Rubber Stamp
I'm not surprised this story didn't get more play in the media this week:
The rumors of juiced baseballs were floating around long before McGwire did his thing in 1998. It was quite prevalent before the andro story broke later that year.
Back in 1998, the preferred script was to sweep thoughts of performance enhancing drugs under the carpet. As I described in an earlier post, the last thing any member of our media wanted to do was entertain thoughts that McGwire (or Sosa, for that matter) was a cheater. And so any other ideas to explain the sudden home run boom were brought to bear, in the hopes that our heroes (and the media's meal tickets) would be spared any embarassing accusations.
But today it's a different story. There aren't enough soapboxes in the country for our pundit-orators to decry steroid use. And you're in denial if you don't demand that every suspected cheater be banned from the game, their names stricked from the record forever. As a result, any information that would spare our erstwhile heroes being spared embarassing accusations must be ignored.
Juiced baseballs does not preclude the possibility of juiced players (and vice versa). Any rational being understands this. But our punditocracy is anything but rational. The concept of juiced balls doesn't fit the script that all those big home run hitters are juicing. And so down the memory hole it goes...
A company that uses computer imaging claims baseballs had a larger rubberized core and a synthetic rubber ring in 1998, including the ball Mark McGwire hit for his 70th homer...
Universal Medical Systems Inc. said Wednesday that with the assistance of Dr. Avrami S. Grader and Dr. Philip M. Halleck from The Center for Quantitative Imaging at Penn State, it took images of 1998 baseballs.
"Examining the CT images of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball one can clearly see the synthetic ring around the core -- or `pill' -- of the baseball," UMS President David Zavagno said. "While Mark McGwire may or may not have used illegal steroids, the evidence shows his ball -- under the governing body of the league -- was juiced."
The rumors of juiced baseballs were floating around long before McGwire did his thing in 1998. It was quite prevalent before the andro story broke later that year.
Back in 1998, the preferred script was to sweep thoughts of performance enhancing drugs under the carpet. As I described in an earlier post, the last thing any member of our media wanted to do was entertain thoughts that McGwire (or Sosa, for that matter) was a cheater. And so any other ideas to explain the sudden home run boom were brought to bear, in the hopes that our heroes (and the media's meal tickets) would be spared any embarassing accusations.
But today it's a different story. There aren't enough soapboxes in the country for our pundit-orators to decry steroid use. And you're in denial if you don't demand that every suspected cheater be banned from the game, their names stricked from the record forever. As a result, any information that would spare our erstwhile heroes being spared embarassing accusations must be ignored.
Juiced baseballs does not preclude the possibility of juiced players (and vice versa). Any rational being understands this. But our punditocracy is anything but rational. The concept of juiced balls doesn't fit the script that all those big home run hitters are juicing. And so down the memory hole it goes...
posted by Bob at
9:49 PM
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