Barry Bonds*,Sammy Sosa*,Mark McGwire*,Luis Gonzalez*,Brady Anderson*?

There is a HUGE difference, now i agree with you we should not leave those guys out b/c you make a really valid point, but Shawn Green, Brady Anderson, and Luis Gonzalez never challenged or broke any major significant homeruns. Did they cheat? Probably, should they be treated any different than Bonds, Sosa, McGwire? No, but we have to resolve the bigger names before we touch up on the others. Bonds is the all-time HR leader, and its b/c he in some way shape or form cheated. He even admitted to putting "cream" on him and didnt know what it was. He was caught using amphetamines and blamed it on someone else. McGwire has ran away with his tail tucked b/c he know he didnt do it in a legit way, IMO he feels guilty b/c he pretty much just sh*t on Roger Maris and his record (much like Bonds has done to Maris, Aaron, and Ruth). Sosa was in that HR chase and then fell off horribly, a coincidence that it happened right when steroids became a hot topic? I think not. There is no doubt that at least 85% of MLB players that i grew up watching (21 yrs old now) cheated in some way, and its hard to differentiate we can only have our speculations, but when someone is coming up on a record that could be considered the "greatest" record in sports history and there are alot of questions about his name being clean, we have to talk about them more than a guy who happened to hit 50 one year (like Brady Anderson, where is he now? lol).

Heltons totals can be inflated due to Coors Field. Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire would have hit 100 at Coors

If they didn't set a record they will be forgotten very soon and immaterial in baseball history

Little mac and Baroid set records therefore they should be scorned, ridiculed and never let into the HOF until the day after they die.

And it was against the rules - Fay Vincent made that ruling - so they all cheated.

One or two season wonder.

Roger Maris was a one season wonders when he hit 61 homers in '61 and he wasn't on 'roids.

Some players have power but then blow it out the next because of all the homers they hit the year before.

Maybe some or on 'roids, but my guess is they are not.

Steriods, or no steriods, nothing was on the books until after the latest Collective Barganing Agreement. While I personally don't condone what these players did in the 90s and early 00s, it was NOT illegal in baseball.

Yell, cry and scream all you want, the facts are the facts, and the fact is the homeruns are allowed to stand.

McGwire was a known andro user so he clearly cheated. He's also linked with steroid thru grand jury testimonies, canseco's book, balco, oakland, Jason giambi, etc. There is no question McGwire took steroids based on these links.

excellent topic. but,

if you are going to challenge these hitters, you might as well challenge some pitchers.

even though its almost always the hitters getting blamed, who says that a handfull of pitchers arent doin it.

you seem to challenge the hitters with big one-year numbers. why not slow down, not jump to conclusions and actually dig deeper, and look at info on EVERYONE... not just big name guys.

Not really, most sluggers hit home runs in bunches. You're trying to put together a puzzle missing some pieces and when you don't know what it really looks like.

In the case of Anderson it is quite likely he did roids that one year. Luis Gonzales very likely to be a roider. Gonzo as well and Derek Lee also top the suspicious list.

With Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Giambi, Sheffield, McGriff, Palmiero, Caminitti, Mota and Canseco there's very solid proof they used roids.

What isn't a sign of a roider is a single season of massive production. That is actually natural. Many players have had peak years. If you look at the pre-roids era seasons like Maris's 62 season are pretty common. They are once in a career events though. Players don't keep doing it.

The other thing that points to roid use with guys like Derek Lee, Sosa, Bonds, Camminitti, Gonzales is the massive increase in HRs from year to year. Very rarely in pre-roids history did you see guys with %50 increases in HR production much less %150 as you've seen with roiders. Maris's 61 jump from 60 and 62 HRs is very mild compared to what you see in Sosa, Bonds and other roider's jumps in production. Maris was always a power hitter. He started out bashing them and ended his career bashing them. In 62 he had an exceptional year but it was one he built up too naturally. In 60 Maris had 39 Hrs with almost exactly 100 fewer abs than he got in 61. That means Maris's HR production the year he set the single season HR record was a mild %30 jump in production easily explained by getting a full season with Mantle behind him. In 62 Maris's production dropped which was natural. He was coming off a peak year, few players can have great years back to back, and Maris was now known to pitching. Before 61 pitchers feared Mantle and gladly pitched to Maris. In 61 they feared them both and Maris saw far fewer good pitches. In 63 he was hurt and already in decline.

I believe Babe Ruth set his first single season HR record with 29 HRs in 432 ABs. I'm pretty sure 29 was a record but not certain. He then topped it by hitting 54 in 458 ABs and 59 the next year with 540 ABs. A few years later Ruth moved the mark up to 60 following up a 47 HR season. The jump from 29 to 54 was the year Ruth went from the Redsox to the Yankees. It was also the year that he transitioned from a starting pitcher to a full time outfielder.

Bonds who had his normal peak year of 46 HRs in 93 was down to 34 HRs in 99 with his 4th strait year of declining stats. He then hit 49 HRs. Then hit 73. Bonds saw no change in parks. He wasn't pitched differently until he hit 73. He didn't have some superstar suddenly appear. In fact when Kent departed the team Bond's stats went down. There were no environmental factors to provide for an increase in HRs and the 29 HR increase in 2 years was a huge jump in production for any age and just flat out unbelieveable at Bond's age. The 49 HR season in 2000 you could write off as a fluke. 73 was no fluke it was steroids without a doubt. Without the other mountain of evidence you need only look at past power hitters and Bonds career stats and see that something was not right with Bonds sudden power surge. Then in 03 with only 403 ABs Bonds ties his pre-steroid best at the age of 38???

If you look at all the players with 480+ career HRs you don't see jumps bigger than 22 HRs season to season and usually that's injury induced or having a career year after a bad year. The exceptions are the roiders. Bond's being the biggest. His jumps in HR production exceed even fluke years like the one Maris put together.

The 2nd damning piece of evidence against roiders is the age of when they start hitting those HRs. The cycle for a power hitter is pretty well established. Most power hitters steadily increase in production until about 30 or 31 where they tend to level off with 1-3 peak years. Then between 32 and 34 it's downhill. Sometimes very rapidly. There have been one or two players who had fluke seasons after the age of 34 and one a very few who had thier best year as late as 35 but those are pretty rare. Most ball players are gone or on the edge of being out of Baseball by 34. Stars often last a bit longer but are nowhere near as good at 35 and 36 as they were just a few short years earlier. There is a massive drop off in production as their reflexes decline and their strength wanes.

Roiders are the exception to that. Bonds for example had his best year ever at 36 then at 37 almost doubles his previous best season. That is unheard of in the thousands of players to play the game. You don't have two consequetive fluke years. Any hitter that has his best year past 35 is having a fluke year. Many players are already on the downhill slope as early as 30-32. In Bond's case he'd peaked, was on the downhill slope and talking about retirement when out of nowhere he sets his career best in HRs and the rest of his seasons when healthy has the best he's ever had. That's just not human.

In the case of Camminiti and Gonzales they went from the stiffling Astrodome to a park on the slightly hitter friendly side. The massive surge in production by both who were close friends and long time team mates transcends ball park effect. That Camminiti who was likely killed by roid usage is almost a mirror for Luis Gonzales and Derek Lee's careers just screams steroid usage.

Lee, Sosa and others also fall into the margional player catagory. That hitters if they are going to make it have shown something by 27 or 28. Very rarely does a hitter come up after that and figure out how to hit. If they have four or five years in the majors they've learned how to hit or not by that age. By 29 they've established some career peaks. By 31 they are/have changed. The BA drops but the power goes up. Guys like Sosa and Lee both in danger of being tossed out of baseball suddenly learn how to hit at very late ages. This itself is very suspicious. The massive power surges is as good as painting steroids on their forehead. Not only did they have these massive jumps in production they were sustained jumps in production.

So Brady Anderson really doesn't follow the pattern of roiders. The reason I suspect him is that not long before Anderson's sudden found power a weak hitting catcher by the name of Wyneger (sp) suddenly developed into a strong hitter. He attributed it too a rigerous off season of weight lifting and unnamed dietary suppliments. Anderson then had his astonishing season and is I think still to this day the only player to both hit 50 HRs and steal 50 bases. Just not in the same season LOL. The thing is it wasn't sustained. So if Anderson did roids he stopped pretty shortly afterwards. It takes time for the muscle mass to fall off and if he'd continue to hit the weights it'd taken a couple years for steroid induced muscle to fade away back to a natural physique. So there were other factors other than roids. Same with Ricky Henderson's sudden power. I strongly suspect he did roids for a short time in his career.

Palmiero's sudden jump in power you can attribute to roids. He was probably bound for the HOF with 3,000 hits but only 200 some odd HRs when he suddenly became a power hitter. Not just a power hitter but at an age when hitters have pretty well established themselves. If he was 25 and suddenly started hitting for power that would be pretty normal. Palmiero was much older than that when he nearly doubled his previous best HR production and kept doing it.

Barry Larkin one year hit 30 HRs at a time when only a few guys in Baseball hit that many HRs each year. It'd be like Derek Jeter hitting 50 HRs this year. He did it once. That is a normal fluke year and likely there were no steroids of HGF involved in that fluke year.

Shawn Green peaked out under a normal bell curve. Power hitters normally get a couple years older before fading than Green did. Remember Green went to hitters hell in LA when his power numbers dropped. So the combination of losing reflexes and muscle coincided with moving to a pitcher's park which aggravated the normal decline in production. Likely he also felt a great deal of pressure to produce HRs and it just made things worse for him. If Green were to hit 40+ HRs now it'd scream steroid use. He's too old to be a power hitter again. He had his time and now he's at best a 20-30 HR guy. So I don't think Green was using steroids but without testing no player today is going to escape the suspicion of steroid use.

There is no statistical evidence Helton was doing roids. His power production follows the pre-roids curve fairly well. At Helton's age he's due for a decrease in power and that's exactly what's happening.

That is the saddest thing. Honest players will be penalized as much as the roiders. If MLB doesn't get serious about testing A-Rod who probably didn't use roids will have his stats placed in the same steroid era stats as Bonds and McGwire. All the hitters of the last 15 years will with the exceptions of probably Gwynn and Ripkin who clearly didn't use roids. Probably Boggs as well who if he used roids he should have gotten a refund.