Would you feel satisfied if an asterisk were added to the home run hitters names?
If fans, especially young fans, were aware of which players took illegal drugs to reach their home run stat, wouldn't that clarify the real heroes from the illegal players? *1. Barry Bonds 762 L HR Log 2. Hank Aaron 755 R HR Log 3. Babe Ruth 714 L HR Log 4. Willie Mays 660 R HR Log *5. Ken Griffey 630 L HR Log *6. Sammy Sosa 609 R HR Log *7. Alex Rodriguez 604 R HR Log 8. Frank Robinson 586 R HR Log *9. Mark McGwire 583 R HR Log 10. Jim Thome 581 L HR Log
jonhull222010-08-25T08:34:34Z
Favorite Answer
If they do that in baseball the record books would look a whole lot different. If they did it in football the record books would look like a constellation of stars or a galaxy. The Milky Way perhaps?
- Let young people pick their own heroes. They don't need a nudge in a certain direction from a record book.
- With all the endless droning about steroid use people know who is a user or suspected user. And if they don't, they can certainly find out easily enough (assuming they care). Putting an asterisk next to a name was a terrible idea in 1961 and remains a terrible idea.
- Griffey? Where did you get that information? If Griffey, why not Thome too?
- People need to stop being so sanctimonious about baseball players. Let he without sin cast the first stone and all that jazz.
Satisfied? I'm satisfied right now because I have a loving wife, a good job, plenty of good friends and family, and a refrigerator full of beer.
Asterisks in the baseball record books won't change my level of satisfaction one bit.
That said, I wouldn't be against adding asterisks to some of these guys' names. A-Rod, McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa deserve it, since there is overwhelming evidence (or even admissions) that these guys juiced (yeah, I know baseball hadn't officially banned steroids during part of their careers, but it was still shady). But Griffey? He has never been accused of steroid usage. He doesn't deserve an asterisk.
Why stop with home run hitters? How about the other hitting records? And pitching records, and fielding records. How do you know for sure who's clean and who isn't? Is Nolan Ryan clean? Remember, he and Canseco were with the Rangers at the same time. Yeah, I'd be shocked to learn that Ryan juiced, but I'm certain that there are plenty of guys from that era who used steroids and weren't caught. Is it fair we just drop an asterisk on the guys who got caught?
How about a double asterisk for using amphetamines?
**Aaron **Mays
And a triple asterisk for drinking alcohol during Prohibition? An illegal drug is an illegal drug.
***Ruth
While we're at it, sportswriters should be banned from using spellcheckers and editors, as such artificial means unfairly enhance their efforts.
Also, posters should either cite and credit Baseball Reference.com when they cut 'n paste, or at least make the effort to delete extraneous information (like "HR Log"). Neatness counts.