Greenies vs roids in baseball.

There's a great greenies effect column-blog here. As far as the effects of amphetamines, it points out a couple of things.

• Anybody who could tell the precise effects of uppers on an athlete, an athlete in general let alone one particular athlete, is pretty full of it.
• Because of that, Larry says, in essence, stop judging today's would-be HOFers, and stop trying to retroactively judge those of the past as far as possible greenie use.
• Amphetamines are more dangerous indeed than steroids, without minimizing steroid dangers.

And this is also worth noting, this here.

Arguably, steroids, as well as (prescription-strength) greenies, have been baseball verboten since 1971, since they weren't "over the counter," at least not by legal sales:

Ken Davidoff makes a good argument for distinguishing between steroids use prior to and after baseball’s formal adoption of drug testing in 2005.  I give Davidoff credit for taking a nuanced stand on what I consider to be a complex issue, and for successfully resisting my instinct to paint everyone as either a steroids hawk or a steroids dove.  But I don’t agree with Davidoff’s selection of 2005 as a cutoff date.  Baseball first explicitly banned steroids in its 2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Moreover, the non-prescription use of prescription drugs has been banned by baseball since 1971 .  ... But if Davidoff is looking for a bright line date to distinguish between tolerable and intolerable use of anabolic steroids, I’d suggest that he use the date February 27, 1991 – that’s the date that federal law placed anabolic steroids in Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, making non-prescription possession of anabolic steroids a federal crime.

That said, I don't entirely agree with the piece. Over-the-counter type greenies are almost certainly less dangerous than steroids. And, as for HGH, we have very little idea yet of its long-term effects in people for whom it would otherwise not be indicated. That said, Larry tries to distinguish between OTC stuff and the serious stuff.

And, Rob Neyer gets a bit of a smackdown for equating the two on effects. Neyer, in light of a bit of chastisement there, claims he never equated greenies and roids. Well, in spirit, he did. Man up, Rob! Or don't they do that at ESPN, either?

That said, as I've said before, the last decade has led to designer steroids, different from both amphetamines and steroids of the past. So, color me a bit skeptical of some of Larry's steroid comments.

The only point where I totally agree with Larry on "judgment" issues is over the small percentage who get caught. How that should affect our judgment, including for Hall of Fame eligibility, is a tough and complicated matter.