, yet is not in the Hall of Fame?"  the answer used to be catcher Bill Freehan of the Detroit Tigers, who was on 11 all-star teams.  Looks like the real answer will be "Barry Bonds" with 14 all-star appearances.  McGuire had 12.  Sosa had just seven.  Sosa hit 40 HRs in two seasons in which he was not named to an all star team.