T-Ball: Part I

Testosterone-Ball

My friends and I were recently partaking in our favorite American past-time which is of course late night beers and baseball talk.  We've long since given up our baseball careers and moved on to more important things like fantasy baseball, arguing about who was the best catcher during the 90's  and our recent argument regarding the prevalence of steroid use in baseball and whether or not they ruined or saved baseball....

Following this last discussion, I decided to look into it a little more and see if I could find any hard facts to back up my opinions.  I tried to look up as much information (legitimate information, not just Jose Canseco's book on steroids) as I could find on this issue and do the best to provide it in a non-biased fashion. It is difficult to understand exactly how many players are/were taking steroids, how steroids may have changed their performance and ultimately how it changed the game because a lot of this information is A) Impossible to obtain and B) Difficult to quantify in the first place; however I will give it my best shot.

What Are Steroids?
In order to understand how steroids are affecting the game of baseball. We first need to define what all is entailed with the term "steroids." According to the all-knowing wikipedia, steroids are drugs that mimic the hormones testosterone and dihydrotestosterone.  These hormones are responsible for promoting the growth or anabolism of certain tissues within the body (i.e. muscles, bones, cartilage etc.).  They were first isolated and synthesized in the 1930's for medicinal purposes.  The use of anabolic steroids became popular during the 1940's and 1950's by Eastern European countries who saw improvements in the athletic performance of their athletes.  Eventually the International Olympic Committee placed anabolic steroids on the banned list in 1976.  In 1990 Congress passed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act which classified steroids as a controlled substance, making it a felony to possess or sell them. In 2003 MLB instituted a random, but anonymous, testing program to gauge the percentage of steroid use in baseball.  This anonymous testing stated that only 5-7% of players tested were using steroids.  Many believe this number largely underestimates the prevalence of steroid use as rumors surfaced stating that players knew when they would be tested to they could easily take the necessary precautions to avoid a positive test.  Eventually there was a modification in the "steroid policy" and punishments for a positive test were finally instated.  However, there were again rumors and speculations that Major League Baseball simply looked the other way during the "Steroid Era" and allowed players to take steroids in hopes to bring fans back to the game following the strike in 1994.

How Do They Improve Performance?
The theory that steroids can turn you into an MVP caliber player has several holes in it.  First of all, steroids can't turn a minor leaguer into a triple crown-caliber player such as Miguel Cabrera. They can't teach you how to pick up the spin on a curveball or get a little more break on your slider. But what they can help you with is promoting growth and improving recovery, thus allowing an individual to train at a higher level with the hopes of taking the body to its maximum capacity.  I am currently reading the book "Bases Loaded" which tells the inside story of the Mitchell Report and the scandal of the Steroid Era. The narrator made a great point of how steroids won't necessarily make you a great player.  He said to look at The Giambi brothers; both of them were on steroids (allegedly) but only one of them found success at the Major League level.  The same could be said for the Canseco brothers; one of them was a reputable slugger in baseball and the other was a reputable slugger in bar fights and played against the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks.

Why The Sudden Change?

This is a question I found myself struggling with following the argument.  A reoccurring comment was: "They had to be on steroids during the 90's! Just look at the physical transitions of some of those guys!"  The picture below of Barry Bonds is a great example of how the bodies of some of the "sluggers of the 90's" changed during this time period.  I have to admit, I jumped on the bandwagon theory of "They had to have been on steroids! They were so big and got that way so fast!"  However, the more I looked into it the more I found myself doubting this theory.

 

One of the reasons I believe players got so big during the 90's was the development and advancement of training practices in Major League Baseball.  A lot of the reports and articles I read stated that before the 90's players didn't really train or lift weights at all.  They were followers of the old school train of thought that if you got too big and bulky you would lose flexibility and wouldn't be able to perform as well.  Players didn't lift weights, they didn't train in the off-season, there were no strength coaches or trainers.  However, following the fitness boom of the 80's, Major Leaguers seemed to jump on the bandwagon as well and training facilities starting popping up in stadiums and clubhouses.  Players began to train regularly and thus the shapes and figures of players changed as well. Players started to become bigger, stronger and faster as a result of a structured training program.  In today's world, every team has a training facility with multiple strength coaches and trainers.  Players often times have their own trainers and/or nutritionists that work with them individually throughout the year.  So, one could argue that the larger players seen during the 90's could just be a result of the natural evolution of athletes as they realized the importance of proper strength training & conditioning. That or they were just hitting the juice hard....or both! 

 

 If I had to take a guess (and this is purely speculation with no hard evidence), I would say that the physical transformations seen by some of the players during the 80's and 90's were likely a result of both structured training programs AND some steroid use.  This of course doesn't include every player.  I fully accept the idea that not all players were taking steroids just as not all players participated in structured training programs. Just look at David Wells (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/bbw/2002-02-13/2002-02-13-cover.htm), clearly he was still able to find success without doing any exercise outside of his walk to the pitchers mound and back.  Not only is it difficult to speculate how many players were actually taking steroids but of the ones that were, how do we know how much or what kind they were taking? There are hundreds of different formulations of anabolic steroids available and each one of them can have a different effect on the body.  My guess is the guys that suddenly put on 80 lbs of muscle in a year or two and looked more like a professional wrestler than baseball player were probably using higher dosages than other players.  Regardless, the truth is we will never know exactly who was taking what and for how long but what we can determine is how the game changed during this time period......

*The next post will focus on how the Steroid Era changed the game of baseball.

If you are interested in the Mitchell Report here is a link for the full report. It's a very interesting read but a very long one at that.

http://files.mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf