gold star for USAHOF

IF I HAD A VOTE IN THE 2013 BASEBALL HALL OF FAME ELECTION, PART 1: A HISTORIC REFERENDUM

Index


2001: A Sports Oddity—or a "Black Swan Event"?

With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, although 2001 saw a slight dip in overall home runs from the previous two seasons, it was the year in which Barry Bonds established the current single-season home run total with 73, and this is one of the prime pieces of evidence as to how PEDs have "raise[d] questions about the validity of baseball records," as stated in the Mitchell Report.

In fact, of the 89 players who hit at least 20 home runs in 2001, 16 of them, 12 from the NL and 4 from the AL, established career highs in home runs that season while four, two from each league, tied their career high. Several players who did not establish a career high but hit a lot of home runs in 2001 have been associated with PEDs including Sammy Sosa (64), Alex Rodriguez (52), Rafael Palmeiro (47), Troy Glaus (41), and Manny Ramirez (41).

The following table lists the 20 players with at least 20 home runs in 2001 who set or tied their career high in home runs in that season along with their next-highest single-season total and the year(s) in which that occurred.

Players with at Least 20 HR in 2001

Player

Age

2001 HR

Next-highest

Year

Bonds, Barry

36

73

49

2000

Gonzalez, Luis

33

57

31

2000

Green, Shawn

28

49

42

1999, 2002

Helton, Todd

27

49

42

2000

Palmeiro, Rafael

36

47

47

1999

Sexson, Richie

26

45

45

2003

Nevin, Phil

30

41

31

2000

Aurilia, Rich

29

37

23

2006

Boone, Bret

32

37

35

2003

Cruz, Jose

27

34

31

2000

Sanders, Reggie

33

33

31

2003

Abreu, Bobby

27

31

30

2004

Sweeney, Mike

27

29

29

2000

Koskie, Corey

28

26

25

2004

Hernandez, Jose

31

25

24

2002

Jordan, Brian

34

25

25

1998

Lo Duca, Paul

29

25

13

2004

Stevens, Lee

33

25

24

1999

Trammell, Bubba

29

25

17

2002

Daubach, Brian

29

22

21

1999, 2000

 

Of the players with 34 or fewer home runs, only Paul Lo Duca, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, showed a significant increase in home runs from his next-highest total. Lo Duca is one of the players cited by the Mitchell Report as having an association with PEDs. Otherwise, these players exceeding or tying their single-season highs did not have a significant increase.

It is when examining the players with more than 34 home runs that the anomalies arise—and with them questions about who did or did not use PEDs. As noted previously, Bonds, Palmeiro, and Bret Boone have been heavily implicated with steroids. The Padres' Phil Nevin, who took over third base from Ken Caminiti, also had the PEDs suspicion applied to him for his 41 round-trippers although no evidence has emerged.

The Colorado Rockies' first baseman Todd Helton's career-high and next career-high have to be evaluated against his home park, Coors Field, which didn't begin using a humidifier to neutralize the altitude effects on baseballs until 2002, leading to an inflation of home runs. In 2000, Helton hit nearly twice as many homers in Coors Field, 27, as he did on the road, although in 2001 the five more homers he hit were all on the road, giving him a more balanced home-road split of 27 at Coors and 22 on the road.

The most dramatic increase, both in magnitude and in total number, is the Arizona Diamondbacks' left fielder Luis Gonzalez, whose 57 home runs nearly doubles his second-best seasonal total, 31, set the previous season. Gonzalez's effort coincided with the start of Arizona's Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Field) being considered to be a hitter-friendly park, although 31 of Gonzalez's homers were hit on the road. The next most dramatic increase was San Francisco Giants' shortstop Rich Aurilia's 37 homers, besting his previous mark of 22 homers in 1999.

Los Angeles Dodgers' right fielder Shawn Green also set a personal best in 2001 with 49 home runs; hitting in pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium, Green, not surprisingly, hit 30 of those 49 round-trippers on the road. But Green had hit 42 home runs in 1999 as a Blue Jay batting in Toronto's fairly hitter-neutral SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre), and repeated that total while playing in more pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium in 2002, hitting only 18 of those 42 homers in L.A. Between 1998 and 2002, his age-25 through age-29 seasons, Green had a five-year peak in which he averaged 38 homers, 333 total bases, 21 stolen bases, a .545 slugging percentage, a 137 OPS+, and a 5.2 bWAR—that is all-star quality—per season. For eight years from 1998 to 2005, his age-25 through age-32 seasons, Green was a respectable power hitter, posting a .284/.363/.516 slash line with seasonal averages of 37 doubles, 33 home runs, 312 total bases, 104 runs scored, 101 runs batted in, 16 stolen bases, a 128 OPS+, and a 3.8 bWAR. His numbers during this period might have been higher had left-shoulder tendonitis not hampered him in 2003, limiting him to 19 homers although he hit a career-high 49 doubles.

By 2006, his age-33 year, Green's effectiveness had dropped off, and he retired following the 2007 season. Green's career was a solid one that exhibited the expected arc: a few seasons of maturation before he hit his stride, producing at an all-star peak from 1998 to 2002 before experiencing a steadily-increasing decline—in other words, the kind of career one expects of a player not suspected of using PEDs.

Yet Green's career-high 49 home runs in 2001 attracted suspicion and allegations of juicing, mixed as they were among the career highs and near-career highs of players suspected of using PEDs, including some who subsequently acquired more positive evidence. But 2001 was an unusually good year for home runs; Jim Thome crushed 49 round-trippers, topped only by the 52 he hit the following season, and Thome has been consistently regarded as one of the "clean" players of Steroids Era. (Although appreciation of Thome's march to 600 career home runs was strangely muted, as I noted in August 2011.) And if Luis Gonzalez and Rich Aurilia, along with Phil Nevin and Richie Sexson, join Green and Thome as clean players who hit an unusually high number of home runs in 2001, then we just might have a black swan event on our hands.

The theory of black swan events refers to this idea: If conventional wisdom holds that all swans are white but then a black swan appears, two possibilities are that a) the black swan is not a swan or b) the black swan is a swan, and conventional wisdom must be revised in light of this new evidence. In baseball terms, the "all swans are white" conventional wisdom (and you could put the term conventional wisdom in quotes) is that a player who hit an unusually high number of home runs during the Steroids Era must have been using performance-enhancing drugs. But if a player during this era hits an unusually high number of home runs and did not use PEDs, then the "all swans are white"—in other words, all players hitting unusually high numbers of home runs were using PEDs—argument is suspect. And if in a single season such as 2001, in which a high number of players hits unusually high numbers of home runs, a single one of those players proves to be free of PEDs—in other words, is a "black swan"—then there must be other factors to account for why that player hit such an unusually high number of home runs in the company of those "white swans." And if multiple players—more than one "black swan"—prove to be PED-free, then the reason for those unusually high numbers of home runs cannot be PEDs exclusively.

Ah, but proof just might prove to be elusive. Further research is needed, but even that won't satisfy the doubters, and certainly further research cannot arrive in time for the 2013 vote. Many of the players on the 2013 ballot, from first-time eligibles to those already on previous ballots, have been painted by the PEDs brush and labeled "cheaters" whose accomplishments are tainted and in turn those accomplishments cheapen the integrity of the game and its hallowed records.

But has baseball ever been truly clean?

"Cheaters" and the Myth of the Pristine Past

Those who condemn players as "cheaters" who used performance-enhancing drugs have a strong point: The status of those substances prior to 2002 might have been murky—at least the enforcement of and penalties for those substances was—and unlike some of the situations and circumstances described below, electing to use PEDs is a personal decision that puts players who choose not to juice at a disadvantage. Furthermore, unlike using amphetamines, "greenies," which have a transitory effect—the drug wears off after a few hours—using PEDs creates lasting changes to the body.

But those who condemn players of the Steroids Era for sullying the integrity of baseball and tainting its hallowed records do not seem to know, or have forgotten, the inherently skewed history of baseball from its very inception.

A Checkered History

The 19th-century version of major-league baseball was a rough-and-tumble game with changing rules and shady characters both on and off the diamond—no sooner had the National League been formed in 1876 than a gambling scandal rocked the League. The Dead-ball Era of the early 20th century was marked—literally—with repeated attempts during each game to mark, scuff, alter, discolor, and degrade the ball—which was the same ball used for as long as humanly possible, hence the ultimately deadening effect on the ball's elasticity—in the effort to make it as hard as possible to see for hitting and catching. Only when a player, Ray Chapman, was killed by a pitched ball in 1920 were the efforts to use clean balls fully realized, resulting in the Live-ball Era that remains today.

But even then 17 pitchers who had been known spitball pitchers, applying a foreign substance to the ball, were grandfathered for the rest of their careers, meaning that they could continue to throw the spitball even though the pitch itself had been made illegal by 1920. (Chapman had been killed by a spitball thrown by Carl Mays.) Among the grandfathered pitchers who eventually entered the Hall of Fame were Stan Coveleski, Red Faber, and Burliegh Grimes. Another Hall of Fame pitcher, Ed Walsh, is credited with having popularized the spitter, but he had retired following the 1917 season.

Later Hall of Fame pitchers Whitey Ford and especially Gaylord Perry were regularly accused of doctoring the baseball when they pitched. Perry, whose autobiography was titled Me and the Spitter, was suspended for 10 games in 1982 for doctoring the ball; long-time manager Gene Mauch once quipped that Perry "should be in the Hall of Fame with a tube of K-Y Jelly attached to his plaque."

Although the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal led to the lifetime banning from baseball of players who knowingly gambled on the outcomes of games, subsequently affecting the Hall of Fame chances of Joe Jackson, one of the "Black Sox," and, much later, Pete Rose, Hall of Fame superstars Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker had been accused of gambling during their playing days; moreover, both players were regarded to be racists. Cobb famously assaulted a fan in 1912 who had aimed a racial slur at him and was suspended for his actions—and in the first players' strike in baseball history, his teammates refused to play until he was reinstated; this was no small feat because Cobb, an intense competitor and all-around bastard, was disliked even by his own teammates. Speaker allegedly belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, and even as recently as 2008 former players' union executive director Marvin Miller opined that Speaker should be banned from the Hall for this association. (After his retirement, Speaker was instrumental in grooming Larry Doby, the first African-American player in the American League, to play center field for the Cleveland Indians.)

And speaking of race, all records set prior to 1947, when Jackie Robinson became the first African-American player in Major League Baseball in the 20th century, should be suspect because players prior to that were playing against deliberately and institutionally diluted competition. Only white players were allowed to compete in the major leagues. White players who barnstormed against Negro League players in the 1920s and 1930s, including Hall of Famers Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean, publicly proclaimed the excellence of the Negro League players they competed against. These African-American players could have been major leaguers, with the corresponding effect on competition that entails. As comedian Chris Rock observed, Babe Ruth hit 714 "affirmative-action home runs." How would Ruth have fared against the likes of Ray Brown, Andy Cooper, Martin Dihigo, Jose Mendez, or Satchel Paige, all Negro League pitchers later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Last modified on Thursday, 22 March 2018 01:57

Comments powered by CComment