Kensal-

I would be fairly confident that there were players that used steroids in the 80’s and earlier, but I doubt in large numbers. The substances were there, but what was required was a drug culture/work out culture. Once that is established, then drug use will spread through word of mouth and peer pressure.

But baseball has always been very backward regarding conditioning, and the general attitude that weights were bad for ballplayers persisted for a long time. I think this meant steroids entered baseball a lot later than football (which has always had a more experimental culture).

Weights and steroids are very closely linked- steroids don’t just magically make people muscular, they just assist recovery time and increase muscle gains from workouts. A steroid culture wasn’t really possible till ballplayers started pumping a lot of iron (although they were taking a lot of other drugs, like greenies and cocaine).

@ Kensai:  Yes, roids have been prevelant in high performance sports long before they were widely used in MLB ( to concur with VanD).  An obvious example is Ben Johnson in 88.  Johnson’s coach, Charlie Francis, testified at a royal commission that Ben and his other sprinters had been doing them for years.  As the years went by practically every other sprinter in that race turned up dirty as well.  And the stories about the East German “women” are legendary.

Ok, it’s unlikely that all supplements contain steroids but my point is that a lot do - see the recent Romero / GNC kerfuffle.  And the reason a lot of these supplements contain roids is that Congress deregulated the supplement industry and nobody really knows what is in this garbage.

Everybody that is muscular is on the juice.  Ok, that is untrue when applied to the general population but in high performance sports I think not.  In elite sports you can’t cede the tiniest advantage to your competitors, which is why players take the juice, it works.  I know you know, but it also helps keep you on the field also.

Off topic a bit but is Bonds still an ***hole in light of ARoid?

A couple of comments on this news . . . .

First, although releasing all the names would not reveal everyone who used performance enhancing drugs in 2003, I agree that it would be better than the drip-drip-drip option for just about everyone except for the media.  And I like the fact that the floodgate release would completely disarm the media. 

I know this has been said time and again, but everyone played a role in this problem, including management, labor, media etc.  It irks me that members of the media now trot around like bleeping crusaders, acting shocked and shaming people so that they can sell their products.  They should not be able to profit from their own nonfeasance.

Second, from a PR perspective, management/owners and labor really screwed the pooch on the anonymous testing.  If the purpose of the 2003 survey testing was to determine whether a regular testing program should be implemented, once management/owners and labor were satsified that the results of the survey testing supported a regular testing program, all documents, communications and other tangible things should have been destroyed.  Once both sides were satisfied that additional testing was needed, keeping things related to the 2003 survey served no business purpose.  Management/owners and labor had no obligation to keep anything related to the 2003 survey. 

Meanwhile, several Congressional investigations regarding performance enhancing drugs in baseball opened and closed.  How a light bulb did not go off in anyone’s head to get rid of everything before a fresh investigation started and a subpoena was served is amazing.  Well done!  Any “from this day forward” benefit realized by the Mitchell report (no matter how slight) was completely forfeited when baseball didn’t incinerate its records from the era.

I am a HUGE Yankee fan. Yes this sucks for us and all of baseball, BUT you know what , whoever leaked this should go to jail. These were supposed to be a secret. If you are going to leak names then leak them all.  why should these guys only be singled out? As far as HOF well lets see what Arods numbers are since STEROIDS are banned. If he tests POSITIVE while Steroids are banned then yes he shouldn’t be in the HOF but if he doesn’t test positive then i think he deserves to be voted in.

“Everybody that is muscular is on the juice.  Ok, that is untrue when applied to the general population but in high performance sports I think not.”

Why? Exactly?  I agree with your point about it working, it absolutely positively works excellently.  I disagree with the body type analysis.

Yes, Bonds is an example of pretty obvious use, even in the opinion of those who are closely familiar with steroids/weightlifting.  However, bodies like A-Rod are completely within reason.  Especially when you consider that working out is their livelihood.

For example, i’ve seen countless people use Brady Anderson’s or Nomar Garciaparra’s shirtless photos as evidence of “steroid bodies”.  That’s completely untrue.  Could they have used?  Absolutely, but they aren’t that big even among those who are regular gym goers.  I guess my point is that a lot of people, who probably have no clue about what you can achieve naturally, go around looking at everybody with any type of physique and now associate it with steroids.  That inference is shortsighted and ignorant.  Going by what somebody looks like is generally dumb, as Alex Rodriguez just proved. 

Steroids are not one singular drug, people seem to forget that.  Different drugs do different things.