* For the records

February 15, 2009

With the latest news of Rodriguez and Bonds comes a renewed cry to literally rewrite the record books. Tony Kornheiser has repeatedly called for some notation that many of these players are suspect. Let them into the Hall of Fame, he says, just make mention on the plaque that these guys might have cheated. Commissioner Bud Selig started out talking tough, threatening to punish A-Rod, then leaving it to the Yankee’s conscience, which would no doubt haunt him the rest of his days for letting down an adoring fandom,

Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt told MLB.com “A-Rod’s numbers shouldn’t count for anything. I feel like he cheated me out of the game.” If it was up to him, “any player who was proven to, or admitted to, using performance-enhancing drugs would have his numbers erased from baseball history.”

“Oswalt said he feels that way about a lot of players who have been proven steroid users,” according to the article.

But how would that work? Statistics are a form of accounting. If you simply omitted the numbers those players put up, things would be unbalanced. And what effect would that have on other, clean hitters? If a steroid-user hit a grand slam, would you subtract a run from the other three? What about the pitcher who gave up those runs? Would his record be adjusted accordingly?

I asked Alan Schwarz, author of The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics and a writer for The New York Times, for his thoughts. He sent me a link to his 2005 article, “Trying to Keep Records Pure Could Prove Futile,” in which he points out that cheating is as old as the game itself, but just got more sophisticated.

What should we do with pitchers like Gaylord Perry, who bragged about his spitball? Or Whitey Ford, who also admitted to tossing a scuffball on occasion. Or Norm Cash, who wasn’t agin using a corked bat? Or Denny McLain, who admitted to serving up the homer to Mickey Mantle that put him one up on Jimmy Foxx?

I then sent an e-mail to Lyle Spatz, chair of SABR’s Baseball Records Committee and a source for Schwarz’s article . He recalled the situation in 2005. “[W]hen the whole business of steroids and records first came up, with regard to Barry Bonds, I started getting calls from the press (including Alan) asking what we would do. I told them basically, that a record is a record is a record. The Baseball Records Committee’s charge is to determine to the best of our ability what the numbers are, not to make moral judgments about them.

In his committee’s April 2005 newsletter, Spatz wrote

In the immediate aftermath of the Jose Canseco book [Juiced], with its claims of rampant steroid use among players, I received several calls from reporters, as well as emails from several committee members, asking how the Baseball Records Committee would treat the accomplishments of the players mentioned. One committee member asked,”Do you honestly believe that self-admitted illegal performance enhancing users such as, Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco’s records reflect the integrity of the game?” Most, however, were interested specifically in Barry Bonds and how we would treat his final home run total if it passed Hank Aaron’s 755. Several used the word asterisk, referring to the supposed asterisk that is affixed to Roger Maris’s American League single-season home run record. Of course there is no asterisk next to Maris’s name and there won’t be one next to Bonds’s name should he surpass Aaron.

This is not to say that many people won’t make mental adjustments to these records and determine to their own satisfaction just how valid they are. However, while everyone is entitled to his own set of opinions, everyone is not entitled to his own set of facts. A record is a record is a record. Ken Caminiti has 239 career home runs, and Jose Canseco has 462. That will not change even though both admitted using illegal substances. Same goes for Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmiero and all the other players accused of using illegal substances.

It is not, our role to decide the purity of the conditions under which those records were achieved. We are not moralists. Our role at SABR is strictly to get the numbers right, that is to make sure, for example, that Don Sutton is credited with 324 wins and Gaylord Perry with 314, and not to decide which, if any, of those wins were accomplished by cheating.

Spatz also related an incident from the SABR convention in Seattle the following year.

“The keynote speaker at our luncheon was Jim Bouton, who opened with a diatribe against steroids. He called the effect they’d had on baseball’s record book an even greater menace to the game’s integrity than was the Black Sox scandal. Whether or not you agree with that, it is certainly a defensible position. What followed was not.

“Bouton proposed that SABR investigate the impact that steroids had on home runs and then make adjustments to all the totals. He wanted SABR to determine how many home runs in the “steroid era” were tainted and then replace each “tainted” players’ actual home run totals with this SABR adjusted total. (The actual number would appear alongside in parentheses.) Now such a proposal might go over well with an audience of Rotarians or members of the local church’s softball team, but it took a while for most of this audience to realize that Bouton was not being his usual irreverent self. He was serious about this.

“Coincidentally, Bouton and I happened to be waiting for cabs together that evening. I didn’t mention that SABR’s role was to get the numbers right, not to make judgments about them. I simply asked him if he was really seriously proposing this to a SABR audience. He said he was, and when I asked him if he’d thought through all the ramifications of such a proposal, like making adjustments to runs scored, RBI, ERA, hits allowed, etc. He said ‘nobody gives a shit about that stuff except you people.'”

In his e-mail, Spatz added that “as a lover of the game, a Yankee fan, and someone who predicted years ago that by the time he retired Rodriguez would be considered the greatest player ever, I am deeply disappointed.”

* * *

In today’s Times, columnist William C. Rhoden goes to the one former player most affected by Bonds and Rodriguez: Hank Aaron.

Last week, in the wake of Alex Rodriguez’s admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs between 2001 and 2003, there were suggestions that Commissioner Bud Selig might consider suspending Rodriguez and adjusting baseball’s record books to restore Aaron as the career home run leader. While it seems unlikely either would happen, Selig said in Thursday’s USA Today that he did not dismiss the idea of erasing Bonds’s record of 762 homers….

Aaron said he hoped Selig would leave the record book alone and simply allow Bonds’s career to speak for itself.

“It’s sort of a tricky call when you start going down that road of who is legitimate,” Aaron said.

Like Schwarz, Rhoden asked about the impact on the record book by circumstances that have been overlooked.

Major League Baseball did not allow African-American players until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Have there been calls to strike all records before baseball was integrated? Would Ty Cobb have set stolen base records if Cool Papa Bell, the legendary Negro leagues base-stealing king, had been allowed to play? Would Babe Ruth had been the home run king in his time had Josh Gibson, the Negro leagues home run king, been allowed to play?

In the 1960s and ‘70s, hundreds of players used amphetamines to get through a season, though hundreds did not. Why not find out who did and who didn’t and strike the records of those who did?

“In all fairness to everybody, I just don’t see how you really can do a thing like that and just say somebody isn’t the record holder anymore, and let’s go back to the way that it was,” Aaron said. Some would apparently like to roll back to 1974, when Aaron broke Ruth’s home run record; probably some would like to return to the 1935, when Ruth hit his last home run and let that stand as the “real” record.

“There’s no chance the record books can be altered,” Schwarz told me in a follow-up e-mail. “Selig’s just trying to please the masses, knowing full well he can’t follow through.”

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{ 2 comments }

1 * Steve Myers February 16, 2009 at 10:19 am

Regarding cheating ways, I was wondering…any current books chronicling the cheating ways of our boyhood heroes? I think we need to quantify the degree of cheating that has taken place. Altering one’s physical body rubs me far worse than a spitter or scuffed ball. There is something downright demonical and sci fi fantasy about PED’s. A spitter, in my opinion, is a clever application of the elements…like a shaved bat or excess pine tar.

2 * Wally February 16, 2009 at 11:45 am

Steve, so basically the cheating you grew up with is fine, but the way these modern players cheat is not ok? I could just as easily say steroids are a “clever application of the elements.”

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