Originally posted by jrg:
Originally posted by skeetskeet:
Whether you liked Bonds or not, thought he did steroids or not... Noone was more intimidating as a hitter. He was a freaking video game player.
So was most players during that era. Steroids ruined all of that. 
How did steroids ruin it though? You enjoyed that era. It was exciting. The fact that players were using disrupts history a bit, but baseball has never been about uniformity in ANY aspect. They group together the players/numbers from the dead ball era. The entire Ruth era all the way into the 40's was whites only. Black players were all in the negro leagues, and hispanic/asian players werent accepted either. The early/mid 1940's were counted the same, even though half the league was away at war. Pitchers used to get away with murder doctoring the ball. Baseball always had a heavy abuse of substances that provided extra energy. Greenies/special coffee werent performance enhancing? They had been a part of baseball for a very long time.
Stadiums are all different shapes and sizes, leagues have different rules, the talent pool gets more and more diluted as expansion teams are added, etc.
The point is, the steroids era wouldve been a total abomination and asterisk on baseball history if the game was otherwise uniform. Its anything but that, so for someone to decide one era was fair and another unfair is totally arbitrary.
If you didnt test positive for any banned substances, I dont see how you can be crucified.
Major League Baseball should be the ones taking the heat, not Bonds/McGwire/Sosa, etc. they blatantly turned a blind eye to the culture that developed because it rescued the game from the 1994 strike. Then after fan outcry they turned around on those same players and blacklisted them.
