Blame Barry, Chris.
In Baltimore, a young, slugging first baseman is leading the charge to get the Baltimore Orioles into the American League play-offs. He is on a home run pace that could net him 60 or more, and fans voted him the starting first baseman on his league’s All-Star team. Because his production this year far exceeds anything he had accomplished before, however, Chris Davis’s emergence isn’t being celebrated as much as it is being suspected. Another steroid scandal looms over major league baseball, one which threatens to engulf two former MVPs, as well as other players. Fans and sportswriters don’t trust players any more, or their power totals, not since Mark McGwire and especially Barry Bonds juiced and injected their way to shattering the game’s home run records.
This bothers lawyer/baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra, and it should., as someone concerned with justice. Of the smearing of Davis, he calls it…
“…utterly baseless speculation; Davis has always had tremendous power but is now, in the past year, matched it up with better plate discipline — is the product of a media landscape which has decided that every power hitter is a ‘roider. Jose Bautista got this treatment a couple of years ago. Davis is getting it now. Everyone who engages in this business does so because they’ve been convinced by the baseball media that such speculation is not just justified but necessary. It’s neither of those things. The drug testing system put in place had avoiding these parlor games as one of its primary justifications. But that’s not good enough for some, apparently.”
But Craig knows why this goes on, just as he knows why a great player like Jeff Bagwell, who built himself into a behemoth over a number of years and excelled in hitting home runs during the same period in which Barry Bonds was cheating, may never get into the Hall of Fame though his career dictates he should. The cheaters have polluted the game and made trust impossible, which also takes a measure of fun out of baseball as well. Now we can’t just thrill to the emergence of a new star; we naturally view him skeptically.
Back in 1967, a veteran singles and doubles-hitting left fielder for the Boston Red Sox suddenly started hitting home runs. Do you know why? He had started strength training that previous winter, but was also swinging harder: instead of stroking the ball to the opposite field as he once did, he took the biggest swing in baseball, almost screwing himself into the ground when he failed to connect. Carl Yastrzemski hit 44 home runs, won the Triple Crown and led his underdog team to the World Series (and also gave me the best summer of my life), and there was nothing but joy and sunshine in his deeds. Nobody thought Yaz was cheating. Today he would be playing under a shadow.
Craig knows this, yet he has vigorously defended Barry Bonds’ qualifications for the Hall of Fame, a position I have opposed here. It makes no sense; the contradiction is unresolvable. Bonds, as much as any player, made every subsequent hitter who excels beyond his previous established level of performance by virtue of his hard work and skill a target of suspicion. That is unfair. Far worse, however, is that by his dishonesty and poor sportsmanship, he removed some of the fun from the game itself, probably permanently. How can a sport honor with enshrinement in its hall of heroes a player who willfully diminished that sport’s most precious commodity–fun?
It can’t and it shouldn’t. You think it’s wrong that Chris Davis can’t get the respect and admiration he deserves this season, Craig? So do I. And your boy Barry is the primary one responsible.
And this is why he should only get into Cooperstown with a ticket.
Here’s a taste of Yaz, for those of you who don’t remember:
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Spark: NBC Sports
Ethics Alarms 
Can we throw out Craig and just talk about Chris?
Yes. I voted for him and frankly expected him to do this two years ago. What a great pick-up for the O’s. Boog, Lee May, Eddie, and finally another true slugger at first!
I can’t explain how happy I am that the Rangers had Josh Hamilton ahead of Davis. He was a fan favorite before he struck out 2 batters as a relief pitcher. Who ever heard of a slugging 1st basemen with 3 distinct pitches?
oh jesus not this again.
Skepticism is healthy, esp in baseball.. This guy has as many HR/RBI this year as all of 2012 (33/85), ~halfway thru the season.
Not sure why you think BB is the poster child for cheating… He would have been a HOF without the drugs.. Canseco, Sosa and McGuire are the real culprits.. .Those guys should not be allowed within Cooperstown City Limits…lol
Skepticism is healthy, esp in baseball.. This guy has as many HR/RBI this year as all of 2012 (33/85), ~halfway thru the season.
RBI is possibly the worst stat you could use to make your case. It’s too team-dependent.
You also use “half way through the season” instead of at bats to make your case. Ugh. He’s on pace for around a 66% jump, not a doubling as you imply.
This is a guy in his mid twenties who has shown solid power numbers in the past and finally has a steady situation. A jump isn’t odd. Davis isn’t Brady Anderson.
I think your complaint made Jack’s point for him.
Not sure why you think BB is the poster child for cheating… He would have been a HOF without the drugs..
HOF caliber players can’t also be cheaters?
Canseco, Sosa and McGuire are the real culprits
McGuire wasn’t an HOFer before he got crazy bulked on steroids?
McGuire had a terrible reputation as a baseball player, like Canseco.. Those guys were both not quality players.
And yeah it’s not a clear doubling of production, but very substantial nonetheless.
Any player on a projected path of 66 HRs in one season should be heavily scrutinized imo.
McGuire had a terrible reputation as a baseball player, like Canseco.. Those guys were both not quality players.
What? McGwire was a 5 tool prospect who exploded onto the scene in 87 and was feted for years. Conseco has a more colorful history, but he was seen as a great hitter, if horrible person, from the first.
And yeah it’s not a clear doubling of production, but very substantial nonetheless.
So, did you just pull the argument out of your ass, or were you actually intending to deceive?
Any player on a projected path of 66 HRs in one season should be heavily scrutinized imo.
Do the Orioles have 178 games on their schedule this year? I’d think you’d be more careful after the last screw up. I vote for intent.
Also, it’s not particularly uncommon for a player to be on pace to hit 60 home runs over 80 or 90 games. Hot streaks are, well, normal. You again are demonstrating Jack’s point.
“Davis isn’t Brady Anderson.”
How do you mean that? As in, Davis is a different kind of athlete than Anderson? Is Anderson suspected of PED use? I sure hope not…I have not followed the Orioles much for many years, but in the late 1990s followed them very closely, having resided then in that part of the country. Brady’s 1996 50-homer season was great fun to watch, and seemed like one season that just fared better than many of his other good ones.
May 17, 1996 was my all-time favorite regular season game, as the O’s beat the M’s 14-13 on a grand slam by Chris Hoiles on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the ninth. Griffey Jr. went 0-for-night, if I recall, a real oddity. My then-teenaged daughter had never gone to a MLB game before; after the homer and hugging one of my fellow ecstatic buddies, I turned to her, on the row behind me, and as she grinned in bewilderment I said to her breathlessly, “You will NEVER see another game like THAT!” I was Cal’s good luck charm; every time I went to Camden Yards, he hit a homer – even, to the general area where I typically sat, in left field about 15 rows up from the fence/wall and one or two aisles inside the foul pole – never got a homer souvenir though.
It’s a joy to see the Orioles back in contention. Seems like Showalter works his magic everywhere he manages.
Yes, Brady was strongly suspected of steroid use, and still is. Here’s an article about the suspicions. Brady was a muscle-head, and looked like a bodybuilder by the time he was mid-career, if a streamlined one. One crazy power burst is not that suspicious, really—one of the strangest was Nats manager Davey Johnson, a singles hitter until he suddenly became a slugger one year in Atlanta. Red Sox centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who is a Brady-like player, hit over 30 homers out of the blue in 2011. He has two this year.
Brady was also rumored to be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Thanks – I meant to make my comment a reply to tgt. I remember that 40-something-homer year by Johnson, too, and thought it especially odd. God, I hate drug abuse; I don’t know which I hate more, “dependency” or just plain abuse. (Watch my doctors give me two more prescriptions now, just for writing that.)
I meant to thank you Jack specifically for the link to the controversy about Anderson, but also for mentioning 1967 and reminding me of what a wonderful year for sports that was, both as a spectator and a player.
Of course Brady was juicing. Just look at the amount of lean muscle mass he put on, and he also exhibits a classic sign of steroid use. His muscles looked packed onto his frame, like there isn’t enough room.
And as to his being gay, what the hell does that have to do with anything?????
Arghh. My single least fairly Barry Bonds defense…he was a HOF player without cheating. ( OK–“innocent until proven guilty” is the worst..or is it “But there are cheaters in the HOF already!”) Yes, and Benedict Arnold was an American patriot before turning traitor, and Leopold and Loeb were great students. SO WHAT? Ask Barry why he felt it necessary cheat to become better when he was already so good, or needed to do something that hurt the game so he could break records he wasn’t quite good enough to break in his prime. Why does anyone think—“he didn’t need to cheat to succeed, he just got unbelievably greedy” is a defense?
Yes, Benedict might have been on Mount Rushmore today, if he hadn’t turned to the dark side. That’s not an argument for ignoring what he did.
So Barry Bonds’s leg should go into the Hall of Fame?
Baseball and the media also bear a great deal of responsibility for having enabled the steroid abusers. The owners loved dingers flying out of the park and the sportswriters just said, “wow, that guy can sure bench press a lot!” Awful. Same with Tiger and golf. No one talks about how Tiger works out so hard in the PGA tour training trailer any more. That’s because he’s not juiced up any more. It’s also why I am pretty convinced he’ll never win another major. We under rate how important stamina is in sports and how greatly steroids contribute to stamina. Anyway, shame on the owners and the writers.
Maybe to mollify the fans who are bitterly disappointed by players who can’t manage a clean career, there should be a “Hall of It’s a Shame” instead of Fame. Then we can mourn and talk explicitly about those who screwed themselves out of their respective Halls of Fame, players who did themselves in.
Sadly there are many who belong in that Hall and can hold any professional sport.