i bought tickets 2 weeks in advance in 98 to see the cards play the cubs in st. louis drove the 500 miles on september 8th and was lucky enough to see number 62 same kinda thing that ball was'nt more than 20 feet off the ground on a line straight into the bull[pen back wall

I remember that day very well.  9/8/98.  Exactly 1 year before my daughter was born.

I was on a business trip, driving back from Findlay OH to the airport in Toledo.  Game was on radio.  Pulled off so that I could listen to the at bat against Trachsel.  Awesome moment.

in the stadium they had about 500 police officers come out every time mcgwire  got on deck and the fans had to stay in their seats the police would'nt let you leave your section. so when he came up i was already out in the concourse standing above the outdoor food court that they use to have at old busch after he hit the homer the cards employees brought out these commerative baseballs for sale for 20 bucks.  well the police were still not letting people out of their seats so only the people in the concourse could buy these balls i bought 4, 1 for me and the 3 for guys i was with and the balls were all gone in like 3 minutes 2 days later they were selling for a $1000 i had a card shop offer me that but i did'nt sell. now after the steroid era is over the ball is worth the 20 bucks i paid for it but i am glad i have the ball

By the way, my comment about whether McGwire was on anyone's list here was meant to be sarcastic, as in, if we are counting all these other steroid-era 1B as so great, why not just accept that McGwire was the best ever since he hit 70 homers. The answers being of course that he is not the best because those 70 homers have no more meaning that if I had launched baseballs out of ballparks with a catapult. Same with Bonds. 

You have obviously never seen me try and load a catapult.

I think Italy's comment was absolutely right..i would say that the vast majority of ped defenders/deniers bow at the alter of one of the ped users or have a beloved team that won a world series with one or more on their team and now cant deal with truth...they cant handle the truth!

Posted by dino27 on 7/15/2015 8:57:00 AM (view original):
I think Italy's comment was absolutely right..i would say that the vast majority of ped defenders/deniers bow at the alter of one of the ped users or have a beloved team that won a world series with one or more on their team and now cant deal with truth...they cant handle the truth!

Really?  How many of the people defending PED users have you actually read/listened to?  I'm pretty sure that the reality is much closer to the exact opposite.

Most of the people who want to shut the PED users out of the HOF and disregard their achievements are unwilling to accept that these guys broke records that had previously been held by their heroes from earlier generations.  It seems like most guys defending PED users want to see ALL of them in the Hall (all that are worthy, anyway - Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod, Manny, etc.)

I have yet to see anyone give me a good, logical reason why PED users should be shut out from the HOF, record books, etc., but guys who used amphetamines should not.  It comes down to a question of what's more important - character or results.  Generally people trying to keep the PED users out point to the character clause.  But in reality, using an illegal substance to try to improve your game is basically a set moral act, regardless of how well it works.  If you don't want Bonds in, you shouldn't want Aaron or Mays in either.

there is a monumental difference between drugs that help you to reach your normal potential vs drugs that allow the users go way way beyond normal human potential.

i dont care if rocky balboa may have used some amphetimines...if he lost to pumped up drago that would be invalid...

Posted by dino27 on 7/15/2015 2:33:00 PM (view original):
there is a monumental difference between drugs that help you to reach your normal potential vs drugs that allow the users go way way beyond normal human potential.

How is attaining a level of focus and energy you would never be able to reach without chemical enhancement "normal potential."

Again, though, as with everyone else, you have failed to offer anything remotely resembling a moralistic argument.  There's no real clear bright line, given that nobody can actually substantiate in a meaningful way what the on-field influence of amphetamines, steroids, or HGH actually equates to.  There's usually an increase in offense after expansion, so we should have expected an offensive outburst after adding 2 teams in '93 and 2 more teams in '98.  You think it's a coincidence the HR numbers jumped from big to really big in exactly 1998?  That's the impact of instantaneous demand for close to 25 more pitchers in the league than it needed a year earlier.  I'm sure PEDs had an impact.  But how big was it?  Was it really that much bigger than the difference between greenies and no greenies?  Can you prove it?

Of course you can't.  Nobody can.  The best mathematicians looking at baseball can't quantify it.  So if you can't come up with some moralistic reason why taking steroids or HGH is more damning than taking amphetamines, you don't have a lot of legs to stand on.

you can reach same levels with or withour greenies.....you go to levels with peds that you can never ever reach without them.

See, this is exactly my point.  I made a rational argument, and you ignored it and reasserted a statement you'd already made, almost word for word.  A medical statement with which medical professionals who have opined on the subject disagree, with which Major League Baseball disagrees, and with which the players disagree.  If the players didn't feel it raised their level of play, you clearly wouldn't have seen near-ubiquitous use of an illegal substance for several decades.  The fact is, YOU - along with many, many other fans - don't want to acknowledge the steroid-era players, and you need to cling to any reasoning you can come up with to deny them.  There's no great logical argument why using illegal substances was ok in the '60s and '70s and not in the '90s and '00s, but there's an emotional one - guys condemning the steroid era players have an emotional attachment to the players from the '60s and '70s and don't want to accept that their heroes were also performing morally analogous activities to the guys who broke their records.  Even if your one-sentence response to me IS correct, it really doesn't matter, from my perspective.  If a guy was willing to use greenies in the '60s, odds are pretty good he would also have been willing to use steroids and/or HGH in the '90s.  They just didn't happen to be available at the time.  It doesn't make any sense to rule out one group of players based on a voting clause that says players should exhibit positive character and not the other.  As long as you compare them using era-normalized stats, there's no reason not to compare one guy directly to the other.  Except that guys who fell in love with the game watching Willie Mays aren't ready to admit that Barry Bonds was just a straight-up better hitter than Mays ever was.  Even before he started using PEDs.  Who, really, is making the emotional argument here?

JUST IMAGINE IF STRAWBERRY AND GOODEN HAD DONE STEROIDS INSTEAD OF COKE.......