THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Steroids shmeroids. Are going to ban guys from the HOF who are having LASIK eye surgery? What about cortisone shots? What’s the difference between the three? This whole idea of “playing the game naturally” is such a flimsy conceit. In thirty years we’ll have genetic engineering and this whole steroids thing will seem quite quaint.

One of Bill’s best pieces ever.  It was worth the quarterly $9 subscription just for that one article.  Even though they’re giving it away for free. 

Even if I had thought of all his arguments myself, I wouldn’t have been able to phrase it 10% as well as Bill did.  Bill James is one of the greatest writers and explainers ever.

Wow, I am surprised by Phil’s (who is normally an extremely reasonable person) reaction to the article.  I read the first page or so and I can’t read any more.  I think it is horrible. Bill’s contention that in 40 or 50 years everyone will be taking steroids and anti-aging pills is preposterous.  It could be true, but I would bet a lot of money that it ain’t going to happen. Of course one would have to be a lot more specific about what one means by “everyone taking steroids” and “anti-aging pills” and the like, but I think his scenario, which he thinks is likely, is ridiculously unlikely.

I am not going to say much more because I don’t feel like getting my thoughts together right now.  I’ll make one more set of comments.  First of all, let me say that I have always said that the taking of PED’s by various and sundry players has never been a big deal to me and while I care little about who makes the HOF or not, if I were a voter, I might give it some weight (who likely used and who likely didn’t), but not too much.  For one thing - actually the main thing - it would be grossly unfair to speculate about PED use and use that speculation as a requisite for HOF entry.  And if you only use admitted or proven use as a criteria for non-entry, that isn’t fair either.  Imagine if 90% of all players used and only 5% were caught.  Would it be fair to bar those 5% from HOF entry but allow the other 85% (even though you don’t know who they are) who used?  That makes no sense.

Anyway, I mention that I think it is no big deal because I want to take somewhat the opposite tact in response to Bill’s argument that when everyone is taking steroids 50 years from now (again, I think that is a preposterous assertion) they will look back on steroid use in baseball as if it were nothing. That is a ridiculous assertion as well.  What makes steroid use troubling is two-fold:  One, it was and is explicitly banned by MLB since something like 1992, and any illegal drug use was explicitly banned since before that, I think (maybe not, but the point remains the same).  So the fact that many people may eventually take legal anti-aging chemicals is NOT going to mean that they will completely disregard the fact that many players explicitly cheated during the 80’s, 90’s and aughts.  Cheating is cheating.  Sure, with the passage of time, everything gets tempered, but James’ central thesis, at least for the part that I read, is that because steroid use will be rampant in 40 or 50 years, people will think that steroid use 50 or 60 years before that was perfectly acceptable.  That, I think is ridiculous.  And what I can’t stand is that when James says something with conviction, all of the sabermetric sheep say that it is brilliant.  He does that all the time.  I would love to see how many things he “predicted” 20 or 30 years ago that did or did not come to fruition.  I love and respect James as much as lots of people, but he is not an oracle.  I really think this article is bombastic and not very good…

Yeah, mgl’s point is taken.  Perhaps I should have been more careful in my comments.  I didn’t mean say I agreed with all of it.  I just loved it. 

I agree with mgl on one point: Bill James writes so well that he could, for a minute, convince me that 1+1=3.  Remember his piece in 1990 on how Pete Rose might have been framed? 

I’m really looking forward to his crime book ... he has some ideas on the JonBenet Ramsey case, apparently.

"but James’ central thesis, at least for the part that I read, is that because steroid use will be rampant in 40 or 50 years, people will think that steroid use 50 or 60 years before that was perfectly acceptable.  That, I think is ridiculous.”

What is so ridiculous?  He may be completely wrong about everyone using steroids as anti-aging drugs in the future, but IF he is in fact right, I don’t see how these 100 year old kids posting from their mom’s basement are going to still rant about the evils of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire in between giving each other their next round of shots.

One, it was and is explicitly banned by MLB since something like 1992, and any illegal drug use was explicitly banned since before that, I think (maybe not, but the point remains the same).

But as Bill points out later in the piece, that up for serious debate:

But “rules”, in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate. They are included in the rule book. There is a process for enforcing them. Someone
is assigned to enforce the rule, and that authority is given the powers necessary to enforce the rule. There are specified and reasonable punishments for violation of the
rules.

The “rule” against Performance Enhancing Drugs, if
there was such a rule before 2002, by-passed all of these gates. It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to participate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject. It was not included in any of the various rule books that
define the conduct of the game from various perspectives. There was no process for enforcing such a rule. The punishments were draconian in theory and non-existent in fact.

As I understand it, Fay Vincent just unilaterally added steroids to a list of banned substances in a memo.  I believe that he has even admitted that it carried no real weight as it was not agreed to in collective bargaining.

Rally, I don’t think that in 40 years too many people are going to rant about it, regardless.  They didn’t rant about Sosa corking his bat years down the road, and they don’t rant about Perry and others using a spitter, 30 years later.  As I said, time tempers things like that.  But, as I also said, I don’t think that is his thesis (that time will reducing the ranting).  As well, I am pretty sure that these guys (Bonds, Clemens, et al.) will have a better chance to make the HOF when “cooler heads prevail” simply because of the passage of time.  But we didn’t need James to write a 1,500 word essay to tell us that.

+1 for Glove-Slap!

I basically agreed with James’s larger point that history will be kinder to the so-called ‘steroid era’ than today’s columnists are. 
(I don’t necessarily agree that we’ll all be living to age 200 and eating our meals in pill form.  Isn’t that what people in 1959 thought we’d already be doing here in 2009?)

I think James is right that most people forgive and forget because they like to look back at history fondly.  I don’t know if this is an American trait or a human one, but we [modern society] would rather rehabilitate than rebuke our history.

Also, once people are able to see that the statistics from the ‘steroid era’ were not as distorted as they thought they were, when compared with the ‘post-steroid era,’ their condemnation will soften.  Steroid testing has not resulted in a different game than the one we were watching in 2002.  Baseball players are still big and strong and playing well into their 30s.

#9 above is spot on.  Remember that there are some credible people that think that steroids give little or no benefit to baseball players and I don’t think that is totally out of the realm of possibility.  And it’s not like there is a mountain of empirical evidence that proves otherwise.

If not for MLB itself banning Rose, wouldn’t he have eventually been enshrined?  And that’s a pretty shady character who did some pretty shady things (albeit presumably none of them affecting his performance).

Again, I think James is a great writer (about baseball things) and thinker, but the certainty with which he makes some dubious claims puts me off a little.  We’re all gonna live to 200 in 40 or 50 years?  Is he serious?  If anything, the way our kids eat (poorly) and exercise (lack of), that might be 60 - not 200.

Is BTF not working for anyone else?  When I clicked on the link it siad:

“Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists.”