Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
You're asking how cheating is different from agreed upon manipulations? When they built new Yankee Stadium it's not like the Yankees needed to get all 30 teams to sign off on their dimensions. The league's rules allow them to build their stadium to already agreed upon limits.
I really don't see any correlation between a new stadium and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire deciding to cheat and pretending they weren't.
How did they make baseball worse? How do you think? When there are discussions that have to take place about "the REAL home run king" there's a problem with the sport. It should be black and white but it's not because cheaters cheated and some of the most hallowed records in all of sports became artificial and cheap.
Think about the rest of your life. When do you ever prefer something less than the real thing? That's what you got for a decade or so when baseball was dominated by players who weren't actually very good at it.
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O----M----G
LOL!!!
You don't get it at all, do you?
The reference to the ballpark changes and the changes to the types of balls used had to do with your initial comment I was responding to.
They brought in money and eyes but made baseball exponentially worse.
MLB made a ton of changes and took the game from what was once called the Dead-Ball Era to a more modern game with an emphasis on HRs. There wasn't any intended direct correlation between McGwire and Sosa using PEDs and new stadiums, the reference was to show how MLB maybe looked at such changes in trying to increase HRs as a way to promote the sport, and make more money. Back then, to help offset the gambling issues turning off fans, and in the '90s with fans turned off by the player's strike. In the 1920's, MLB set the changes up and initiated them themselves. In the '90s, maybe MLB latched onto something that others like McGwire and Sosa started doing, and by a turning a blind eye and not actively opposing it, more or less unofficially endorsed the use of PEDs by more players, all to achieve MLB's true goal of enhancing the game, attracting more fans, and of course, making more money! The point being that MLB is not at all totally innocent and not at least partially at fault for most all of this. MLB only changed their tune and upped the PED enforcement when fans started complaining. Which is what I was getting at with the references to how fans may feel about players and what they do, or not do, so as to acceptably train and play the best baseball they can.
And as for how McGwire and Sosa made baseball worse, why are asking me, I never said they made it worse? I was asking YOU for that answer, in response to what YOU had said, and obviously you either can't, or won't give an answer. So, am I supposed to read your mind and answer for you then? No, I'm not going to do that, or go putting words in your mouth. Or is this all about your next comment referring to supposed issues arising from having discussions of the "REAL home run king"? So is that it, you think PEDs made baseball worse because certain records became supposedly easier to break? If so, that is one of the most ridiculous arguments I have ever heard!
Remember me commenting about teams that had coffee laced with uppers in them? I think the Yankees back in the '50s and '60s were one of the teams I had heard rumors of as doing this. So, is it at all possible someone like Maris, who set one of those HR records you're supposedly talking about, may have been taking advantage of some otherwise not so normal performance enhancers himself? Or if you're specifically referring to Ruth, then my earlier comments about all the changes being made to the baseballs and the sizes of the ballfields are also relevant. Go back 100 years and I'll bet there were tons of fans that despised the changes and the way the game had been altered and now seemed to focus on hitting home runs. At the time, the Dead-Ball Era had been around for around 50 years or so, what about the discussions people may have had back then about how it maybe wasn't fair to earlier power hitters during the Dead-Ball Era to have Ruth replace their records after making the baseballs livelier, the stadium fences shorter, and other things like outlawing spitball pitchers? If someone thinks like that, they're as bad as the Russians, picking a time when your supposed "empire" was at its largest, and claiming going forward that is always how it has been, and now how it always should be going forward. But in this case, picking a time baseball was played a certain way, and then claiming any changes to it ruin the game and make it no longer real because how those changes can possibly affect old records...............tsk, tsk, tsk, how dare they!
Baseball rules, equipment, stadiums, training, medical advancements, and on and on, have been changing constantly. My question(s) to you again, are basically why did fans/MLB suddenly draw the line at PEDs, and yet still allow (and actually revere in many cases) other known baseball cheaters, such as all the known spitball pitchers in the HOF I've previously mentioned, to stay in the HOF with virtually no complaints at all? Otherwise, how can you complain about the one, but not about the other? So, do you have similar thoughts and feelings against the HOF status of those pitchers I've previously mentioned, Ford, Drysdale, Sutton, Perry, and Rogan? And if not, why not, they're just as guilty, if not more so, of breaking MLB rules and cheating as alleged PED users?
And as to your comment that baseball during the PED era was dominated by players that weren't very good.......really?!?!?! Please explain then how after the 150+ years professional baseball has been around that ONLY during the decade or so that PEDs were being used that there were supposedly no good dominant baseball players? Did it ever occur to you that if upwards of half or more of the ballplayers during that time were actually taking one form of PEDs or another, and that includes both hitters and pitchers, they were doing so merely to keep a somewhat level playing field amongst all the other players taking PEDs as well? So that the players taking PEDS who were dominant would have likely been just as dominant if no one used any PEDs at all during that time.
And if you choose to say that baseball during that PED era wasn't "real", I can just imagine many people right after the Dead-Ball Era ended up saying the exact same thing you are. It isn't the same game, and the changes make a mockery of some of the records set in the 50 or so years before that time.....exactly same thing you're complaining about now. Your excuse seems to be that was okay back then because MLB set up and initiated the changes, as opposed to merely going along and showing a blind eye to changes that players had initiated on their own. My comment/question again is that why did MLB have to outlaw and ban PEDs after the fact, or at least wait so long to really do anything about them then/ Most every change ever made by MLB can affect earlier records and achievements as well, but you choose to supposedly only pick on the PED users and blame them for such changes ruining baseball, and look at those entirely differently than any other changes made by MLB over the years.