Quote:
Originally Posted by philo98
No opinion on Rose, but Bonds and Clemens no way. I'm a former steroid user for 8+ years and actually monitored my results for strength, endurance, and recovery, testing the change in my abilities playing baseball, soccer, running, and weightlifting. The difference of being on-cycle and off was phenomenal and if I was a professional athlete, I could never expect someone to vote me into any Hall of Fame with good conscience knowingly having used steroids. All of this testing and experimentation was done outside of the US as I have resided overseas for 25+ years and only nowadays make trips back for baseball season.
For baseball, strength and the ability to connect hitting a baseball was vastly improved, in soccer my strength was incredible, shots on goal harder and the ability to kick the ball up field farther, for running my endurance was through the roof and for weightlifting, my strength and especially my recovery was absolutely incredible. In most exercises my strength more than doubled and in most cases was 3 times or more then when off cycle. Also, I could weight lift 6 days a week on-cycle and only 2-3 off-cycle without being incredibly sore.
As I dont think many on this board have first hand experience with this, there is an incredible difference when on a cycle. I tried most steroids and each cycle was slightly different in length. My favorite was always Test E with Deca (felt like a million bucks everyday) and the most difficult was when I went on a Tren A cycle. Had to stop that one early.
I have been off cycle now for about 3.5 years and have completed wellness checks every year. Nothing is out of the ordinary such as BP, cholesterol, heart rate, etc etc. When I was on cycle my diet was top notch as I paid someone to cook my meals 5 days a week.
Of all the countries I have been too (which is over 130 at this moment), I find the subject of steroids to be the most taboo in the US. However, for older men, they can be a miracle for people who are thinking of TRT, etc. My cycles were never at the dosages that professional bodybuilders take, at those levels there can and are serious side effects, but taking them for performance enhancement at lower dosages they are miracle drugs.
Having done cycles myself, if I was even able to vote for the MLB HOF, in good faith I could never vote for known users.
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Ryan, thank you for your detailed testimony and frank comments on steroid use. I must say Ryan's post should be NET54 's 2023 Post of the Year.
With this thread, there's been a lot of members in favor of allowing the major successful cheaters to actually be enshrined in the BBHOF. For shame. Yes, they may have had hall of fame careers going when they began using steroids, but so had Joe Jackson when he was caught up in the fixing of the 1919 World Series.
Just as Canada's "Big Ben" Johnson was stripped of his Olympic Gold Medal for testing positive to steroids after winning the 1988 Olympic Mens 100 meter dash finals, and was sent home in disgrace, the baseball players who greatly enhanced their numbers on the playing field should be disgraced every time a Baseball Hall of Fame election ballot comes up.
For what it's worth, the cheaters were not stripped of their exorbitant salaries they were paid during those years, but you better believe they should be stripped of any chance to be enshrined. --- Brian Powell