By Sal Marinello

Health and Fitness Advice

Part 1

Baseball statistical maven Bill James published a paper last month detailing his thoughts on the steroid in baseball issue, and wrote that he was, “finally ready to say what I have to say about it.” James makes some good points along the way, but overall his 4-page missive is a mess of inconsistency, flawed logic and bad information.

When James’ paper was first made public, I read excerpts of it in a couple of wire service stories that had the effect of making me think James had done good. As a matter of fact, I told a couple of colleagues that I thought James had made some good points. However, when I read the full text I was more than surprised by the approach taken by James.

James starts off with the statement that, “The use of steroids or other Performance Enhancing Drugs will mean nothing in the debate about who gets into the Hall of Fame and who does not.” Nothing like starting off with a bold statement to make your position clear and get people’s attention.

The problem is that James follows this opening salvo with his analysis of steroids, “Steroids keep you young. You may not like to hear it stated that way, because steroids are evil, wicked, mean, and nasty and youth is a good thing, but…that’s what it means. Steroids help the athlete resist the effects of aging.” James goes on to look into his crystal ball to tell us that in the future not only won’t steroids disappear from our culture, but that “everybody is going to be using steroids or their pharmaceutical descendants.”

According to James, not only will steroids assume a Soma-like status because doctors are going to routinely prescribe drugs that will help us live to be 200, 300 or 1000

In 40 or 50 years every citizen will take anti-aging pills everyday.

People in the future will look back on the users from the steroid era as being pioneers and not rule-breakers that cheated to gain an advantage.

Our children and grandchildren are going to be steroid users and will view the banning of PEDs “as a bizarre artifice of the past”

James’ argument that steroids and other anti-aging drugs will be used regularly and his view of the future are as off base as is statement that, “The argument for discriminating against PED users rests upon the assumption of the moral superiority of non-drug users.” This declaration is frightening as it clearly implies that those who follow the rules are not morally superior to those who break the rules.

The statistical expert has gone off the rails and lost all credibility. But it gets worse. In the ensuing paragraphs James favors us with these gems.

*A steroid user will get elected to the Hall of Fame and then acknowledge he used steroids.

*Some players who used steroid will get in which will open the floodgates so all users get in.

*Compares the attitudes towards rule-breaking PED users with the attitudes about sexuality on television of a generation ago. I am not making this up..

You have to read this to believe it.

Dick Allen is going to get into the Hall of Fame.

Andy Pettitte is probably getting a plaque in Cooperstown and when he does, “he is going to speak up for Roger Clemens.” I am not making this up, either.

Part 2

Baseball’s preeminent statistical expert has gives us his thoughts on the issue of steroids and baseball and there’s a lot to talk about as a result. This is part two of my look at his paper titled, “Cooperstown and the ‘Roids.”

James gives us this mind boggling passage, “The discrimination against PED users in Hall of Fame voting rests upon the perception that this was cheating. But is it cheating if one violates a rule that nobody is enforcing, and which one may legitimately see as being widely ignored by those within the competition?” This is another, “Wow!” moment. As in, “Wow, WTF is he talking about? Where has he been!”

James doesn’t seem to remember that the league wasn’t able to/didn’t test for steroids until recently, and cannot and will likely never be able to test for human growth hormone. Furthermore, regardless of whether or not the league has the ability to test for every PED, if MLB states that the use of these substances is prohibited, any player who uses them is breaking the rules. James also doesn’t bring up the fact that not one baseball player, and to my knowledge, not one athlete has come out and admitted to using steroids and/or said that using them during the years when everyone was doing it, wasn’t cheating.

As a matter of fact, players have gone to great lengths to hide their usage from the authorities, their peers and fans, from wagging their fingers in denial at congressional hearings to telling people they didn’t want to talk about the past.

Towards the end of the paper James mentions how Will Clark was a great player who was historically under-rated because, “his numbers were dimmed by comparison to the steroid-inflated numbers that came just after him. Will Clark in the pre-steroid era, was a much better player than Rafael Palmeiro.”

James goes on to say that he would not argue with a person who did not support a player for the Hall of Fame because he was a steroid user and, therefore, a cheater. We writes that Will Clark has a “right to feel cheated out of a fair chance to compete for honors in his time, and, if you chose to look at it from the standpoint of Will Clark, I don’t think that you are wrong to do so.”

James writes that he doesn’t believe “history will look at this issue from the standpoint of Will Clark.” The sad thing is that Bill James is one of the few people in the position to prevent/correct this injustice. Who better to “man up,” and make the case for the non-cheaters than the leading baseball statistician of all-time?

It’s sad that a noted expert like Bill James chose not to take a stand and call PED users cheaters. I don’t say this because I believe Clemens, Bonds, Sosa, McGwire and the rest of the lot are cowards and cheaters and want a guy with James’ stature to be on my side of the argument. I say this because James didn’t provide any provocative *cough* rational *cough* arguments to support his position, but takes the easy way out and says PED users will get in simply “because.”

Before reading this paper, if I had heard that Bill James had made the case for why steroid users should be baseball’s Hall of Fame my first thought would have been, “Great, I can’t wait to see how he makes his case.” Rather than provide a thought provoking lesson, James serves up a muddled, bordering on incoherent, collection of “arguments” that adds nothing to the debate.