Jim Bouton, former MLB pitcher and author of Ball Four, throws some high hard ones at steroid users

After a short hiatus to see Barry Bonds annihilate his toe in San Diego, we resume our own annihilation of written English.

Jim Bouton discusses amphetamines and steroids in a blog interview (All on the Field).  Bouton says the amphetamines (greenies) reigned in his day.  He compares amphetamines with steroids/HGH.  We loved Ball Four, and see that Bouton has updated the work.

You reference "greenies" several times in the book. How extensive was their use when you played? Did everybody use them?

I don't know, but in the book I asked Don Mincher how many guys are taking Greenies. I said "Fifty percent?" And he said, "Hell, way more than that." I would probably guess maybe 60 to 70 percent.

But you have to distinguish greenies -- the peptos as they were called -- from steroids. Greenies only allowed you to play up to your ability. If you didn't get a good night's sleep, or you had a hangover, it would allow you to play up to your ability, or at least some players thought that. It did not create a different human being. It did not change your physical makeup. It did not allow you to play beyond your ability, your normal ability as steroids do and as Human Growth Hormone does.

Bouton's separation of amphetamines from steroids seems a canard.  Amphetamines certainly constitute a performance enhancer.  Stimulants improve concentration and motor coordination.  There is little room for a hierarchy in PED rankings.

Bouton gets back on track here with his next response.  He points out that that the MLB Player's Association protects suspected steroid users from unnecessary search an seizures by management.  However, at the same time, when the MLBPA is too obstructionistic they hurt those players who do not want to dope, to keep up.  It is a conundrum.

As you mentioned, these days it's HGH and steroids that are all the buzz. How do you think the game evolved to this point where no slugger or power pitcher is immune from suspicion?

Baseball got itself into this position because it has refused to have a strong drug policy, and for that I blame the Players Association. They're very short-sighted. They elevated the players' rights to privacy above their rights to good health and fair competition. The Players Association should have protected the players who were not taking the drugs; even if most of the guys wanted them, the Players Association should have protected the non-users who have to compete against the users.

It's really not fair, is it?

No, it's not, and now you've got a bunch of records that are going to be hard to break. It's unfair from two levels: first of all, it's unfair to the records that were broken and were set by guys years ago who weren't on performance enhancing drugs. And now they're going to be broken in the future by guys who aren't going to be on performance enhancing drugs because they're going to have tougher drug laws.

So you're going to have a set of records that are going to be distorted and are going to be standing for longer than they should be.

This is the point in track too. There are track records almost certainly recorded under the influence of PEDs (even if track purists do not want to discuss this issue).  Those records are so far out in terms of human performance, they may not be approached now that the typical PEDs are farrowed out by anti-doping procedures.

So are you in the camp, then, that would go for asterisks attached to some of those records?

Yeah. A blue ribbon panel needs to be appointed and be given a launch budget and investigate just exactly what kind of impact steroids have on batting and pitching. And also [to determine] what period of time were they prevalent, and to what extent have they affected the numbers, the records.

This would be not a punitive thing; this would be investigatory simply to establish which records are legitimate and which ones are not. And then, they need to figure out where the impact is. If it's on home runs -- for example, 40 percent increase in home runs as a result of steroids -- they need to apply those numbers to the numbers that were actually hit so that next to the actual number of home runs hit, you'd have, in parentheses, a steroid adjusted number. I call it the S.A.N. It would sit there in parentheses next to the actual number hit.

Very nice thoughts by Bouton on how to correct the PED enhanced records.  The problem is actually determining what the influence on performance PEDs gave the drug cheats.

Good interview, worth reading.