Posted by: Jude (wayout1@columbus.rr.com) on Thu Sep 4 15:41:42 2008

Greetings again Tim:

You said in one of your postings that we should forget about steroids since both pitchers and hitters used them so they cancelled out each other. How does one aging pitcher's use cancel out the performances of probably dozens of every day players who were taking performance
enhancing drugs. More to the point how does it cancel out those incredible home run figures (and other stats) that have been oohed and ahaed over, major league baseball having once promoted the impression that today's players are the super players you have portrayed. On July 27, 07, under the Mickey Mantle topic posting I dealt with this issue, by referring to an article in the Sports Illustrated that I referred you to. You should look it up ad read it.

When Williams passed, an elderly sports writer wrote that Williams was the greatest hitter 40 years ago, and 40 years from now will still be the greatest hitter who ever lived. (Sports writers do not refer to Williams as you have, "If Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of the past...") Even if a hitter in the future came along who was better than Williams how would we know? Baseball has been bent so far out of shape by money hungry owners and players that cheating the public has beome so commonplace that the federal government has had to step in. Football with its parity has replaced baseball as America's top sport. It is no exaggeration to say that ballparks are juiced (made smaller), balls are juiced (one old timer maintained they have to be juiced, otherwise how could small players hit such long home runs to the opposite field), the bats are juiced (small whippy breakaway bats), and the players are juiced (no explanation necessary). I would add that players wallets are juiced. Many of today's players are multi-millionaires with guarantee contracts. They can afford to take chances finding and using undectable performance enhancing drugs. They are also juiced with a present day powerful corrupt union that continually places roadblocks to keep players from being exposed as users and lawbreakers. They are also jucied with a foot dragging publicity seeking government agency.

You can't compare players of the past with present day players for all of the reasons above. What comes close as a valid comparison is comparing cotemparies. Besides, no one in this thread has stated how far back the past is. I would like to draw a line at 1990 and call everything after that: the drug era. (A strong cse could be made for the strike year 1994) What would be wrong with that? There is a precedent. 1900 has been called the modern era and previous records were ignored.

I think it is widely known that Mays is the godfather of Bonds and would be very reluctant to say anything that would minimize Bond's baseball accomplishments. (Has anyone asked him whether he thought those accomplishments were the result of drug usage?)

If anyone is looking for an old timer who doesn't share Tim's view of today's players look no further than Mike Schmidt. A few years ago Schmidt made the observation that if he played under present day conditions that he could have hit 70 home runs (presumably without juicing up).

Then there is a pitcher who played with Roger Maris who said: they made the ball parks smaller and no one could break Roger's home run record until steroids came along.

Tim seemed to be preoccupied with the physical aspects of hitting. What about the mental part? Williams said that half of hitting is above the neck. I'm sure he meant that applied to pitching as well as hitting. (Williams was known as pointing out how dumb pitchers were.) At this point I am closing down temporarily, and leaving this thought: compared to Tim's super players of the present how do players of the past stack up mentally? That of course leaves a lot of room for speculation.