NEW ENGLAND SPORTS HUB...Red Sox Nation, Patriots Nation, The State Of The Celtics And B's

Sunday, March 13, 2005
Hubbub
Filed under: Baseball News— Jeff Kallman @ 7:43 pm
ITEM: New England Sports Hub has, or believes it has, a simple enough solution to deal with the needle and the damage done, actual or alleged.

HUB FACTS: Roger Maris had only 7 more AB’s in 1961 when he hit 61 homers than Babe Ruth did in 1927 when he hit 60; Maris still has an asterisk next to his record.

HUB FIX: All records broken prior to 1988 will stand in the record books. An asterisk will be placed next to all records broken in 1988 and beyond that reads:

*After 1988; performance enhancers were introduced to MLB by this date.

Roger Maris, in fact, had fifty more at bats (590) in 1961 than Babe Ruth had in 1927 (540), but a mere seven more plate appearances (698) in 1961 than Ruth in 1927 (691). The American League ERA in 1961, by the way, was 4.02; in 1927, it was 4.14. I submit, then, that it was a little bit harder for Maris to pop 61 into the seats than it was for Ruth to pop 60.

And, as others have pointed out, we long enough deemed Maris the legitimate single-season record holder, even as we never cared—and should not have cared—how long it took Henry Aaron to become the career holder, particularly considering that Aaron hit against better pitching lifetime than Ruth did: The league ERA against which Ruth hit as a full-time position player was 4.12. (Coincidentally, that is the league ERA against which Barry Bonds hit through the end of the 2003 season.) The league ERA against which Aaron hit, covering his career through the season in which he broke Ruth’s lifetime mark, was 3.69.

As for the infamous asterisk, it never existed, except by way of an infamous suggestion from Hall of Fame sportswriter Dick Young, then with the New York Daily News, after then-commissioner Ford Frick (a former Ruth ghostwriter) made the whole megillah of “separate records” in the first place. Young, according to Maris biographer Maury Allen, suggested to Frick—when the commissioner gathered a round of sportswriters to discuss the “issue"—that “everyone” uses an asterisk “when there’s a difference of opinion,” and never mind that the difference didn’t exist until Frick made it an issue.

(Forgotten well enough: Not only was Mickey Mantle running reasonably even-up to Maris in the 1961 home run race, until Mantle was flattened down the stretch by a hip abscess, but Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles was at one point considered a competitor to the Yankee tandem, for at least two thirds of the season, anyway; Gentile, having his career year in Baltimore, following years of languishing in the Dodger system, before getting a clear shot with the Orioles in 1960, finished 1961 with 46 homers and second behind Maris in RBI with 141).

Did I mention that, in 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent ordered that the separate-record entry which did exist in all post-1961 publications of baseball records be done away with? (Even Ford Frick, in his memoir, Games, Asterisks, and People, acknowledged that no asterisk appeared in “the official record” regarding Maris’s feat, while Frick just had to add a little jab: “His record was set in a 162-game season. The Ruth record of 60 home runs was set in 1927 in a 154-game season.") As longtime Yankee Stadium annoucer Bob Shepard said, with a pronounced catch in his voice, at the conclusion of Billy Crystal’s flawed but empathetic 61*, “Roger Maris died six years earlier. . . never knowing. . .that the record. . .belonged. . .to him.”

(N)ote that Frick used the words “record books,” a distinction that escaped most of the baseball writers present at the conference. Major League Baseball has no “official” record book, and relies heavily on The Sporting News and The Baseball Encyclopedia to record baseball history. In essence, Frick was telling publishers over whom he had absolutely no authority whatsoever that they had to print something in their books on his order. Obviously Frick was grandstanding, and most of those present understood that. Hank Greenberg, who very nearly broke Ruth’s record with 58 home runs in 1938, was quoted as saying that Frick’s ruling was “damn stupid. Conditions always change in baseball—day ball to night ball, new towns, new teams, new parks. They don’t make rulings every time something like that changes.”—Allen Barra, That’s Not The Way It Was (New York: Hyperion, 1995)

Until there is the incontrovertible proof that any record setter or record breaker who is proven to have used steroids, during the time he set or broke said record(s), would not have achieved it except because of steroids*, one and all ought to be invited to speak and write very carefully—from the press room of the nation’s newspapers and the blogosphere to the arterials of Capitol Hill and back to the radio and television studio—without such incontrovertible proof in hand.

* - Do forgive me, please, if I am very reluctant to take the word of a man who lied publicly about using steroids throughout his career—when he wasn’t threatening to sue at least one writer who had the drop on him as early as the late 1980s, that is—until he could think about writing a saleable book after he might have decided baseball done him dirty by not “letting” him hang on to pop his own 500th into the seats.

HUB RESPONSE:
1 Comment »
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We at New England Sports Hub do concede to your fact checking and to your excellent review of the history of the “Asterisk". We have not as of yet performed a complete cross check of what you have presented as fact (we will let our fact checker, who we affectionately refer to as Nomar’s Nemesis, or B.D.D., mishandle this task as he sees fit). As you know, of course, we were speaking of the asterisk that still exists in the minds of baseball fans. Metaphorically speaking, it has never left the “record books” of baseball consciousness.

Of course, in literal terms, the feats of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris were syringed away, first in 1998, by Mark McFraud and Shrinkin’ Sammy Sosa, with 70 and 66 performance enhanced yard balls, and subsequently in 2001 by Barry “Who told you to put a balm on?” Bonds with 73 synthetic homers.

The Hub is quite comfortable with its stance on these bogus records. We are curious as to how much indisputable evidence constitutes enough proof for you , Jeff Kallman. No, we are not relying on the penned word of Jose Canseco‘s version of Ford Frick. Rather, we will consider the evidence presented by the San Francisco Chronicle in regards to the Balco Investigation, as well as the New York Daily News and a fairly reliable source known as the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

If that is not enough for you, then consider the words of Gary Sheffield, the Giambi brothers, and Barry Bonds himself. Bonds does currently hold the single season homerun record, and has admitted, under oath, to using the “clear and the cream”. Of course, he didn’t know that they contained steroids, and didn’t ask any questions. He is not being called to the senate hearings on Thursday, as the government does not wish to grant him immunity prior to the conclusion of the Balco investigation. Still not enough for you?

In closing, Mr. Kallman, I just have to say, that should I ever commit a crime sinister enough that my destiny need be determined by a jury of my peers, I pray that you are selected as my jury foreman. I am confident that your unreasonable doubt would swiftly let me off the hook.

Best,

-NF

Comment by NomarFan1997 — Monday, March 14, 2005 @ 11:40 pm

NF–Perhaps I made the passage in question, about the evidence regarding alleged steroid-fueled home run hitting, a mite too obtuse. So I will say it simply here, that there be no doubt:
Show me the incontrovertible proof that that the gentlemen in question could not or would not have hit their record numbers of home runs in a season except for their having used steroids.
The evidence presented thus far is nothing more than that certain players may have used steroids. That is not quite the same thing as saying that said players could only have performed as they did by using steroids, if indeed they used them.
I don’t know for dead last certain if those home runs were synthetic.
And, neither do you, for dead last certain.
Not without hard and incontrovertible proof.
(Which reminds me: Is it not curious that the oxymoronically named House Government Reform Committee chooses not to call Barry Bonds as a witness because the Fabulous BALCO Boys remain under investigation, but they think nothing of calling Jason Giambi as a witness and never mind that he is part of the same still-open FBB investigation?)
Meanwhile, I should content myself to hope first that you are never accused of committing any crime, never mind requiring a jury of your peers. Should you be so accused, I would stand as vehement on your behalf, and remind one and all as a wiser man than I once tried to remind a nation buffeted by an earlier hysteria, albeit one based upon no less real and disturbing an actuality:
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigation and persecution is a very fine one…We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
Yours cordially,Jeff