The Historical Context of Baseball Greatness

One of the most appealing things about baseball is its context in history. If you transported a fan from Fenway Park's first Opening Day in 1912, and plopped them down in the same spot a few months from now, it would likely be the only thing about modern life they understood.

Sure, there are differences: the jumbotrons, the sound systems, and the racial diversity of players and spectators would surely confuse our mythical 1912 fan. But the ballpark has changed remarkably little when compared to other everyday institutions of American life.

Baseball's long history has certainly had its share of upheavals, what with multiple expansions to the playoff structure and number of teams, the addition of the designated hitter, and the explosion of player salaries under free agency - but the game still has a level of statistical continuity that allows for perennial arguments about the "best ever."

This year's debate will center around Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. If the Captain had played for a shorter lived expansion team (like the Rays), I might be able to entertain the idea of him being the best they'd ever had. But the Yankees? A team that employed Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, and Yogi Berra?

There's a tendency among fans to view players that were on the field as they came of age as larger than life - better than any who came before or who will play in the future. But the beauty of baseball is that you can look at (most) statistics and compare them across the decades, even if they must be taken with a grain of salt.

Typically when discussions of "modern advantages" come up in baseball, they allude to the use of performance enhancing drugs, but today's players have plenty of totally legal advantages over their predecessors. Things like Tommy John surgery and laser eye surgery didn't always exist, and players didn't always have access to personal trainers and dietitians to perfect their bodies. Even something as simple as a salary that doesn't require an offseason job as a ditch digger to make ends meet can extend a career long enough to make a Hall of Fame worthy difference.

So is it really possible to compare players across generations? Maybe - but while having heated discussions about "the best ever," we must remember that there's no definitive way to know how today's players would perform under 1912 circumstances - or how someone like Babe Ruth would do with the modern conveniences (and prying press corps) of today.

Alex Rodriguez suspended for 2014 season

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It's official. The arbitrator has decided, and Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez will miss the entire 2014 baseball season with a suspension of 162 games, plus any playoff games the Yankees might qualify for.

Technically this is a reduction in the original punishment, as Major League Baseball had initially suspended Rodriguez for 211 games. Either way this could mean the end of his career, as he'll be forty years old before he's allowed to take the field again, and who's to say the Yankees will want their lineup anchored by a middle-aged scandal-ridden pariah.

For anyone who isn't a Yankees fan, this is a boon, as the Yankees still have to find a third baseman for the upcoming season, and the market is thin this late in the offseason.

Of course, Rodriguez and his legal team aren't ready to accept this decision - they have released a statement saying they will be taking the case to a federal court.

Sanctimonious nonsense from Hall of Fame voters

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With all the discussion and controversy surrounding the Hall of Fame voting this year, I'd like to propose a new rule: any BBWAA members who were covering the game from the late 1980s to the early 2000s who didn't make a fuss about rampant steroid use while they were witnessing it in clubhouses across the game are no longer allowed to make a fuss about it in their Hall of Fame voting rationale.

I said the same thing this time last year, but it is unbelievable to me that writers who were complicit in the longevity of the Steroid Era through their silence are so incredibly sanctimonious about their votes now that those players are appearing on the ballot.

There's a lot of self-satisfied talk about how the Hall isn't just an honor for players who were the best on the field, but a place for those who were also the most moral and sportsmanlike. It's an admirable wish, but if you're seriously a baseball writer who thinks a violent and racist (albeit incredibly talented) player like Ty Cobb represents the moral and sportsmanlike, even in the context of his era, you should probably take a refresher course in basic baseball history.

Of course, Ty Cobb is an extreme example, but if he was "moral and sportsmanlike" enough to be revered and remembered, who are the BBWAA members to say that players they personally suspect of drug use, or worse, those who just had the misfortune of playing during that time, are unworthy?

It's ridiculous. I don't need baseball writers to teach me about morality, thanks all the same. I want to see the best of the era in the Hall of Fame, and if that includes PED users (and it most certainly does), so be it. Why should some players get the benefit of the doubt, while some get tainted by the brush of their peers?

If a player dominated during his era, if his numbers set him apart from the rest, if he faced the best of his time and beat them, he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Fans understand the nuance of the era, so maybe the BBWAA voters can save the moralizing lectures for their children.

The Complicity of Bud Selig

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However you feel about the Alex Rodriguez debacle, you have to agree that it makes for excellent baseball television. Personally, I'm quite enjoying the circus - schadenfreude has always been one of my strong suits.

When A*Rod takes the field in Chicago, he'll doubtless face a loud chorus of boos and jeers. After talking to a few Yankees fans, I don't think his reception would be much better at home in the Bronx; Rodriguez has a seriously dwindling list of supporters.

But to focus on Alex Rodriguez at the expense of all the other storylines surrounding the suspensions would be a mistake. Sure, A*Rod's return is somehow both arrogant and brave, and certainly makes for great drama - but there's so much more to talk about.

In light of Bud Selig's singleminded prosecution of Rodriguez and his fellow PED users (which, of course, is warranted given their alleged indiscretions), we should not lose sight of the fact that it was Selig and his power structure who let the steroid era go unchecked for so long.

Selig took the reins at MLB in 1998, when the game was still trying to recover from the strike and cancelled World Series in 1994. So when the home runs started flying out of (publicly funded) stadiums and fans started flocking back in, he looked the other way.

In his defense, Selig was dealing with an at-times uncooperative Player's Union, but he didn't manage to get steroid testing into the game for six years. Selig ignored the problem for more than half a decade. Six years of rampant PED use across the game created a culture of steroids in cities everywhere - and people like Alex Rodriguez realized that the benefits outweighed the risk.

The wide use of performance enhancing drugs is a black eye to the game of baseball, but the sport will recover - just like it has recovered from scandals in gambling, amphetamines, and greed. The reputations of Alex Rodriguez and Bud Selig, however, may be beyond recovery.

PEDs: the perpetual headline

Curt Schilling can't seem to help himself. After being an outspoken critic of the media during his playing career, he went and joined the ESPN team upon retirement, and now he's made an offhand comment that's landed him in the headlines just before spring training.

Apparently a member of the Red Sox medical staff suggested to Schilling in 2008 that he try HGH to repair the injured shoulder that would ultimately end his career.  Schilling reported the incident to Theo Epstein, who reported it to MLB, and there was an investigation. If you want to read more about it, there isn't any shortage of places to do so.

I don't know about any of you, but I am tired of talking about this. I'm tired of MLB all but assuring fans that the drug problems have been curtailed, and that now the game is clean and beyond reproach.  Anybody who thinks that is fooling themselves.  Since the onset of free agency in baseball, the steadily rising salaries in a league with no salary cap have all but guaranteed that the players who want to will be able to pay a premium for designer, undetectable PEDs.

Perhaps this year, with in-season HGH testing coupled with the testing to determine levels of player testosterone, it will be harder for players who are using to continue to fly under the radar - but these guys are multi-millionaires, and if they want to cheat, their money will enable them to do so.

Perhaps the most annoying part in all this is people who claim that "The Yankees should forfeit their titles, they had players on the roster doping," or "the Red Sox World Series wins aren't legitimate, Manny Ramirez was cheating," or any variation on this theme with any team and player. It simply proves you haven't been paying attention: there is no team beyond reproach, and I personally assume that every team has at least a few perpetrators.

On the team level, my suspicion is that it balances out - if both teams in a series have users on the roster, fairness is maintained. The parity breaks down when looking at individual players. There's no way to know for certain who is playing clean anymore, and all the players are evaluated assuming that they are (thanks to imperfect testing methods). We've been unfairly comparing the stats of non-users and users for years now, and there will never be a know to tell the truth.

I wish I could speculate that this topic will fade away with the imminent start of spring training, but I doubt it. Inevitably, the first players will be caught during team physicals, and news of their suspensions and speculation about how it will affect their team's performance will dominate the news cycle. We're going to be stuck talking about this for a very long time, and it's certainly a shame - in every possible way.

BBWAA: get off your high horse

I don't know about you guys, but I find it pretty rich that so many BBWAA members with votes for the Hall of Fame refused to vote for anyone with the "stain" of steroid use - especially when it was their silence for so many years that allowed a few users to turn into a full-blown "Steroid Era."

Do I agree with the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs? Of course not, but to say they made a mockery of the games and its records is laughable. You know what else made a mockery of longstanding records? The expansions of the regular seasons and postseason: more games results in more chances to break records, while more teams in the playoff field somewhat dilutes the dominance required to set a postseason homerun record.

Baseball is a game of nostalgia. I get it. If you pulled a player out of a 1903 baseball game and put him in a present-day baseball game, it would be nearly the only thing about the present day he would understand, and that's really special. But that's just on the surface of things; there are plenty of things about the game he would NOT understand. Designated hitters, pitch counts, airplane travel, Tommy John surgery, and beerless clubhouses are just a few of the things that would be endlessly confusing for our proverbial baseball original.

Modern players have all kinds of advantages over their predecessors, including but not limited to: full time training staff, laser eye surgery, innovative doctors on the team payroll (I'm looking at you, Curt Schilling - that bloody sock game doesn't happen in 1912), cortisone shots, and more. Even the huge salaries now commonplace in baseball play a role: not being required to work as a ditch digger in the offseason could certainly stave off retirement a few years and strengthen your HoF numbers.

Somehow we came to the conclusion that there are some scientific advantages that baseball players are allowed to utilize, like the aforementioned conditioning programs, cortisone shots, and even surgeries -but PEDs are off limits. And that's an acceptable distinction, since unlike most of the other methods here, steroids destroy your body in the long run.

But it definitely rubs me the wrong way when HoF voters, the very men (and a few women) who were in clubhouses in the nineties, watching as players ballooned up to comic book proportions, who looked the other way, get up on their pedestal and claim they're voting to preserve the sanctity of the Hall. Where were they when players were taking pills and injections and ruining the sanctity of the game? Most were pretending not to see, in order to preserve their clubhouse access and their jobs, which is understandable. But you don't get to do that, and then act like you're somehow baseball's magical savior when you vote to keep the very players you protected with your silence out of the Hall.

It's impossible to prove that anyone who played in that era was clean; Clemens and Bonds had the misfortune of being caught, but there's no saying who was clean and who wasn't. It's unfair to award Hall of Fame votes only to those who somehow escaped public suspicion. After all, perhaps they were just sneakier than those who were caught. I want to see players in the Hall of Fame who were the best of the era, and some of those who were caught were among the best. Anyone interested in baseball enough to visit Cooperstown will understand the Steroid Era numbers must be taken with a grain of salt, just as they understand that it's difficult to compare the Deadball Era to those that came after it.

No matter what the voters decide, there will be players who are unfairly penalized for playing when they did. Some of them will be the rare players that stayed completely clean, and thus unable to compete with the superhuman strength surrounding them. But mostly it's the fans who were cheated: we'll never know who of our favorites was clean and who was using, but the BBWAA has the gall to be all sanctimonious in keeping them out? When it was them looking the other way that sustained the drug abuse in the first place? The whole thing makes me ill.