Baseball Musings: How Did We Get Here?

December 05, 2004

How Did We Get Here?

In the previous post, Peter Gammons is quoted:

Certainly as the Bash Brothers ushered in the Home Run Era -- now known as the Juiced Era -- the people who run baseball encouraged everything powerful.

One of the sad things is that it would have been the home run era without drugs. For a long time, the belief in baseball circles that too much weight training was bad for you. Here's a paragraph from Jack Aker's Baseball Fundamentals Handbook:

Players up to age 12 shouldn't worry about staying in shape, as (hopefully) their normal daily activities give them plenty of exercise. There are exercises and drills that a player who wants to improve coordination and skill can do, however concentrating on physical conditioning is not necessary until about age 13. Many of today's amateur coaches are pushing their young players to pump iron, but this is, at the least, ILL-ADVISED, and can be DANGEROUS for young players. Baseball players need to be lean, loose and flexible, not muscle-bound. The greatest players of all time did NOT lift weights, and the players whose careers last the longest are those who keep their bodies
limber -- not bulked up. The players who do too much weight training are the ones who suffer the most injuries.

Actually, it's been known for a long time that weight training is very good for you. At some point, baseball players started to realize this, and started building their muscles the old fashioned way. The big boppers discovered they could hit more HR with bigger muscles. The skinny shortstops discovered they were better fielders with bigger muscles, and a few more HR came along as a bonus. Smaller parks, higher altitudes and a better manufactured (but still legal) baseball helped, too. But basically, ballplayers as a whole realized that the stronger you were, the better you hit, and the more money you made. It wasn't difficult to take the next step in building those muscles.

I'd still love to know how much of a difference these drugs make. The scientist in me would love someone to do a blind placebo study to see how much stronger people get when they are taking these drugs vs. when they think they are taking the drugs. My guess is that the HR records could have been broken without the juice. Maybe the next generation can prove me right.

Posted by David Pinto at 09:04 AM | Cheating | TrackBack (1)

Comments

Even if, and it is a big, big, big if, these performance enhancing substances do not change that much, the fundamental problem is that by using the substances the integrity of the game is questioned. Pete Rose may never have changed his decisionmaking based on his bets, but the problem is that he put himself in position where he might have been compromised, and we can never know if he was. The integrity of those games are then questioned, which strikes at the heart of sports. The same holds true for steroids and the like. Even if we accept they did very little (something I am, quite frankly, not ready to accept), the fact that they MIGHT have means that the integrity of every game and every statistic in which the substances were used by a participant is put into question.

Posted by: Chris at December 5, 2004 03:09 PM

Come on. Look at Jason Giambi's body before and after 2004. Look at some old pictures of Arnold. Hell, look at Kelli White! There is no question that steroids and other drugs build muscle mass, more than weight training alone can do. It's unclear how much on-field improvement all those muscles actually contributes to, but as you say, the players realize that stronger is better.

Posted by: tc at December 5, 2004 06:11 PM

You should also mention the whip-handled bats. Better bats are a big part of this.

The other significant factor is the perpetually declining percentage of a team's innings thrown by its 5 or 6 best pitchers.

Posted by: Crank at December 6, 2004 10:43 AM

No one knows how much the current steroid testing limits the numbers of players taking it, but ESPN.com ran their "Juice Box" all year anticipating a decline, and in fact, there were across the board improvements in power numbers. All of the factors mentioned throughout the 1990s and in this post describing increased offense are very real. We may never know what impact steroids had.

Also, with pitchers supposedly on 'roids too, is it possible that increased offense was evened out?

Posted by: Man of Leisure at December 6, 2004 12:40 PM

It's incontrovertible that steroids build muscle mass (in conjunction with weight training), as it's been shown in numerous studies. One Dutch study that can be found on the medical journal database site PubMed.com reports "Strength gains of about 5-20% of the initial strength and increments of 2-5 kg bodyweight, that may be attributed to an increase of the lean body mass, have been observed."
As to whether these strength gains are psychosomatic, I'm not aware of any study, but when you consider the tangible physiological changes associated with steroids it's hard to imagine much of it can be due simply to believing you're stronger. The more interesting study would be whether building muscle mass in excess of your genetic potential really has a net positive outcome on your playing ability.

Posted by: Steve rauscher at December 6, 2004 01:50 PM

M.O.L has a good point about pitchers. There are many 90+ fastballs that have been found during the late 90 early 2000 period. Yes the roids will help increase muscle mass and most importantly help with regeneration. If you look at Big Mac, the most important thing that the over the counter stuff did for him was allow his body to recover quickly. This helps to mitigate the wear and tear a body deals with over a long season. Much the same way that cocaine did in the 70's and uppers and booze did in the 30-60's. And I will submit that roids are less harmful than that stuff.

The point on weights is perhaps the most important change in baseball since the late 80's. 5'9" and 165 pound players just don't really exist in baseball anymore. They all weigh around 200 now. Size, weight and muscle mass are all far above what they were 20 years ago.

Posted by: Rob M at December 7, 2004 09:19 AM