Mike Piazza took steroids and he is not the first steroid user to make the Hall of Fame.

So when the headline shouts "no juice," the headline is incorrect.

I don't know for sure that Piazza took steroids, but I'm not an idiot. I don't have to prove it in a Court of Law, I just have to intelligently observe what is right in front of my face.

For 100 years, human beings were not blasting baseballs 450 feet to the opposite field, and then suddenly a 65th-round draft pick is doing it on the regular.


Next year will be interesting not because of Manny (no chance), but because of writer favorite Pudge Rodriguez throwing things for a loop. A 'roid-head who didn't actually hit an unseemly number of HRs and who was an "old school" favorite for a long time. So we'll see how dedicated the voters are to their dubious anti-'roid principles.


This blurb also caught my eye:

"Starting pitchers Curt Schilling (39.2% to 52.3%) and Mike Mussina (24.6% to 43%) and longtime Seattle DH Edgar Martinez (27.0% to 43.4%) also made sizable gains from last year."

Edgar Martinez at age 37: .324/423/.579, 37 HRs, 145 RBIs, 31 doubles, 100 runs.

Ken Griffey Jr. at age 37: .277/.372/.496, 30 HRs, 93 RBIs, 24 doubles, 78 runs.


Edgar Martinez at age 40: .296/.406/.489, 24 HRs, 98 RBIs, 25 doubles, 72 runs.

Ken Griffey Jr. at age 40: .184/.250/.204, 0 HRs, 7 RBIs, 0 doubles, 6 runs, quit baseball and drove home to Florida in the middle of a road trip.


So when you make a case for Edgar Martinez's HOF candidacy, you are making a case for a man who used PEDs.

Without the benefit of PEDs, 37-year-old men playing professional baseball don't hit 37 HRs and drive in 145 runs.


I'm not saying in the history of the world, no one else has accomplished this. Hank Aaron also accomplished this. Babe Ruth.

There might be somebody else, like, in the history of baseball ... Honus Wagner won a batting title at age 37 in 1911 ... led the league in an unheard-of stat now known as OPS.

So that's three in the history of baseball who were pretty darned good, and I didn't find anybody else, though my search wasn't particularly exhaustive ... and those three are among the game's ultimate immortals ... and Edgar Martinez was probably the best of the bunch at age 37 ... and I didn't check Edgar's steroid-era contemporaries, because I know a lot of them were putting up extraordinary numbers late in their careers.

C'mon, man. Think about it.


We shouldn't be ashamed to use our brains. That's what they're there for.

Piazza took PEDs, Edgar took PEDs, lots of players during this time period took PEDs.

Please, when you vote these people into the HOF, at least do it with your eyes wide open.