The great baseball writer Bill James is the reason I became a conservative in spite of growing up in a hotbed of hysterical liberalism. I realize that statement deserves an essay of its own, but I figured it was as good way as any to introduce this quote from an Opinion Journal profile of the great man:
(James’) theory on baseball and steroids may or may not be odd, but it is certainly not in vogue. "I don't know," he says, when asked if steroids account for the surge in home runs in the late 1990s. "Speaking globally . . . the reality is that there are many changes in the game which could cause batting numbers to jump. And no one really knows to what extent the increase is a consequence of steroids. I strongly suspect that the influence of steroids on hitting numbers is greatly overstated by the public." Other factors include ballpark dimensions and bat design. "I've never understood why nobody writes about it, but the bats are very different now than they were 20 years ago," Mr. James says, with different woods and finishes. "[Barry] Bonds's bats are still different from everybody else's," he notes.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the gym over the past three decades, and have been around steroid use. Steroids don’t take a guy who can’t bench press 200 pounds and suddenly have him putting up 300. They help the user become stronger, but only at the margins. This marginal benefit is of most use to athletes in sports like track and field where improving your performance by 2% is the difference between being the world’s greatest and just another guy.
But an improvement of a few percentage points in baseball? You don’t go from hitting 30 homers to hitting 70 because of steroid use. Maybe 30 to 35. Possibly. The actual impact of steroid use in baseball would be much greater for pitchers who could get an extra foot on their fastball than it could ever be for hitters. I’m not mentioning any names, but real baseball fans know exactly who I’m talking about.
But equipment changes? Now there’s your Holy Grail. In the past two decades, the handles of baseball bats have shrunk down to almost nothing. That means hitters generate more bat-head speed at impact. A lot more. So the ball goes farther.
James doesn’t mention the additional effect of hitters becoming more selective at the plate. The homerun hitting Barry Bonds shows remarkable and indeed historic discipline waiting for a pitch that he can drive.
No one should infer from the preceding that I’m disputing the irrefutable fact that Barry Bonds is one of the most obnoxious baseball greats of all time.
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