Poll - Greatest Living Player

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Were amphetamine users "juicers"? I would lean yes.

How about people who received cortisone injections regularly? I don't know. It's pretty clear Koufax couldn't have pitched successfully without them. Is it the performance enhancing thing people object to, or the "cheating"?

What if a player now has a medically documented condition requiring HGH?

Nuanced.

The answer to the question is probably "yes", but it's not to the same degree. I am sympathetic to this argument, but whenever I hear it it is usually overstated to draw an equivalence to excuse the steroid guys.

Steroids do a hell of a lot more than cortisone shots in 1964 or greenies in 1972. The records books got erased, guys smashing 50 homers every year like it was nothing. Lots of things are performance enhancers, but not all performance enhancers are thus equal or the same.

The other factor is that nobody gave a shit in 1964 if Koufax needed a cortisone shot. Nobody really cared much if Mays needed an energy pill (I'm not sure there's actually proof on him?). In 2001, I was a ten years old kid. Even I knew that something just wasn't quite right with what I was watching in San Francisco every day of the season. People cared. We had congressional hearings, league bans, an entire national drama (hence why we have some posters going a little absurd with the anger here to Bonds) over what this generation was doing in near real time.

Going after Mays (if guilty) and Koufax as equivalent to Bonds is historical revisionism and greatly overstating the case and impact. But are what they did (or these charges are, at least) performance enhancing? Yes, it appears so to me.

Bonds cheated, Mays may have taken greenies (or similar, I am not a drug expert). On the other hand, so were half+ the pitchers and players Bonds was facing. Bonds' cheating became symbolic of the sin of a generation. If Bonds and Bonds alone was doing the cheating, I would be much more in tune with the angry group here. But it wasn't that much of an uneven playing field when everyone is doing it. That doesn't make it okay, but if I sat here and picked at everyone's flaws, I would end up with a list with 0 names on it. Selectively denying the sin of a whole generation while excusing breaking Baseball's biggest no-no for the last century (and other 'character failings' we'll say to be generous) is not consistent character clause. This is why I throw out the character clause; all it really means is "I like X and not Y so Y is bad and ineligible and X that I like wins" and that is stupid. Personally, I would like to conclude that Randy Johnson is the greatest living player and that it was Mays, a hero in my household that my mother adores for a kindness he did half a century ago, until last week. But the great thing about math and consistent standards, is that it separates my bullshit from reality, and my bullshit ain't worth any more than anyone else's bullshit while reality is always actual reality.