Posted By:
warshawlawMost everyone is right here and most everyone is wrong.
As you age your metabolism slows and your natural levels of testosterone drop. It becomes harder to maintain a specific weight and level of strength without increased work, and at some point the diminution in performance overwhelms even the hardest work. Most athletes until relatively recent times lacked the training, skills and resources to crank up their training regimens and to reconfigure what they do to combat the lack of resilience you have as you age. I am in better condition at 40 than I was at 35 because I started a program of really strenuous yoga. My weight has crept upwards, though. Many athletes eat like crap and work out without sufficient guidance relative to their bodies when they are young, but youth compensates. There are a lot of athletes in a lot of sports, not just baseball, who are extending their productivity naturally, so the folks who indict all older athletes as steroid junkies are just plain wrong.
By the same token, there are athletes out there who use banned or illegal substances to enhance their performances. Big Mac got caught with a now-banned substance. He did nothing illegal or against the rules at that time. Palmiero plain cheated and got nailed. Bonds may have used steroids (I think he did and I don't buy his claims of ignorance, but that's IMHO). The folks who denigrate the accomplishments of older athletes are right as to some of them.
There are also other effects to consider. Read Bill James. He concludes that Aaron's phenomenally long production is partially a park effect (moving from unfriendly Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1966). I think the same is true for Bonds. There are friendly confines out there in more places than Chicago. Pac Bell was designed with a chip-shot right field for lefthanded power hitters. Coincidentally, Bonds is one and there is a very good argument that he has benefitted from a change of venues for 81 games a year. When the team moved from Candlestick to Pac Bell in 2000, his power numbers spiked.