Steroids, Baseball Records and What Bud Selig Has to Do

Now that Alex Rodriguez has hit his 600th home run and is being touted as the youngest player to ever reach that milestone, allegedly beating Babe Ruth by one full year,the question of how much steroids actually helps a player is gaining in importance since it has an indelible impact on baseball's all time records.

Rodriguez admitted using steroids for one year, evidence is Sammy Sosa used them for a few years, McGuire for one, Roger Clemens and the most notorious of all, Barry Bonds who used steriods from 1997 at the age of 34 untill 2004 when he retired at the age of 42.

The question that Selig has to confront is what to do about statistics accumulated by a player while he was using steroids and it's is an issue that cant be swept under the rug,

The most important of those statistics are those that belong to Barry Bonds, and the unbelievable statistics he racked up in the 7 years he took steriods.

Baseball records are the most sacrosanct in all of sport, not only because of baseball's place in American life but also because, unlike other sports, baseball and its rules haven't changed in 100 years. Accomplishments on the baseball diamond from generation to generation have more credence in comparing generations and players than say football , because in football the rules are always changing and have never been held in the esteem that baseball records are.

With Bonds now the holder of two of baseball's most revered records, the single season home run record and the lifetime home run record its time to face just how much did steroids helped Bonds in his record breaking years.

For the first 12 years of his career Bonds averaged one home run every 16.2 at bats. At that rate with the same number of at bats, he would have hit something over 500 home runs, probably not coming close to even 550 and without ever tinghit as many as 40 in a season. Given the kind of player he was, even without steroids he was headed for the Hall of Fame.

But from 1997 through 2004, from the age of 34 to the age off 42, when athletes in any sport are on the downside of their careers, when every athlete starts to slow down,when their reflexes arent what they were, after taking steriods Bonds went from hitting one home run every 16.2 at bats to one home run every 8.1 at bats.

To show just how ludicrous that is and how much Bonds home run output was steroid induced, had Bonds averaged one home run every 8.1 at bats his entire career he would have hit over 1700 home runs.

William Rhoden of the New York Times tried at one point to brush off Bonds use of steroids by trying to argue that if steroids were the reason Bonds hit all those home runs why didn't everyone else who used them do as well? The reason is the same reason a plow horse couldnt win the Kentucky Derby no matter how much performance enhacing drugs wereinjected.. Performance enhancing drugs do just that -- they enhance, artificially, the performance of the athlete who takes them. Bonds was already a top player but the steroids transformed him into something no one had ever seen and what he never could have been without steroids..

Explaining Bonds spectacular numbers as a result of steroids is easy. Bonds had the fastest bat in the history of baseball. Had Bonds added 40lbs of muscle the old fashioned way by lifting weights, the constant repetitions of bench presses, curls and other weight lifting exercises needed to add that kind of muscle would have slowed his bat down. It would have been a trade off -- 40lbs more muscle and a slower bat. But add the muscle artifically by using steroids negating the need to lift weight and so not slowing down his bat, and you get Bonds hitting 73 home runs, passing Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and breaking Hank Aaron's all time life time home run record.

Bonds performance between 1997 and 2004 while on steroids was nothing he could have accomplished without the drugs.

And what has to be done about it, and anyone who has taken steriods is to do what they do in horse racing, a sport with the toughest drug policy in all of sport. In racing, if a horse is found to have performance drugs in his or her system the horse is disqualified and placed last. The second place finisher is moved up to first and their time is the official time of the race. The horse with the drug is treated as if he never raced.

With Bonds, Rafael Palmiero, Sammy Sosa and others, that is the only solution -- disqualify their years of using steroids and wipe them from the record book so that baseball records can be returned to a true reflection of a players ability. There is no point in trying to make the argument that its not fair to wipe out all of a players stats because even without steriods they would have hit SOME home runs and gotten hits and driven in runs. But that isnt the point. The solution isnt perfect but it is justice. You cheat youre disqualified and what you could have done had you not cheated is besides the point.

To let those records stand is an injustice to every player who never used steriods from Babe Ruth and Ted Williams to Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Ken Griffey Jr. Alex Rodriguez has said he only used steriods one year so those stats for that year have to be wiped from the record book.

When Bonds was poised to break Aaron's all time home run record, Aaron at first refused to attend the games where the record might be broken. That tells you all you need to know about what Aaron thought about Bonds and steroids and what affect it had on Bonds totals. Aaron eventually reconsidered and not wanting to be seen as a sore loser, attended the game, but most baseball people still consider Aaron the real home run king. The question is will Bud Selig do what has to be done to correct the injustice steroids have done to the baseball record book. And he is the only one who can do it.