Steroids Are Not Magic Home Run Beans
Well, it has begun. As Aaron Judge enters the final month of the baseball season with 55 home runs, we are starting to see takes about what constitutes the “real” record. Jon Heyman, fresh off lying about Fernando Tatis’ steroid suspension, wrote another ridiculous piece saying that the totals of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds were all tainted because they “transformed their bodies into home run machines” by taking steroids.
And, look, I recognize that many fans have serious and fair reservations about players who used steroids. For one, steroid use was illegal, so even if baseball didn’t have official rules against their use prior to 1991, and didn’t test until 2003, it’s reasonable to think that taking them crossed an ethical line. There are also serious adverse health effects associated with taking steroids, and so I understand why fans would not want to encourage that behavior. I even understand the nostalgia for a simpler time that romanticizes mid-century baseball as “purer” than the modern game (even if I think that impulse is false and ought to be resisted).
But let’s at least be honest about this stuff.
It is absurd what claims people can get away with when it comes to steroids. Suddenly people who never took a biology class after high school can diagnose steroid users based on their hat size, and tell you which home runs are caused by “chemistry” based on the size of someone’s forearms.
But, of course, none of this pseudo-science is grounded in anything. We saw this last month, when a bunch of people without dermatology degrees (and even one guy WITH such a degree) made empirically false statements about the ingredients in ringworm medications. And now we have a baseball writer and noted non-doctor like Heyman claim that steroid users “transformed their bodies.”
Let’s start with that phrase – “transformed their bodies” – which really irks me. It’s dripping with condescension and judgment, but it’s essentially meaningless: You “transform your body” when you exercise, when you take Tylenol, when you get a Cortisone shot – if you want to be literal about it, you do it when you get a haircut!
Of course, Heyman is suggesting that the specific way these players transformed their bodies was UNNATURAL. That PEDs cross some line between what is legitimate and what is chemically enhanced. But in order to do this, he has to mystify the actual effects of steroids, to pretend that they confer some advantage that is inherently disqualifying: “We know now their home runs came via chemistry.” As opposed to the home runs that are decreed by God…
Indeed, in the popular imagination, steroids have become little more than magical drugs that make you hit home runs. Last week, some jabroni at Barstool suggested that Albert Pujols’ recent resurgence – one of the best baseball stories of the year – could be attributed to PED use. There is, of course, no actual evidence of this, except the fact that he has hit a bunch of home runs recently. (Although, as Will Middlebrooks joked, this must mean steroids only work against left-handed pitching..)
If a player who wasn’t previously hitting home runs suddenly starts to, then that alone is evidence that they took the magic home run medicine.
But let’s be clear: Steroids do not cause home runs. All the best evidence we have suggests that the increase in home runs in the 1990s was primarily driven – as basically every surge in home runs in baseball history has been driven – by changes to the ball, not widespread use of steroids. That doesn’t mean players weren’t using steroids (it certainly seems like they were!), or that there wasn’t some marginal effect of steroid use, especially for specific players. But to say that the accomplishments of Bonds/Sosa/McGwire were primarily fueled by steroid use is to ascribe powers to steroids that they frankly do not have.
The way to think about this stuff is through the prism of the drug war, because the way fans and the media talk about PEDs is learned from the way people talk about other illegal drugs. In order to justify the draconian and arbitrary treatment of drug users, people exaggerate the power of those drugs, ascribing effects to them that are truly absurd and not grounded in any science. These mythical effects can become so widely accepted that nobody even questions them. In the 1930s, Hollywood made films about how using marijuana could drive you insane. The ability of drugs to give criminals “superhuman strength” is a recurring myth; it popped up about marijuana, crack cocaine, and just a few years ago about “flakka.” Right now, police officers around the country have so convinced themselves that you can overdose on fentanyl merely by touching it, that they are literally having panic attacks when they see the drug.
And baseball has its own little drug war on PEDs. The truth – as something like the Fernando Tatís suspension illustrates – is that baseball has drawn a truly arbitrary line around “banned substances,” one that primarily penalizes foreign-born players for taking drugs that are legal in their home country: Over 60% of the players who have been suspended under MLB’s drug use policy were born outside the United States (mostly in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic); that’s more than twice the share of foreign-born players in the league. For the horrible crime of living outside the FDA’s jurisdiction, these players are suspended for 80+ games, branded as cheaters, and unofficially banned from the Hall of Fame.
This is an absurd and stupid system. The only way to justify it is to imagine that PEDs are SO EVIL that there ought to be no limit on our ability to police them. It’s the same way that America’s repugnant drug war can only be justified by fantastical claims about the evils of drugs. So we imagine that steroids turn you into a home run hitting machine, and that crack turns you into an amoral superpredator. It sounds crazy, but it has to be true, right? How could we live with ourselves if it weren’t?
So, do you think its actually ok to talk in terms of “the real record” (because of juiced ball) and you just take issue with folks for talking about it for the wrong reason (steroids)?