Posted by Doug Thorburn on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 8:47 am

It’s 1987, and you are an 8-year old kid who has just discovered the greatest thing since peanut butter: Major League Baseball. A childhood of He-Man, Transformers, and G.I. Joe has given way to Little League, baseball cards, an allegiance to the local green & gold, and their He-Man of a rookie first baseman. You mimic his pigeon-toed stance and hammer-drop swing during games of wiffle ball, and you faithfully follow his career through a rookie homerun record, a World Series Championship, years marred by injury, a cross country trade to a National League team, and the breaking of the most heralded record in sports.

It’s 2010, and you are a 30-year old man who has never shaken his obsession with the sport of baseball. You have become a student of the game, and the fanboy of adolescence has given way to a calloused veteran of performance analysis and baseball research. The date reads like binary code: 1-11-10, and high noon brings breaking news that will etch that day into your mind, forever linked to another date that has been engraved into your psyche: 9-8-98. The clouds of suspicion finally clear, and all that remains are the words: The redheaded He-Man was on the juice.

Autobiographies aside, I will do my best to keep the 8-year old Doug in his room, and let the adults discuss how Popeye admitted to using more than just spinach to bludgeon his opponents. It’s been a week since Mark McGwire owned up and finally broke his silence about PED’s, and the news has had ample time to sink in. The announcement brought detractors and apologists alike to the forefront of the discussion, and debates flared about how this admission should change the way that we view Mac’s career.

The hot stove season took a backseat to media ‘roid rage when McGwire released his statement to the Associated Press. The fiasco brought some forgotten characters out of the woodwork, like Steve Trachsel and Jack Clark, each searching for 15 fleeting seconds of fame. Meanwhile, the injection of Jose Canseco into the conversation officially announced that the circus was in town.

One of the angles of the McGwire controversy is his assertion that taking steroids had little to do with hitting homers, and was instead a solution to combat the litany of injuries that the big red slugger incurred on the playing field. I am not in any position to judge Big Mac’s intentions, but it is hard to imagine that a ballplayer, whose paycheck is largely dependent on the homerun, would not be somewhat motivated by the potential to boost his output along with his earnings.

Many have pointed out that it takes a lot more than brute strength to hit a homer, from pitch recognition to swing mechanics and reaction time. There are a number of variables in the hitting equation, and it is difficult to quantify the precise impact that steroids have on performance. But it is not difficult to understand that an increase in bat speed would be a big advantage to an athlete already armed with the experience and raw skills to hit a baseball.

When McGwire was interrogated about his use of andro in 1998, the explanation was that he used the stuff to help him recover from workouts more quickly, and not necessarily to bulk up. The statement makes as little sense now as it did then, given that McGwire wouldn’t need such recovery if he just tempered back his workout regimen. It is no secret that steroids help to extend one’s time in the gym, and that the aided recovery means a greater frequency of workouts as well. Steroids are no help to an athlete that sits on the couch, as they are designed to create a workhorse.

 

The ability to stay on the field is a measurable skill in baseball, and any health benefit derived from steroids would qualify as performance enhancement at its core. Playing more games at closer to full strength and stamina is a huge advantage in a daily sport with a 162-game schedule. I would argue that the recovery aspect of steroids could have an even greater impact on performance than the increases in strength and bat speed.

 

Just for fun, let’s take McGwire’s statements at face value, and assume that the only benefit that he realized from steroids was the ability to stay on the field. This surely had an impact beyond raw totals of games played, as playing closer to full strength on a regular basis will improve performance day-to-day and over the course of a season. It will also limit the cascade effect of injuries, where compensating for a minor ailment can lead to further damage.

 

Players naturally wear down over six months and 162 games, and one needs only look as far back as 1996 to see how steroids can make a difference in that regard. That year, the Padres’ Ken Caminiti admittedly used steroids to overcome his own injury problems, and rode that health to an MVP season that stands out as an obvious outlier in his career path.

In McGwire’s case, consider the following graph, which charts his home run frequency throughout his 16-year career (1986-2001). Big Mac’s rate dipped below 10.0 just once in his first 9 years in the league, and then it abruptly dropped under the hard deck and stayed there until his final season. He claims to have begun using steroids “briefly” in 1989-90, and then again after he was injured in 1993. Any effect that resulted from chomping power pellets would probably show up in the numbers after 1993, which is year 8 in the graph.

 

The data points clearly demonstrate a significant boost in home run frequency during the 2^nd half of his career. In an era where many of his contemporaries were also chemically enhanced, the frequency of McGwire’s homers still stood out among the crowd. He holds the all time record with a homerun every 10.61 at bats, sitting atop an elite list of sluggers. He has a 10% edge on #2 Babe Ruth, whom he passed on the list during the 70-homer season of 1998, and a 20% edge on #4 Barry Bonds.

Big Mac also had an incredible walk rate, at 17.2% of all plate appearances for his career, which helped drive the AB/HR ratio. The walks also limited him to no more than 557 at bats in any season, and contributed to McGwire registering just six seasons with more than 500 at bats. The man’s entire playing career was an advanced lesson in power and patience.

The guy had the Pac-10 record for single-season homers, hitting 32 bombs for USC in 1984, until Troy Glaus broke the record 13 years later. He also holds the Major League record for home runs by a rookie, with 49 shots in the 1987 campaign, breaking the previous record by 11. He led the Major Leagues in homers five times, and hit 50 or more homers in four consecutive seasons. Single-season home run records are McGwire’s thing, so it seemed only fitting when he went on the march for #62. Canseco was even quoted as saying that he thought that Mac could have broken the record with or without steroids.

The summer of 1998 has been overly glorified, but there is only slight hyperbole in the tagline, “Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa save baseball from its own Depression.” The game was hurting after the ’94 strike, suffering from the damage of self-inflicted wounds. Power struggles between the players and the owners robbed the baseball public of a highly anticipated stretch drive, in a season that featured a .400 hitter in August, the re-establishment of the Yankee powerhouse, and the best season in the history of the Montreal Expos.

The Maris chase of ’98 was captivating, and my last summer before college was filled with daily countdowns in the newspaper, back when people still read the black-and-white. Using the amazing new technology of online multimedia, I listened to Cardinals games from thousands of miles away, following the action from graduation until it was time to leave for school. ESPN went live for every at bat in late August and early September, as McGwire and Sammy Sosa closed in on the record.

The big one came on September 8^th, a birthday gift that arrived a day early. Not the way anyone had scripted it, the shot was his shortest homer of the year, a low liner that barely cleared the wall down the left-field line. Overwhelmed with excitement, the big guy missed first base on his historic home run trot, and had to backtrack and touch the bag before resuming his trek around the bases. He was congratulated by Cubs’ infielders as he rounded the bags for the 62^nd time of the season, and record-chasing rival Sosa even jogged in from the outfield to give McGwire a congratulatory bear hug.

The storyline to 1998 is integral to the McGwire controversy. Like many others, I have formed an emotional connection to that season, and have often defended the rationality of that connection. Denial is a powerful tool, especially in the hands of a vulnerable ego, and for a time it was difficult to accept that the home run chase was anything but legit.

The Hall of Fame has dominated the focus of the McGwire story, as he is the initial subject for the study on, “sluggers from the steroids era and their representation in Cooperstown.” The results are negative after three years, and time will tell if McGwire’s admission will have an impact on next year’s voting.

My slant on the Hall of Fame is that receiving a plaque is an honor, rather than a right. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe may have been worthy based on their on-field accomplishments, but cheating the game does not deserve to be rewarded in bronze. The powers that be have taken a firm stance on gambling, which nearly ripped baseball apart from the inside, corrupting the industry during a critical phase in the game’s history.

Having been banned by Major League Baseball, the absence of Rose and the Black Sox from the Hall of Fame is easily defensible, but PED’s are still under examination. The legion of voters has some tough decisions to make regarding the steroid era and the next wave of candidates, and McGwire has set the bidding low for the upcoming attractions of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

The voting members of the BBWAA are in a position to make a moral judgment in hindsight, to weight the on-field performance against the crime of cheating baseball through chemical enhancement. If they are not careful, the voters could reward an entire generation of dishonest players. If they are too careful, the voters could create a witch-hunt scenario that ends up with the Hall of Reportedly Good Guys.

If nothing else, McGwire’s admission shows that we need more time to make Hall-worthy decisions about this generation of players. We need more information, more players to speak up, and more perspective. Jeff Idelson, President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, said it best in a phone interview with Baseball Tonight:

“At the end of the day what’s important for folks to realize is that the baseball Hall of Fame is first and foremost a history museum, and within the walls of Cooperstown, the entire history of the game has unfolded for better or for worse”

McGwire has never shown much concern for the Hall of Fame, and his primary motivation for the steroids admission was his new job as hitting coach with the St. Louis Cardinals. Never comfortable in the limelight, McGwire should find solace working under Tony LaRussa, the man who managed the big first baseman for 15 of his 16 seasons in the big leagues.

McGwire sorely wanted to get back in the game, and to contribute his knowledge on the field. A naturally shy person, the big guy faced his great fear of public perception in order to earn some redemption. By admitting to the past and confronting the backlash, he will attempt to run through most of the media gauntlet by the time pitchers and catchers report. 

If successful, he can focus on his new job with minimal distraction, and prepare the Cardinals’ hitters for the upcoming season. Professional sports are the original reality television, and MLB has plenty of drama in the script for the next season of programming, allowing the McGwire issue to eventually be put to rest.

Many folks are taking this opportunity to go all Jimmy Valmer on the slugger, and blast McGwire as a liar and a cheater. There are calls to erase all of his accomplishments from the record book, or to brand him with an asterisk. Maybe I’m just a Big Mac apologist, but I have a hard time attacking the man’s integrity and character, given the way that he has handled a difficult situation.

For starters, consider that McGwire is the unique player that has admitted to PED use without first getting caught. Whereas Bonds and Clemens deny use in the face of evidence, McGwire admitted use despite a lack of evidence. He also made phone calls to LaRussa, the family of Roger Maris, and others to personally apologize for his dishonesty. Mac showed genuine emotion as he recalled his past and recanted some of his earlier decisions. 

No asterisks are necessary to remind us of the past, and little benefit can come from erasing records or denying a chunk of the game’s history. A unique environment has shaped every era of Major League Baseball, from dead baseballs to gambling, from integration to expansion, from artificial turf to the designated hitter, and from greenies to steroids. As baseball fans, we understand these different influences, and we adjust our microscopes when examining a particular era.

We understand why all of the .400 hitters and 30-game winners hail from the early 20^th century, we understand why Babe Ruth was able to hit more homers than entire teams for a couple years, and we understand why pitching records spiked in the late 1960’s. We will always understand why homers and strikeouts defined the generation of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, even if it takes some time to learn all of the details.

Photos courtesy of www.picapp.com