Shorter David Harsanyi

steroidz

The War on Home Runs

  • Look, if it’s okay to use boner pills to have sex, what’s wrong with shooting up some ‘roids to get a few home runs? After all, who the hell’s gonna pay good money to watch a game full of bunts? I’d rather watch a scoreless soccer game with a bunch of Euro-fags. If a guy’s willing, for the good of the game, to shrink his balls, cover his back with zits and scream his head off at anyone who looks at him funny, what right do I have to complain? (The fact that I’m a Yankees fan has not influenced me at all in holding this opinion.)

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


‘LOLcons’ concept created by Jon Swift and named by Marita.


 

Comments: 104

 
 
 

Evil Empire of A-Holes.

 
 

Oh, man, this thread is ruined already.

 
 

In as much as I care about baseball (not at all), I have to confess that I really don’t see the big deal either. I mean, first of all we’d have to define “performance enhancing” to some degree of specificity, which is difficult. Also, it’s becoming increasingly clear that pretty much everyone is juiced, so isn’t that in effect a level playing field?

 
 

So is it bad of me that I actually agree with the “shorter” take?

 
Outraged Conservative
 

I see you had to use a “black & white” lolcat. None too subtle plug for Obama and the muddying of our blood purity. Typical liberal.

 
 

You know what else gets debated too much?

Beating people with baseball bats. I mean seriously, baseball bats are good for beating people, so…. what’s the problem?

 
 

None too subtle plug for Obama and the muddying of our blood purity. Typical liberal.

All your ethnicity belong to us.

 
 

I really don’t care much one way or the other, but the “no, I don’t take drugs, I’m just naturally this amazing” hypocrisy is definitely irritating.

 
 

I’m kind of disappointed we don’t have cyborg baseball players, really.

 
 

Actually, I agree with him, to a point. I think steroids ought to be legitimized in sports.

I figure it will take about ten years, but once kids see what ‘roids do to a body, and how badly damaged you can become (ask any professional wrestler who’s used them extensively), the drugs leave the scene so fast it will make your head spin.

This will have the added bonus of making sports less important to our couch-potato society, meaning people might actually pay attention to something on a Sunday afternoon.

 
 

Because as soon as everyone starts doin’ it, that automatically makes it ok awesome.

So why do we even bother trying to get politicians to stop taking bribes? If they want to risk jailtime so they can make my government more efficient and keep those starry-eyed Jefferson Smiths out of Washington, so be it!

 
 

I’d love to see performance-enhancing drugs allowed in sports. 1500′ homers, 200 mph fastballs. It’s all good. It may change the sport in that batters will have to dress up like hockey goalies and broken bats will become the rule. But watching the batter run all four bases while the ball is still trying to get back to earth would be worth all the tumors, cancers, shrunken balls, ‘roid rage, and total freakouts that some, like Bob Costas, fear would ‘taint’ the game.

 
 

I’m kind of disappointed we don’t have cyborgs, period.

C’mon Japan, we’re waiting…

 
 

Allowed? Legitimized? Steroids have to be required.

 
 

One other thing would happen if we legitimized steroids.

We’d get our Congress to stop using hearings on a non-issue as a distraction from real problems.

 
 

Steroids have to be required.

Nah. I think if you want to play it straight-edge, it ought to be an option.

 
 

And reporters would stop asking the goddamn President of the United fucking States his opinion about the latest steroid “scandal”.

 
 

Nah. I think if you want to play it straight-edge, it ought to be an option.

Well, there goes any shot at “awesome.”

 
 

Are you kidding? Think about the middle linebacker who plays it straight-edge getting knocked into the next county by the fullback who doesn’t!

 
 

Steroids in all sports! I wanna see golfers who look like the Michelin Man and drive the ball 5,000 yards.

 
 

Oooh, Rusty! And then they can finally turn the links into a sport I’d watch: full contact golf!

 
 

Ultimate Fighting Golf

 
 

I wanna see golfers who look like the Michelin Man and drive the ball 5,000 yards.

For some reason I first read this as Michelle Malkin…which would indeed be an awesome sight to behold.

 
 

I have heard of body building competitions that have “open” and “nautural” categories, but a lot of the guys in the “natural” category end up testing positive.

 
 

Y’know, maybe Congress ought to look into steroids in blogging.

No particular reason, but it would be fun to watch Hugh Hewitt answer questions about his manboobs in front of Henry Hyde.

 
 

And reporters would stop asking the goddamn President of the United fucking States his opinion about the latest steroid “scandal”.
But surely if you want an opinion on drug abuse you should go to a well-informed source.

 
 

Smut suggests an interesting twist: crack in baseball. How much fun would that be to watch a guy swing at a pitch a week later?

 
 

How much fun would that be to watch a guy swing at a pitch a week later?

Preferably while in the shower, or eating dinner.

 
 

Maybe we could assign each sport one mandatory drug.

Hockey? PCP.

American football? Meth.

Basketball? Marijuana.

Baseball? Codeine.

 
 

Actually, I agree with him, to a point. I think steroids ought to be legitimized in sports.

I figure it will take about ten years, but once kids see what ‘roids do to a body, and how badly damaged you can become (ask any professional wrestler who’s used them extensively), the drugs leave the scene so fast it will make your head spin.

An Australian bodybuilder did an interview I heard a while back, and he raised a really interesting point: in physical culture, steroids are not just accepted but expected, and the quick and easy development of high bulk without the serious devotion to physical culture results in a sort of ugly bloat that depends on seriously damaging your health. The idea is that it’s become a complete farce now that it’s no longer about what someone can do with his body and laser-precise training but rather about who has the best genetics to swell up like a sponge on deadly drugs. That and that early devotees of physical culture did amazing things with incredibly crude instruments, and more is available to us than at any point in the past.

Unfortunately, because steroids allow people to bulk up easy, they’re going to be accepted whether or not they’re hell on the body; the turnaround time on professional atheletes is too slow for people to care too much about the severe effects in the long term, and the effects in the short term are too mild for people to care. And even with the strong regulatory hoops, the temptation is always there.

I think that we have a much too reactionary idea of what constitutes undesirable performance enhancement. Steroids definitely do – they simulate aggressive and undesirable health conditions which aren’t sustainable in the long term – but I can’t see something like blood loading as being worth throwing a fit over. Nothing about any major sport is ‘natural’ from a biological perspective, so why are we getting worked up over whether someone is using modern technology to make more oxygen available to their muscle tissue? The focus can’t be on fairness (or else a lot of stuff that is allowed shouldn’t be), but it ought instead to be on whether or not everyone doing it would lead to serious health problems; a kind of Kantian approach, I guess.

 
 

I’d usually have zero interest in this topic, but my nephew was drafted by a major-league baseball team a couple of years ago. Ever since he’s been working his way up through the farm/minor league teams and may play for the major-league team in the next year or two cuz he’s really REALLY good. In the meantime, the boy is getting bigger and bigger. I did read where A-Rod said something about the pressure to compete and move up, etc. — which sounds like what my nephew could very well be going through right now. It reminds me, in a reverse sort of way, of young prepubescent gymnasts who become anorexic and have developmental delays etc. because of their desire to compete.

Steroids in baseball? Yah, whatever, overpaid prima donnas, yadda yadda (which my nephew is not, by the way, by any means) — except I remember this kid at age 6, when he was cute and sweet and he liked to go to the mall with me and have our photos made in those cheesy photo booths and stuff, and it’s not just a weirdo thing peripheral thing to me anymore.

 
 

2 Words.

Dock Ellis…

mikey

 
 

Hey, mikey. And a big heh indeed for the late Dock.

 
 

Don’t get near it. Only you (& you alone) can prevent Internet tragedies.

 
 

MzNicky, that’s the weird thing about this.

If you look at A-Rod’s career stats, he was actually a better hitter (altho with a little less power, averaging 36 home runs to 41 a year now) before he juiced, and was likely Hall of Fame bound.

He did this because he saw a chance to take the home run title, not because it would make him a better player.

 
 

the turnaround time on professional atheletes is too slow for people to care too much about the severe effects in the long term

Ask Chris Benoit’s family about that.

 
 

MB,

Did you say “pie”?

 
 

Since this thread is already toast:

The Truth Releases His Manifesto

 
 

I’d usually have zero interest in this topic, but my nephew was drafted by a major-league baseball team a couple of years ago. Ever since he’s been working his way up through the farm/minor league teams and may play for the major-league team in the next year or two cuz he’s really REALLY good. In the meantime, the boy is getting bigger and bigger. I did read where A-Rod said something about the pressure to compete and move up, etc. — which sounds like what my nephew could very well be going through right now. It reminds me, in a reverse sort of way, of young prepubescent gymnasts who become anorexic and have developmental delays etc. because of their desire to compete.

My mom has horror stories of being dragooned out of what was either dance or gymnastics for being too fat. She was twelve or so, and given what she looked like and how much she weighed it just baffles me. She and my dad were both runners in high school – which caused her serious problems, because she has traumatic periods to begin with and add that to the clotting disorder and she would routinely pass out from anemia.

My favorite phrase on the whole matter is what Stephen Bond passed along about young swimmers and their horrifying parental overdrive: “What man would want to turn his daughter into an outboard motor?”

My little brother is big on staying all buff and shit, and I just have to keep reminding him to look up the really huge bulky guys when they get old – Arnold Schwarzenegger is a prime example. If you get used to consuming and expending 10,000 calories a day, you get really fat really quick after you can’t exercise it away any more. Once you hit 40, muscle begins slowly and ineluctably turning into fat.

The way I see it, I’m going to be a happy camper – all the glorious cut young men decaying into what I’ve had forty years to get used to being, buying stupid cars and having sex with teenagers to try and recapture an unnaturally high rest state I’ve never aspired to. The thing about the Buddha is that he was fat.

 
 

Actually it was “Doc Gooden” and “Dock Ellis”

/meaningless baseball knowledge

 
 

I find it’s entertaining to have long, informed conversations about baseball with its fans, and then reveal you don’t give two shits about the actual game but have just studied up on it enough to know what you’re talking about.

Add that to last-thread-style misuse of the word ‘foul tip’ and you’ve got an excellent evening set up.

 
 

Since this thread is already toast:

The Truth Releases His Manifesto

Shame on you for pointing out non-existent alleged white racism.

 
 

I’m kind of disappointed we don’t have cyborgs, period.
C’mon Japan, we’re waiting…

Complaining about lack of androids = one form of ‘roid rage.

 
 

The thing about the Buddha is that he was fat.

One of the Japanese Buddhas is fat. Shakyamuni Buddha, on the other hand, is hot. Well, he was when Keanu Reeves played him in “Little Buddha.”

 
 

I like baseball, because I can read a book while watching it on TV, but taking in a live game is a communal experience second perhaps only to going to a concert.

I’m a tactics nerd, to be sure. I will pay attention to the fielders on a 2-1 count while everyone else is watching the batter take some practice swings and the pitcher looks in for a sign.

I like the strategy involved, but how unlike football, improvisation is not only useful, but damned near necessary.

 
 

the turnaround time on professional atheletes is too slow for people to care too much about the severe effects in the long term

Ask Chris Benoit’s family about that.

Incidentally, one can pretty much determine a pro wrestler’s politics by figuring out whether their gimmick is (a) carefully-maintained, theatric, and well-executed or (b) the product of marketing.

Thus Mankind being a Great Lakes wooly lefty and Ultimate Warrior being an incoherent right-wing dipshit.

 
 

“Mikey won’t eat it. He hates everything.”

“He likes it! Hey Mikey!”

Hey Mikey.

 
 

Complaining about lack of androids = one form of ‘roid rage.

What about all those Goddamn episodes with Lore in them? I mean, jesus.

 
 

Y’know, Alec, I’d never thought of it that way.

Altho JBL as a Fox analyst puts a bit of a lie to that theory.

 
 

“Complaining about lack of androids = one form of ‘roid rage.”

Do androids dream of Sadly, No!?

 
 

Thus Mankind being a Great Lakes wooly lefty

I always had soft spot in my heart for Mick Foley. Seemed like a stand up guy in an overall sleazy industry.

 
 

Do androids dream of Sadly, No!?

Are ‘Friends’ Electric?

 
 

alec: Basically you’re summarizing Bigger, Stronger, Faster, which everyone in this thread should see. It is a refreshingly pragmatic approach that isn’t so quick to condemn steroids or their use, and (in a conversational way) explores the larger American social emphasis on being.. well.. bigger, stronger, and faster. At any cost.

I don’t like the tendency to set up idols just to tear them down again. Everyone hated A-Rod but we kept going to games and buying merchandise, and now we all froth at the mouth as he falls. It’s grotesque.

 
 

In the ‘absurdly positive developments nobody’s noticed yet’ department, Ratzy’s Vatican has finally reiterated that Intelligent Design is a scientific and theological bumblefuck and that evolution, like physics, is a real and readily-observed part of the workings of God.

Maybe by 2200 they’ll admit family planning isn’t just for whores.

 
 

Maybe by 2200 they’ll admit family planning isn’t just for whores.

Hey! One thing at a time now. What’s the rush?

 
 

Yeah, how long did it take them to let Galileo off the hook? (Literally.)

 
 

Ratzy’s Vatican has finally reiterated that Intelligent Design is a scientific and theological bumblefuck and that evolution, like physics, is a real and readily-observed part of the workings of God.

The Catholic Church has not had a problem with evolution for quite some time now, going back to John Paul II and maybe before.

They have almost everything else wrong though, so you won’t see me defending them.

 
 

Android Lloyd Webber.

 
 

Kurt Vonnegut:

I did not expect Rabo Karabekian to rescue me. I had created him, and he was in my opinion a vain and weak and trashy man, no artist at all. But it is Rabo Karabekian who made me the serene Earthling which I am to this day.

Listen:

“What kind of man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor?” he said to Bonnie MacMahon.

 
 

My experience (as an ex-Catholic with 12 years of Catholic school to my name) is that Catholicism has a really fucked-up understanding of human nature and the way people interact with each other, but they are not so bug-fuck crazy like the fundies to deny the nose on their face.

Which is why they do not subscribe to the creationism thing, but yet are backwards enough to oppose something as pedestrian as condom use. You should see them try to justify that too. At least the way it was explained to me, the birth control prohibition is based on the “little abortions” theory, but of course that don’t work for condoms. Or something. You’ll find a lot of Catholics these days with 2.5 kids, so I don’t think anyone pays attention to that anymore.

But then there’s the whole Catholic guilt thing and don’t even get me into Catholic understandings of human sexuality…yeah, like I said, you aren’t going to see me defending them but they are at least willing to believe their own eyes and (mostly) their own powers of reason.

 
 

I’ve had little to no problems with individual Catholics. Polling consistently shows the laity to be liberal or at least lenient.

The Church infrastructure, on the other hand…

 
 

Farnsworth: He’s good, alright. But he’s no Clem Johnson. And Johnson played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory.

Bender: Clem Johnson? That skin bag wouldn’t have lasted one pitch in the old Robot Leagues! Now Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern-hitting machine!

Leela: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns! I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.

Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitchomat 5000 was just a modified howitzer?

Leela: Yep.

Bender: You humans are so scared of a little robot competition you won’t even let us on the field.

Fry: What are you talking about? There’s all kinds of robots down there.

 
 

Americans love their home runs, always have. So though you hate the sinner, do not hate the sin. A home run, after all, is a noble feat.

It’s perfect. You can apply the label ‘noble feat’ to any accomplishment was was obtained through cheating.

Ken Lay almost became a billionaire by running a racket posing as a new-age commodity market. But a Billion, after all, is a noble feat.

It’s like the ‘central to my point’ cliche.

Oh, and I have asked Yankee fans what they think about A-Rod. The answer was predicable. They don’t care what he does, so long as they win championship # 27 soon. The 8-year drought is driving them stir crazy.

 
 

Funny how they don’t lock people up and throw away the key for steroids like they do pot huh. I mean, what the heck, lets make sure we test our cops, firefighters, prison guards, rent-a cops, military personnel and such. Oh, wait, if these guys probably ain’t rioding up. The shit’s everywhere. It is almost so common that you think lots of people are this bulked up naturally.

 
 

Ayn Rand would have loved steroids.

Hmmm…

Ayn Rand

Alex Rrodriguez

Coincidence?

 
 

Thanks, mikey, didn’t know that. But my interest in baseball is only slightly higher than, say, a grasshopper’s ass.

It’s a tough call for me, since I’m for drug legalization across the board. But this is heinous stuff; one could even make the case that steroids are a public menace.

 
 

OMG…cyborg baseball players….Maybe you could sell that thread to Lawyers, Guns & Money with all the BSG threads over there..(which I admit to participating in).

 
 

Catholicism has a really fucked-up understanding of human nature

Oh, they understand it perfectly. It’s just that they understand & use it for purposes of manipulation & exploitation.

 
 

Fucking Jesuits.

 
 

Its a little more complicated than that.

All quite true. The Catholic Church isn’t dismissable en masse — there’s simply too many people and too much good work being done. It’s also got millenia of nasty baggage.

 
 

Not to admit anyone’s existence, but

among the laity, you have to really look on a case-by-case basis. Some are very liberal, some are conservative

considering the effort made by Rove etc. to wrap up the Cath. vote, it’s not a bad assumption that most of them are evil.

 
 

it’s not a bad assumption that most of them are evil.

Yeah, it is.

 
 

The Catholic Church deigns to accept the theory of evolution?

Oh my, I may have to rethink this whole atheism gig.

Oh wait. Omnipotent but exceedingly pissy and self-involved deity? Check.

Worship the dead guy? Check.

Three words: Science of Exorcism? Check.

Whatever the HELL a holy spirit is? Check.

Nah. They still sound like idiots on a three day bender to me..

mikey

Hi Everyone!

 
 

Hey, Mikey! Missed ya.

 
 

cyborg baseball players
Are these for world domination, or simply to defend the volcanic-island laboratory? I haven’t been keeping track.

 
 

Catholics shouldn’t be demonized.
How about catholicising demons? Can we do that?

 
 

Anyone who makes more than a million dollars a year to play baseball should be forced to take steroids. I am voluntarily accepting a $500,000 salary cap this year.

 
Gore Vidal Sassoon
 

“War on Home Runs” what?

 
 

Well, all religious beliefs are stupid, but among religionists, Catholics shouldn’t be demonized.

Of course they should. They believe in demons, for one thing, & should be able to take a little of their own medicine.

More importantly, as the largest & most powerful religious institution in the world, they must be resisted by any means possible & necessary. Knock them & their petty city-state inside Rome, inside Italy, & the other Krazee Klown Klubs will be a lot shakier.

 
 

Hey, aren’t we supposed to be abusing A-Fraud here?

Where’s Aristophanes w/ his sure-to-be stirring defense of Barry “Greatest Hitter in The World, I’m just taking this year off” Bonds?

 
 

I’ve had little to no problems with individual Catholics.

Then you’re lucky. My brother’s in-laws (all 20,000 of them) are Catholics, and a bigger bunch of drunken supercilious assholes does not exist.

 
 

I’ve had little to no problems with individual Catholics.

Am I wrong or is there an individual Catholic running the show?

 
 

I’m shocked, shocked, to learn that professional athletes take drugs. Along with most of the rest of the U.S. population — just different drugs.

Also, speaking as a baseball fan: I don’t care.

 
 

Hey! What’s with all the Catholic-hating?

You guys are horning in on my act as a Lutheran!

 
 

an individual Catholic running the show?

Yeah, this infallible indivdual, Pope Dracul.

“Look into my eyes.”

 
 

Yeah, this infallible indivdual, Pope Dracul.

But that lollipop he’s holding looks delicious!

 
 

Hey! What’s with all the Catholic-hating?

Gee, I dunno. Except for bestowing upon Western civilization the ultimate political-patriarchal paradigm; instituting vicious misogyny as a form of “worship”; the near-sanctified pedophilia, the insistence upon living at least three centuries behind the rest of “civilization,” the burnings at the stake and other innovative means of thought domination, the terrorizing of the third world into believing they’ll all go to hell if they practice birth control; maintaining, arrogantly and consistently for centuries, a rabidly exclusionary and rigidly dogmatic theology that is about as far as is humanly possible from representing Jesus’s teachings, and other assorted scary-ass anti-human bullshit, I can’t think of anything.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

The next pope will be a cyberpope.

I’ve long been fascinated by the whole concept of performance-enhancing drugs. The NYT magazine did a cover story about doping a few years back.

I can see, on some level, how an athlete could “do the math” and decide that earning millions while young, at the cost of a long life span, is worth it, but how many individuals are really aware of what they’re doing to their bodies?

I mean, what the heck, lets make sure we test our cops, firefighters, prison guards, rent-a cops, military personnel and such.

Yeah, cops using ‘roids has become a national scandal. A pharmacist in Brooklyn was alleged to have killed himself over a ‘roid ring rigmarole.

Every March, there’s a huge judo tournament in Manhattan that involves players from all over the world, and volunteers from the entire metro area. I have no problem spending hours setting up the mats in a gymnasium and breaking them down, but I’ve always been able to weasel out of being a “piss test” chaperone.

 
Catholic Yankee fan
 

Christ, am I glad this thread is over. Phew!

 
 

Why do we even have batters? Why don’t we just have a gun that shoots baseballs really far?

 
 

Mikey, good to see ya. But don’t fuck with Dock Ellis. He never did steroids- guys in those days were into speed (see willie Mays re “the red juice”) and pot, mainly the speed to get over hangovers on road trips.
And while most guys get a cheesy sportswriter to “co-author” their autobiograpies, Dock got the future poet laureate of the United States. See “Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball” by Dock Ellis and Donald Hall (circa 1976)
Don’t even get me started on Harry Greb.
Honus of Pittsburgh (nee Wagner)

 
 

Weight gain? Unwarranted rages? Time to drugs-test Mehitabel the Abyssinian.

 
 

Catholic Yankee fan

Are you asking for a beat-down, or what?

 
Leon Trotsky, Exile-in-Mexico
 

To be fair to the general Catholic population, the number of American Catholics that actually listen to the Catholic Church on anything nowadays is probably pretty low. So you get some very liberal Catholics (not to mention the remarkable number of lapsed Catholics wandering around the liberal tent).

On the other hand, that’s also how assholes like Donahue and the Catholic League end up looking like shitty knock-offs of Baptist evangelicals, since they’re obviously not listening to the Vatican about anything, and instead marketing themselves to the other fundie assholes who think they’re the servants of Satan.

And not in the way we think he is.

So it’s kind of win-lose.

Me, I was Catholic up until I reached seven and asked, “If Jesus died to save everyone so we’d get into Heaven, why’re we still here?” and didn’t get a good answer.

No, I kid, I stopped being Catholic because Mass conflicted with my cartoons. Which I suppose shows which force had the prominent influence in my household.

 
 

You want more home-runs? Make the bloody fields smaller – or make the ball slightly lighter (duh) – that way, nobody has to die or wind up permanently psychotic, & you still get to enjoy the roar of the crowd & all that cal.

Funny thing with steroids … some of the folks who take too many for too long get a little unintended bonus – like having their fucking legs rot off. Besides, how can you say no to a drug that makes your dick the size of a baby’s thumb, shortens your lifespan & produces towering homicidal rages at random? Good times ahoy!

Yeah, what an AWESOME concept: America needs to get ALL pro athletes hooked on that shit, pronto. Heck, don’t be pussies – make it mandatory for the Varsity & high-school jocks too … & let’s make going outside FUN again!

 
 

Dock Ellis inspired one of the greatest Barbara Manning songs ever.

 
 

Ayn Rand

Alex Rrodriguez

Coincidence?

Atlas Drugged?

 
 

Except for bestowing upon Western civilization the ultimate political-patriarchal paradigm; instituting vicious misogyny as a form of “worship”; the near-sanctified pedophilia, the insistence upon living at least three centuries behind the rest of “civilization,” the burnings at the stake and other innovative means of thought domination, the terrorizing of the third world into believing they’ll all go to hell if they practice birth control; maintaining, arrogantly and consistently for centuries, a rabidly exclusionary and rigidly dogmatic theology that is about as far as is humanly possible from representing Jesus’s teachings, and other assorted scary-ass anti-human bullshit, I can’t think of anything.

Jeez, can’t you people be creative? Martin Luther nailed 99 theses to a door on these very topics hundreds of years ago!

 
 

Was that before or after the “I have a dream” speech?

mikey

 
 

Except he pronounced it “Mein haff ein Traum”.

 
 

“You want more home-runs? Make the bloody fields smaller – or make the ball slightly lighter”
That’s pretty much what they did. All the new parks are smaller than the ones normal size guys played in the 1960s and 70s. Normal size guys like Stargell (6′ 2″ 205lbs) and Mike Schmidt (6′ 2″ 200lbs) hit lots of home runs and many moon shots. Stargell hit 5 of the 7 home runs ever hit to the upper deck in 3 Rivers. You don’t have to be some huge meatball to hit home runs. Hell, Clemente (5’10” 175) hit 257 and that was in mostly in Forbes Field with a 457 foot left field power alley.
As Schmidt said in 97 when asked how many HRs he would hit “I hit 48 home runs in ’78 and I know I flew out to the warning track 20 times. Those would be home runs in the new park”
And the pitching went to shit in the 90s, although it’s better now.

 
 

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