Baseball's long, long steroid history

Hardball Talk cites a page from the Mitchell Report (PDF):

In 1973, a Congressional subcommittee announced that its staff had completed an “in depth study into the use of illegal and dangerous drugs in sports” including professional baseball. The subcommittee concluded that “the degree of improper drug use – primarily amphetamines and anabolic steroids – can only be described as alarming.”

Hardball Talk also references former major-league pitcher Tom House, who hurled in that era. He said steroid use was pretty common 35-40 years ago.

He and his teammates laughed and rationalized losses by saying, "We didn't get beat, we got out-milligrammed. And when you found out what they were taking, you started taking them." ...
"I pretty much popped everything cold turkey," House said in a phone interview. "We were doing steroids they wouldn't give to horses. That was the '60s, when nobody knew. The good thing is, we know now. There's a lot more research and understanding. ...

House was listed at 5-foot-11 and 190 pounds, and he ballooned to 215 or 220 while on steroids. He blamed the increased weight for putting additional wear and tear on his knees; he had five surgeries on his right knee and two on his left.

House estimated that six or seven pitchers on every staff were "fiddling" with steroids or growth hormone. He said the drugs and devoted conditioning improved his recovery, but his velocity didn't budge.

That said, there ARE differences between the 1970s and the late 1990s.

With laboratory sites and researchers like BALCO and Victor Conte, we do indeed know. Not just about the potential harm, but how to maximize the benefits and how to avoid scruitiny (that is, short or letting your head grow two cap sizes).

Steroids in the 1970s didn't get "designed," either.

Now, HGH? If administered within carefully prescribed limits, AND if legitimate medical research and not just anecdotes tell us that it does promote healing time from injury, and does so safely, I would lean toward allowing it.

But that's a big if.

Anyway, this didn't start back in the 1970s, even. Not even close.

Pud Galvin shot himself with monkey-testicle derived testosterone in 1889. And, he surely wasn't alone, whether in baseball, boxing or something else.

Anyway, it didn't appear to help Pud. 1889 was his last good year! And, that gets back to what I said above. Today's steroids are "designed." They're personalized. They're combined with weight training and other stuff that Pud Galvin didn't know existed, and that contemporaries of Tom House, and team trainers, scoffed at and worried about.

Now, back to steroids and their influence in the post-1994 era.

I'd say they're worth 30-40 percent of the power explosion. The Costa Rican baseballs after Rawlings moved its factor from Haiti? Maybe about the same. So, let's say 70 percent there. Maple bats 10-15 percent?

Continued squeezing of the strike zone? 10 percent? Miscellaneous factors, 5-10 percent.

More in my next post.