Floral Park Mayor assures us Babe Ruth would have taken steroids. Would Babe be ahead of Barry today?
The mayor of Floral Park NY tells us Babe Ruth would have taken steroids, had the drugs been available. From the Floral Park Dispatch:
Lance Williams, an investigative reporter and co-author of the exhaustively researched Game of Shadows, reports that as many as 80 percent of all baseball and track and field athletes have used performance enhancing drugs. Some have argued that performance drugs are so widespread in professional sports that the competitive balance remains unaltered. But this is besides the point; the tragedy is that the cultural bias toward success complete with its rewards of riches and fame has claimed, degenerately, a generation of stellar athletes seen as role models for maturing athletes.
This is not a moral indictment of the modern athlete who often sees doping not only as not cheating but necessary in order to be competitive. The temptations are frightfully seductive since these drugs are extremely effective, the payoffs staggeringly high and the prospect of getting caught, despite recent revelations, generally low. I have little doubt that if steroids had been around when Babe Ruth was playing, the Babe, phenomenal ballplayer though he was, would have been chugging the stuff down in his beer.
A good history of anabolic steroid development can be found at Steroid.com:
Later, in 1929 a procedure to produce an extract of potent activity from bull's testicles was attempted, and in 1935 a more purified form of this extract was created. A year later, a scientist named Ruzicka synthesized this compound, testosterone, from cholesterol, as did two other scientists, Butenandt and Hanisch (3). Testosterone was, of course, the first anabolic steroid ever created, and remains the basis for all other derivations we have currently being used in medicine today. Testosterone was then used in 1936, in an experiment demonstrating that nitrogen excretion of the castrated dog could be increased by giving the dog supplemental testosterone, and this would increase its body weight. (4) Shortly after this time, the Nazi´s were rumored to have given their soldiers anabolic
steroids, but that rumor seems to be largely undocumented...
In 1934 and 1935 Ruth's baseball career and his physical condition started failing. The Babe might have sought out some anabolic aids to push his career more. Here are the last 3 Ruth years at ages 38, 39, and 40.
Year Ag Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG *OPS+ TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP
1933 38 NYY AL 137 459 97 138 21 3 34 103 4 5 114 90 .301 .442 .582 176 267 0 2 AS
1934 39 NYY AL 125 365 78 105 17 4 22 84 1 3 104 63 .288 .448 .537 161 196 0 2 AS
1935 40 BSN NL 28 72 13 13 0 0 6 12 0 20 24 .181 .359 .431 118 31 0 0 2
Now, lets look at the Bonds, Barry Bonds from age 38 on. Examine the numbers closely: despite about the same number of at bats and interestingly the same number of hits, Bonds's SLG blows Ruth out of the water. After 40, the rest of Bonds's career is frosting. If Ruth broke down more than Bonds, then someone explain the stolen bases Ruth racked up, comparable to Bonds. (also think of Ruth as a DH)
Year Ag Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG *OPS+ TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP
2003 38 SFG NL 130 390 111 133 22 1 45 90 7 0 148 58 .341 .529 .749 231 292 0 2 61 10 7 SS,MVP-1,AS
2004 39 SFG NL 147 373 129 135 27 3 45 101 6 1 232 41 .362 .609 .812 263 303 0 3 120 9 5 SS,MVP-1,AS
2005 40 SFG NL 14 42 8 12 1 0 5 10 0 0 9 6 .286 .404 .667 174 28 0 1 3 0 0
2006 41 SFG NL 130 367 74 99 23 0 26 77 3 0 115 51 .270 .454 .545 156 200 0 1 38 10 9
2007 42 SFG NL 126 340 75 94 14 0 28 66 5 0 132 54 .276 .480 .565 170 192 0 2 43 3 13 AS
As one can see, Barry Bonds's "fitness routine" in his late career propelled past the Babe. Indeed, had the Babe sought out someone like Greg Anderson or Victor Conte, he would not be sitting on 714 home runs today.
Comments