ColbyCosh.com

Interesting analogy, and probably a good one, at least the sense that the first step in addressing (2) is to resist the simplistic explanation for (1) (the authorities were weak-willed and insufficiently iron-fisted) and properly account for the various forces and incentives which led to those rules not being enforced.

OTOH, analogies between issues of such varying magnitudes and consequences are inherently problematic.

to resist the simplistic explanation for (1) (the authorities were weak-willed and insufficiently iron-fisted)

Except when that actually might be the case. Is there not a compelling argument to be made that MLB turned a blind eye to the steroids issue in light of the strike and consequent fan unhappiness, which was then salvaged by the Mcgwire/Sosa home run contest? MLB owners have a long history of choosing their own personal gain over the "integrity of the game."

And James' comparision between traveling and steroids is terrible. It's also pure hyperbole. NBA players don't get away with taking five steps without dribbling. I challenge Mr. Sabermetrics to find me even five instances of that happening.

Uh, yeah, I don't watch much basketball, but there's plenty of just plain ridiculous Barry Sanders-style ballcarrying on the highlight reels, and I could find you least a dozen basketball writers who've written more or less the same thing James did there. Also, he watches A LOT of basketball and has being doing so for a long time.

The "McGwire/Sosa saved baseball" thing is a creation of dimbulb sportswriters. Every pro sport that's had a labour disruption bounced back in a couple years or less. I would agree that the owners looked away, generally, because it was easier to do so.

"Or it is, rather, the responsibility of the LEAGUE to enforce the rule?"

{feh} This general point is why I don't pay attention to Major League Baseball anymore.

"We CAN’T start picking and choosing who we honor on that basis."

James should speak for himself on the matter.

That's what I do.

> That's what I do.

Word.

Just as important is James's observation that The fact that everybody else may regard that era as the steroid era doesn't necessarily make it true in my eyes.

There's plenty of evidence that the performance enhancement part of the PED acronym is missing, at least as far as steroids are concerned.

There's also the ex post facto problem to consider -- steroids in particular were not against MLB's rules in the 1990s. A user of steroids was therefore not cheating.

I say that user was cheating, and I don't care what the league has to say about it.

I'm imagining walking around Crid and Billy's Basketball Hall of Fame, wondering where everyone from the '80s and '90s went. The argument would seem to be that regardless of what referees, umpires and other officials of the game _say_ the rules are, players should somehow know better. Kobe shouldn't wait for the refs to call travelling, he should call it on himself. Aging hitters with a reputation for sharp eyes, who get the close calls regarding balls and strikes, should correct the home plate ump and call themselves out if that's how they saw it. And if Mark McGwire were to note in 1998 that baseball had no rules against androstenedione, or steroids for that matter, we can only conclude that he should have made up such a rule himself, and so should've others in his position. As soon as we can find a league's worth of great players who care so little about competing, we'll be on our way.

I had LASIK surgery! I took legally prescribed Adderall! I am Spartacus!

Martin: I would be curious as to why you think steroids don't enhance performance. Are you thinking specifically of baseball, or against the general theory that steroids enhance recovery, thus enabling faster construction of lean body mass?

Because I think the latter case is virtually ironclad at this point: steroids make you bigger and stronger. Sometimes they ruin your kidneys, of course, but you know...

Here's an interesting article on PEDs (including steroids) albeit with a sample size of 1. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to seek out the rest.

"The argument would seem to be that regardless of what referees, umpires and other officials of the game _say_ the rules are, players should somehow know better."

Everybody else can speak for themselves. I say that the league should be far more authoritative.

Colby: I'd like to see someone objectively qualify the effects of steroids across individuals in the same way that LASIK can be qualified.

This is in no way a valid comparison.

Every night Bud Selig gets a good night's sleep is a bad day for baseball and all that is good in the world.

Fucking WOW. Day is night, white is black, and Billy Beck says that the problem with an authority figure was that they weren't authoritative enough.

I'm stunned. I mean, I understand the general anti-PED sentiment, but Christ Billy, how are you deciding who's guilty and who's innocent? On the basis of leaked grand jury testimony? Other self-serving testimony? What the hell am I missing here?

"Fucking WOW. Day is night, white is black, and Billy Beck says that the problem with an authority figure was that they weren't authoritative enough."

I will never, ever understand this sort of thing.

Doing my best to make a way through it, I think I'm reading an insinuation of surprise at my endorsement of authority, per se. If that's it, then I really don't quite know what to say except that the concept of authority is so clear to me that I never credit it where it does not belong.

"Billy, how are you deciding who's guilty and who's innocent?"

Is this a joke? Go ahead, Matt: tell me that you don't believe that that Bonds punk was dosing. Go ahead: I'll do my very best to smile and nod.

And what did Mr. Bill James do to call attention to steroid use in baseball? Not much, that's for sure.

Tom Boswell publicly accused Jose Canseco of using steroids during the 1988 playoffs. A friend who is a player's agent told me that Canseco was the Typhoid Mary of steroids back around 1993.

And where was Bill James while all this was going on? As far as I can tell, the word "steroids" is mentioned once in James' 1000-page New Historical Abstract from the early part of this decade, and that's only in an afterword mentioning that Caminiti had confessed.

Uh, yeah, I don't watch much basketball, but there's plenty of just plain ridiculous Barry Sanders-style ballcarrying on the highlight reels, and I could find you least a dozen basketball writers who've written more or less the same thing James did there.

I call bullshit on this. Absolute, total bullshit. The guy said "five steps." Five steps. His statement that they "lost track of it" is also bullshit. They call traveling now the same way they always have. Which is to say, the stars get a little more benefit of the doubt. The basketball writers who complain about the "increase" in traveling are probably the same guys who wrote about baseball when John Wooden was 50 (he's an amazing 97 years old, by the way). For a guy who's made a living challenging ridiculous assertions, James should know better.

Isn't there also a big difference between traveling, and other "fouls", and doing things like steroids. One is penalized behaviour that is expected to occur in a limited capacity within the confines of the game, and is punished as such. It's a foul, or a penalty. The other isn't an activity within the game. One doesn't do steroids in the act of hitting, or catching, or shooting a puck. I understand that the end (achieving an advantage) may be the same, but the means and scope seem to be vastly different. It's apples and oranges.

There's also the ex post facto problem to consider -- steroids in particular were not against MLB's rules in the 1990s. A user of steroids was therefore not cheating.

Martin and I've fought about this as nauseum, but I'll just make the point that lots of things aren't "particularly forbidden" in sports, yet they would still be considered cheating if they occured. Remember the tennis player's dad attacking his son's opponents, Marty?

but Christ Billy, how are you deciding who's guilty and who's innocent? On the basis of leaked grand jury testimony? Other self-serving testimony?

I don't know how anybody who can read hasn't come to the conclusion that Bonds was using "the cream" and "the clear." "Game of Shadows" is your one-stop shop for a dose of reality, Matt, and it isn't less factual just because the reporters were told of Grand Jury testimony.

> The argument would seem to be that
> regardless of what referees, umpires
> and other officials of the game
> _say_ the rules are, players
> should somehow know better.

No, the argument is that for our whole lives, those of us disinclined to care about this sport, that one, or any of them have been told the fault lies in our own hearts... That the transparency of athletic competition offers an exemplary realm where there's no quibbling or room for disingenuity in judging merit. Mantle hits and you can't, Jordan dunks and you can't. Much patience with personal, civic and national jingoism was expected in the shelter of this clarity.

A deeply human mix of science and greed has brought to sport the same murky measurement we see in every other field where people get freaky rewards. Achievement can now be convincingly distinguished from effort, natural brilliance and even luck. (Taste was never a factor, right?) Yet you still expect us to care who gets into Cooperstown? Babe, it's over.... Sorry.

The art in museums is always dead anyway.

And where was Bill James while all this was going on?

As you know, he was living in an unkempt home in Lawrence, Kan., and (unlike Tom Boswell) doing very little visiting of locker rooms or press boxes. Anyone who thinks of him as a reporter has sort of missed the central theme of his career.

James' overlooking of the steroid issue is in some ways a replay of his handling of the cocaine scandals of the early 1980s, when he was still actually working for player agents as a contract employee in arbitration hearings. He heard a few rumours, was unable to filter the signal from the noise, misinterpreted contemporary events like Keith Hernandez' sudden departure from the Cardinals, and was later forced to admit to a perfectly understandable reluctance to start accusing people of felonies in print.

The PED issue is further complicated by the fact that steroids came into baseball very soon after weight training of any kind became accepted amongst baseball men. As late as the mid-'80s you can still find quotes from older managers denouncing weightlifting as a threat to bat speed. This explains why no one in baseball has yet owned up to steroid use during the 1970s and 1980s, when East Germany had already mastered the details of hormone and steroid abuse in amateur athletic competition. I think James would still take the view that it is hard to detect the undifferentiated mass effect of steroids within a generation of baseball players that was the first to train deliberately for greater muscle mass.

They call traveling now the same way they always have.

YouTube + "LeBron" + Andy's comment + "Yakety Sax" = comedy gold.

Martin and I've fought about this as nauseum, but I'll just make the point that lots of things aren't "particularly forbidden" in sports, yet they would still be considered cheating if they occured. Remember the tennis player's dad attacking his son's opponents, Marty?

So did you guys get around to discussing Lasik, Sudafed, and Adderall, or were you just cracking one another up with imaginary bullshit scenarios? I suggest you locate a copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and thumb through looking for the name "Eric Clipperton."

YouTube + "LeBron" + Andy's comment + "Yakety Sax" = comedy gold.

Still waiting for the link to the evidence. I'd be glad to read about the notorious influx of five-step traveling.

So did you guys get around to discussing Lasik, Sudafed, and Adderall, or were you just cracking one another up with imaginary bullshit scenarios?

We did in fact discuss Lasik, Sudafed, and Adderall. We also discussed players intentionally getting Tommy Johns surgery performed at a young age, since there is some evidence that players come back throwing the ball even harder. I'm surprised we thought of it, though, since we obviously have a hard time tying our own shoes. We're so dumb, we even made up a story involving Christophe Fauviau drugging and killing his son's opponents, and got it published on the BBC, Washington Post and CBC.

You may be Spartacus Mr. Cosh, but perhaps not Cal Ripken. Or whatever famous baseball name my uninterested in MLB girl brain can remember.

I love sports, I love watching train till you puke, leave it all on the floor sports. I love watching the agony of defeat, remember that guy crashing through the snow fence at like a zillion miles an hour while hurtling down a mountain of ice? That pretty much defined it for me. I love that thrill of victory, the glory of utter dedication, the desolation of loss.

As a former college athlete I can still keep in decent shape, but I have quit watching any televised sport and cough up bucks for live action mostly for social event reasons. Why?-Because I am no longer watching dedication, drive discipline and talent, I am watching some doped up idiot grab onto a victory he/she hasn't earned.

It is qualitatively different from Adderall prescribed to remedy an ill that affects basic human function. It is not Lasik surgery designed to mitigate weakness that impinges on the everday aspects of life.

Elite sports is not everyday life, it abnormal dedication to greatness that sets athletes apart, and it is that context that drug use becomes cheating.

Athletic drug use is full knowledge alteration first of the mind then the body. Drug use in sports means that the athlete must first be willing to forgo the the tenet that it is effort and discipline and talent that make a person great. The drug user willingly subverts the contract of competition between himself and the 'clean' player. In the dark dressing room corner he rejects his/her own natural ability and substitutes a synthetic reality. At the base of it all drug use is the language of the loser who would whine to his Mommy that it isn't fair when he gets trounced.

The drug user severs (or at least greivously harms)the realtionship between athlete and fan, by trampling on the great ideals of sport - 'With enough discipline and talent this is what the human body is capable of,' 'It is all about discipline and single minded pursuit of a goal,' 'competition is the ultimate measure.'

Oh good grief I am an idealistic sap. But I don't watch lab rats get paid exhorbitant sums to run around my TV screen anymore. I wish that had a larger effect on ratings and revenue streams - those weak and greedy bastards wrecked something great.

Here's a question for you, then, Bobbi: if two athletes, both using the best steroid technology, are in competition, they lay it all out on the line, give it everything they have and more, and one eventually proves victorious, what makes his victory less legitimate?

Nobody says that an American athlete is less worthy of victory than a third-world athlete because the American receives millions of dollars worth of (perfectly legal) training and the best knowledge science has to offer while the third-world athlete, for simple monetary reason, gets far less. Yet even a token glance at the medal counts for the last few Olympics will show this matters. Surely a competition between evenly-matched steroid users is at least as fair as the alternative people are going for.

Since I'm good at the obvious, A study on the effects of steroids.

And another one.

Bonus: Lebron on YouTube. I haven't counted steps, but in more than one play he picks up the ball above the top of the key, and runs through the paint before jumping. Has to be 4-5 steps each time.

He's still impressive, but basically, he's allowed to run with the ball.

> I am no longer watching dedication,
> drive discipline and talent, I am
> watching some doped up idiot grab
> onto a victory he/she hasn't earned.

This woman is a sister.

> if two athletes, both using the
> best steroid technology, are
> in competition

It's not just two athletes in competition... Anyone poised for championship in professional sports has been graded superior to tens of thousands of other players on their way up the ladder. These defeated contenders are expected to pay attention to the championship to see what they might do better next time. Every player aspiring to be champion in a league where drugs are tolerated must use them.

> what makes his victory less
> legitimate?

"Legitmacy" is a word for lawyers. Players using "steroid technology" aren't "laying it all out on the line." They're cheating their way around the risk posed by equally talented and disciplined contenders.

> Nobody says that an American
> athlete is less worthy of
> victory than a third-world
> athlete

No, but they say that anyone on the globe who had those advantages with their gifts & discipline would have done as well. Steroids derail that arithmetic.

Listen, Bonds is about to break a big record. I guess we're lucky that he's such an unpleasant and unsympathetic fellow... But even if he were Mattingly or Ozzie, a lot of people who want to still care about this stuff would be getting their noses rubbed in the stink of this moment. But for the righteously bitter, this oncoming scat-smelling will not be enough.

When Aaron's record falls, you might hear a snarky, self-satisfied cackle echoing across the Santa Monica Bay. Think fondly of me.

Reviewing the item that got all this started...

> We CAN’T start picking and
> choosing who we honor on that
> basis [PED use]. It’s
> hypocritical...

What's hypocritical about it?

> ... and it’s impractical…

Translation: It would be a lot of work! People's feelingswould get hurt! I guess I made the right decision early in life: Sports aren't worth the investment of attention after all.

When Bonds or Giambi or whomever gets soem exotic, punishing cancer or maybe even dies young (in vernacular, "the full Alzado"), you're going to here another cackle.

Yes, I have energy about this. Sports guys are that smug.

I haven't counted steps, but in more than one play he picks up the ball above the top of the key, and runs through the paint before jumping. Has to be 4-5 steps each time.

I didn't see a single basket where he took four to five steps. If people want to give me specific times in the clip, that would help. And even if they are there, it doesn't prove James' idea that the NBA has "pretty much stopped enforcing" traveling. It's just a ridiculous claim not backed up by any evidence.

There are a couple in the first minute of the video where he pretty clearly takes four.

The first is around 20-26 seconds in, and the second about 48 seconds in, are both clear travels, and involve 4-5 steps. The first two(I think they are the same play, against Portland, maybe?) are the ones right before the play where he steals and goes the length. (that one is possibly legal, it is the prior two he travels in) He jump stops near the top of the key, does a full 360 while moving about 7 feet forward, and lays the ball in. The last is the one against Chicago, and is similar, but starts near the middle of the right side of the paint. By my count there were at least 4, and probably 5, steps on each of those plays. He travels - taking two full steps while holding the ball - on practically every basket in the first minute of the video.

Keep in mind, the rule is that once you've picked up the ball, you can pivot and pass or shoot, or jump and release the ball in the air. You can't pick up both feet and then come back down with either foot. After the jump stop, he shouldn't be able to cover ANY distance, except purely in the air.

Crid - Steroids most likely had nothing to do with Alzado's tumor.

Martin - Illegal use of drugs is against (and always has been against?) baseball's rules.

Lord Bob,

If two athletes on drugs openly declare they are on performance enhancing drugs, and push themselves until the veins pop out of their foreheads and that awful purple colour flouresces brightly I might watch like a Roman at the galdiator match to sees who falls first. At least if they are open about their drug use. The foundational lie of hiding drug use has been absolved.

The current situation is outrageous because it is a lie. A lie that runs in many directions simultaneously. Drugs alter human cells at a molecular level, it changes the cells physical essence and for me that is terribly unsettling in the realm of sporting competition.

The lie works its way along the basis that elite athletes are afraid of losing so they dope, they can't get what they want with their natural ability and discipline. I think it is because I view secretive steroid use as a function of fear that I find it so loathsome,I prefer my sporting heros to lose hard and come back (obviously I watched too much John Wayne as a kid).

Beyond the idealism and hero worship of a 'pure' sport event I am unconvinced and deeply wary of the thought that holds permanent chemical alteration to the human body as a component of success. Call me a medical Luddite, deeply suspicious of change, but I find comfort in watching the humanity of sport, the joy. The self-loathing and body hatred that comes with steroid and performance drug use, the need to steal a win from someone with more natural ability just leaves me cold.

Steroids became legally controlled substances in 1991. Baseball users were violating the law of the land.

Steroid use wasn't irrelevant to Bill James' lifework -- steroid users were breaking the most famous statistical marks in baseball.

Look, Bill James didn't rock the boat about steroid use, and then he got a really nice job with the Boston Red Sox. If he had gone on the warpath over steroid use, would he have been persona non grata with the baseball clubs? Maybe, maybe not. All we can say for sure is that he chose to stay quiet about the biggest distortion of baseball statistics ever and he ended up doing very well for himself.

the biggest distortion of baseball statistics ever

Without some qualification, this is a ridiculous description. The distortion caused by PEDs might be disproportionate on the right tail of the talent distribution, but testing hasn't cut into overall scoring rates nearly as much as building a single major-league ballpark in Colorado permanently elevated them.

(Not that this exhausts the ridiculousness of that paragraph--I can only keep thinking how terribly clever it was of Bill James to have sold 100,000+ copies of his Abstract for seven or eight years running, tearing the baseball establishment into ever finer shreds with each one, in order to get that awesome Boston Red Sox job he had his eye on all along.)

how terribly clever it was of Bill James to have sold 100,000+ copies of his Abstract for seven or eight years running, tearing the baseball establishment into ever finer shreds with each one, in order to get that awesome Boston Red Sox job he had his eye on all along

A job that he finally landed fifteen years after the last of those Abstracts. Also, a job that (I have it on good authority) pays him less than he makes from writing.

Believe me, as someone who's been in the baseball consultancy business... it pays less than peanuts.

the biggest distortion of baseball statistics ever

That's inaccurate. No one has been able to definitively assess the impact of steroids on modern statistics, but we know that the distortions of the modern era of any kind are far less than the distortion of the 1920s or 1960s; that's without the many other factors (smaller parks, different baseballs, big differences in bat technology, new styles of hitting, and weight training in general) that are in play.

One thing we do know, is that "distortions" due to steroids are indistinguishable from distortions due to weight training. Widespread, meaningful weight training entered the game at around the same time steroids did. Ballplayers who trained in any serious way with weights in the 1970s could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

the biggest distortion of baseball statistics ever

Without some qualification, this is a ridiculous description. The distortion caused by PEDs might be disproportionate on the right tail of the talent distribution, but testing hasn't cut into overall scoring rates nearly as much as building a single major-league ballpark in Colorado permanently elevated them.

Or something that might really skew the statistics, like excluding all the talented black players from competing.

Or lowering the mound five inches. Or banning the spitball. Or banning the Ross Barnes "fair/foul" bunt. Or sending the young players to fight in World War II. Or changing the number of balls required for a walk.

Steroids? Yeah, puts 'em all in the shade.

Obviously, I'm referring to the distortion of individual statistics achieved by steroid cheaters.

For example, Bill James helped teach us that players around 27 and that OPS was a good measure of a hitter. So, when Barry Bonds broke Babe Ruth's park-adjusted OPS+ record with the three highest seasons ever at age 36, 37, and 39, well, it should have been more transparently ridiculous to Bill James than to anybody else. Instead, he goes on about Barry's amazing new bat.

Look, everybody makes mistakes. Bill James is a great guy but he screwed up by remaining silent for years over steroids. He should admit it, apologize to his fans, and then we could move on. But instead he keeps digging himself a deeper hole.

I note that "he kept quiet about steroids and good a good job out of it" has morphed into "he screwed up", which is at least a potentially fair assessment.

I believe both Mr. Cosh and Mr. Sailer are partially correct. There seems to be a pretty universal consensus that James was long an outsider in the baseball world, that he was generally either ignored or held in contempt by most major league executives, that he had long since become reconciled to this status, and that therefore it came like a bolt out of the blue when the Red Sox wanted to hire him. I think we need pretty hard evidence before we conclude he had any kind of master plan to become a major league consultant. So score one for Cosh. But really, while James is certainly not a "reporter," he had to have been aware of the rumors and controversy swirling around figures like Canseco, McGwire, Caminiti, Bonds, etc. He should have mentioned the controversy in the Historical Baseball Abstract, if only to say, "I can't fully judge from this distance." So Sailer is more right on the whole, IMHO.

But really, while James is certainly not a "reporter," he had to have been aware of the rumors and controversy swirling around figures like Canseco, McGwire, Caminiti, Bonds, etc.

This is imposing a pretty heavy burden of foresight considering that the NHBA was released in October 2001 and that much of it was written in 2000. As this comment in the original Baseball Primer thread suggests, the PED "scandal" didn't really come to public attention in a major way until 2002. Before that there was no "controversy," only rumours. McGwire's open use of androstenedione was discovered right in the middle of his race with Sosa and the public's reaction was largely "Meh," which is demonstrated by the fact that he is still credited with having saved baseball by later breaking Maris's record. (The sale of andro was not outlawed in the U.S. until 2004.)

"he is still credited with having saved baseball by later breaking Maris's record."

Is he? The Hall of Fame voters certainly seem to have turned on him.

Yes, because of later developments (the Canseco book, the congressional fiasco). But did you miss the first comment in this thread? Andy's just stating conventional wisdom. McGwire basically admitted to using performance enhancers per ora before he even broke the record, and no one really gave a crap at the time.

"Well, they still call traveling but they will allow you to take about five steps without dribbling as you are running toward the basket."

James took care to clarify that he wasn't saying traveling didn't exist anymore, which is demonstrably false. No one would dribble at all were that the case.

Traveling IS still called consistently in the NBA, just not on drives to the bucket originating inside the three-point arc against a set defense (3-4 steps permitted anyone, 5 for James, Kobe, et al) or half court on a fast break (Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain permitted).

Post players receiving the ball with their back to the hoop, and guards circumnavigating perimeter defenses are still whistled all the time for "shuffling" or extra steps. Both will occasionally chuck the ball to the ref almost before the whistle when they know they've committed what remains of the violation.

What puzzles me about the PED era is why a coterie of NL Central flyball pitchers didn't organize a smear campaign in the late '90s to blow the lid off this thing. Or a once hot prospect like Gabe Alvarez, whose career was arguably damaged by Caminiti's roid-surgence in '96, didn't tip somebody off.