I am certainly no San Diego fan, but I had some time and just happened to stumble onto the game in which, a short time later the Runge, Winters, Bradley affair took place. It all began when plate umpire Brian Runge asked Bradley if he had flipped his bat toward Runge's direction after being called out on strikes ending the fifth inning and that Winter's told him that Bradley had done so. Moments later after he singled Bradley, asked Winter's if he told Runge that he threw his bat and Winter's answer escalated the event, adding insult before injury, called Bradley a "...piece of sh*t..." First base coach Bobby Meacham San Diego manager Bud Black said Winter's used profanity. Bradley said it was, "the most unprofessional and most ridiculous thing I've ever seen." It was clear even to my 10-year-old neighbor who was watching the game next door with his dad, how the affair began. Although no one else mentioned it, it was the seed planting, provocative conversation point made by home plate umpire Brian Runge that initiated the problem. He should have known better than to listen to gossip and to bring the matter to Bradley's attention-his action was stupid, and unethical, it was also an indication of the attitude of MLB umpires who think that millions come to games to watch them play Pope and judge, but act more like pompous hypocrites. I recognized immediately that Bradley was the dupe in a three-way attempt to nail him. I think Runge should share the blame and whether or not the entire thing was a case of Pecksniffian, Judgmentalism or a trap, racially motivated mean spirited, vengeance, or merely a case of stupidity, I do not know. However, my panoply of reasons quickly boiled down to one as I began to read the myriad comments on various website by those who either never saw anything but the carefully edited video-short beginning and focusing on Bradley's seeming tantrum, ignoring what may have led to his rightful anger, or was racially motivated. Reading the comments and replies one could only come to once conclusion the vast majority of those writing were either uneducated boobs, or racists, and many seemed either adolescents or grown-ups with adolescent minds, if any. The more I read of the comments, the more racism, intolerance, and bitter hatred, even in the cases of those whose language supported that they were awfully young. Pre and post adolescent racism is and always has multiplied under conservative administrations, but for the time and place was never worse than right now and the past, near, six years. Barry Bonds has experienced more racism than did Hank Aaron, possibly because he demonstrates a less conservative or less diminutive personality than Aaron did when he played. It has been years since I have heard racism that is more veiled and more overt racism than have been escalating exponentially, since January 2001. Aaron is the sort of Corporate bought Black racists use as an example of an Uncle Tom where they see Bonds as an ungrateful bundle of anger. The recent attempt by Baseball collectors to Asterisk Bond's record-collectible baseballs, most notably his 756th Home Run Baseball, is an obvious attempt to indicate that Bonds is a cheat, and as we know in the many cases of blacks who sleep with white women or who excel in sports or entertainment, and especially who make a great deal more money than some whites, those who envy and therefore, criticize and slander, are in essense slandering and criticizing the One who Gifted these men of extraordinary ability, and those slanderers either know nothing about the game, less about physiology and indicate the prime racist faults; stupidity aided and abetted by lack of education and a hidden contempt for the God who gifted such men, instead of the slanderers. The only people qualified to make comments about Bonds Prodigious Home run proclivity, are not baseball pundits, coaches, players, managers or writers, or even physicians, it is scientists schooled thoroughly in the science of statistics and chance. As a Cultural Anthropologist, I can begin the discussion about steroids and Home run hitting, but it is a bit like spitting into the force of a hurricane-an uneducated, ignorant, spiteful, racist, hurricane. What we are experiencing in the sport of baseball concerning the new home run records of Barry Bonds, is an unreasonable, unreasoned, mob mentality of ignorant, racists and hate mongers, revisionists. It does no good to relate to Ox-Bow incidentalists with facts and realities. Hell is lined with the figures, which now vilify Bonds, Sosa and Palmiero as well as McGuire. However, unreasoning and ignorant the audience is, I shall for justice sake say it plainly and clearly before turning the matter over to specialists in chance.
In his book, JUICED, Jose' Canseco, claimed that more than 85% of MLB baseball players used anabolic Steroids. Many now claim that the bulking up steroid is the reason they were able to hit so many home runs, because it made them stronger. However, according to most drug analysts: Short term effects: slower reflexes, rapid pulse, dilated pupils, shallow rapid breathing, arousal, excitation, increased body temperature, distortions of perception (altered colors, shapes, sizes, distances, senses), exhilaration, anxiety, panic, sense of power, violent behavior, brain damage, convulsions, mood swings, hallucinations, memory gaps, dizziness, sleeplessness, constant yawning, mouth numbness, stomach discomfort, sweating, shivering, a feeling of separating from your body, weakness, clumsiness, decreased awareness of touch and pain, and sparse, incoherent speech, spontaneous abortion, congenital abnormalities. Long term effects: muscle tenseness, flashbacks of hallucinations, panic, profound depression, social withdrawal, lack of motivation and interest in life, anxiety, persistent speech problems, loss of memory, behavior similar to schizophrenic psychosis, coma, and heart and lung failure. Not exactly, these qualities would help MLB baseball players, and, in fact, make it close to impossible for a player to time MLB pitching at all. The products work against speed of eye hand coordination, bat speed and clear vision, by blurring and distorting vision. The argument of records being broken because of steroid is ludicrous and an example of blear-witted, hebetudinous, thinking, and superstition, fed by bigotry to overcome education and science. These are evident in societies, which ignore logic and science in favor of superstition and preconceived and obviously absurd fantasies. However, even more damaging, the argument that steroids, even if taken, according to Jose' Canseco' s book were taken by 85% of MLB players. Even if he was liberal in his estimate that would mean that the vast majority of major league players were using the same drugs that accusers point to Bonds, Sosa, McGuire and Palmiero used. That indicates a level playing field for the majority of players in the league taking a drug that hindered rather than helped hit a baseball thrown so fast that only a tiny percentage of humans in the world can hit with any consistency. So, then why a large percentage of the 85% challenge or break records? For instance in 1907-1908 1907 and 1908, with a league-wide batting average of .239, slugging average of .306, and ERA under 2.4. That year, the Chicago White Sox hit three home runs for the entire season!
In 1930 when the ball was so juiced that it was evident to all, in both league's whole team batting averages went up by an average of 40 to 60 points over the averages of the period from 1901-1918, batting and homerun production nearly tripled. In 1909, Ben Shibe created a cork-center for the ball, which was manufactured by the Reach Company, the ball supplier for the American League. Spalding, which supplied baseballs to the National League, also designed a cork-centered ball. This led to a spectacular change in scoring in both leagues. The AL went from .239 to .273 following the new ball in 1911. The AL and NL Average BA went from .239 in 1910 to .272 in 1912. The near impossible to hit spitball, and the use of the same baseball, which by the second inning was brown and green stained by second inning by the fact that the same ball was used throughout the game and often never replaced, all made for lower scores. Some teams tailored their fields to meet the nature of their teams. Faster players mean that owners mowed and grew thicker higher grass. Teams with slugger, made the fences closer and not as tall. If their key hitters were left handed the right field fences were closer, with lower walls, if right handed, visa-versa, as a result their homerun totals went up. If their best hitters were single and doubles hitters, the fences were higher and farther away, and the grass in the infield was higher and thicker and the base lines were banked for bunts, and the base paths harder for their faster runners to run better, steal more bases, like Cobb and Sam Crawford, stealing bases and hitting doubles and triples and high batting averages, and then the whole team hit more doubles and triples and stole more bases. The owners manipulated circumstances, stadia, fields and implements to their advantage and setting of new records. The dead-ball era ended of a sudden in 1920 and 1921, when Babe Ruth hit more home runs in each of those two seasons than each of 14 of the 16 teams in both leagues in both seasons. By 1921, teams were scoring more than 40% more runs and hitting more than four times as many home runs as they did in 1901-1918, per season. More than once after that, in 1930, 1951, 1961, 1994 and 1998, the liveliness of the balls increased, always by covert actions of the league and so did home run production. The dropping of the pitcher's mound from 18" to 10" in 1968 gave rise to higher scores and ERA's. However, throughout all of these management manipulations there were few complaints by fans, they liked the higher scores.
In 1991 and 1994, to avert strikes baseball increased ball liveliness as I predicted before 1991, and manipulated changes in baseball and few people complained. When the idea of "Ties go to the home team," were expanded to "If at all possible, home team wins," and home away records move from 52%-55%% of home games won and 48%-45% of away games won by 60% of the teams to 60%-65% of home games won and 40% of away games by 70% of the teams to keep the crowds coming, we who are blessed with the vision have seen clearly what the others have missed. Those with eyes that see and ears that hear see and hear and the others are blind. When evil has entered the realm of child-like joy, turned the purity of a sport men love into money and deceit, death by force follows, and all hell comes on its heels. Throughout all of it, everyone simply moved up a notch in statistics, but the same players who starred earlier merely did better and starred with even better statistics. As new young players came into the league, they also starred or failed to depend on their abilities and proclivities. The same thing happened in 1961, 1994, 1998-2007. If, indeed, as Canseco indicated, 85% of baseball players were on anabolic steroids, didn't they all have the same chance as the other's had before them when MLB manipulated changes that were in essence cheating? Why did not they all, have incredible years? Did they not have an equal chance to hit 60-70, and more home runs in a season? Sammy, Barry and Mark simply were better before the drugs and remained so despite the drugs, if they took them. Actually if they did take anabolic steroids to bulk up, and become muscle bound they hindered their chances of hitting better unless pitchers were thow 40 MPH instead of 90-100 + mph. It has been estimated that the apparent Mutant, Babe Ruth, whose reflexes and vision were tested and reported to be Superhuman. The chance of another human having his skills in both pitching and hitting, like Michelagnello, may never be seen again. In essence, when the conspiratorial nature of the corporate "sports" owners caused new records to be established with changes to the ball, the grass, the dumbest people in society, which percentage is growing rapidly, didn't get it, hear it, or see it, and so they embraced their hatred. In his book, Steroids and Home Runs, Professor Emeritus Arthur De Vany expounds brilliantly on the probability of home run hitting and steroids Department of Economics, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine www.arthurdevany.com asdevany@uci.edu And I quote: "ABSTRACT There has been no change in MLB home run hitting for 45 years, in spite of the new records. Players hit with no more power now than before. Records are the result of chance variations in at bats, home runs per hit, and other factors. The clustering records are implied by the intermittency of the law of home runs. Home runs follow a stable Paretian distribution with infinite variance. The shape and scale of the distribution have not changed over the years. The stable Paretian law of home runs generalizes the laws of extreme human performance developed by Pareto, Lotka, Price, and Murray. The greatest home run hitters are as rare as great scientists, artists, or composers. Home Runs The pace of new records in recent years is due to the extraordinary accomplishments of three prodigious hitters. We have lucky enough to see three Babe Ruth's in this generation. Hitters such as these may never appear again. You cannot take an ordinary player and turn them into home run hitters of the accomplishment of Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa by dosing them with steroids. It may even be harmful. Home run hitting of that magnitude is as incomparably rare as the greatest works of science or art. That is the missing element in discussions of home run hitting; the extraordinary players that hit them in record numbers are as rare as great scientists and artists. There is no explanation for genius of that rank. There is no basis to form expectations of when a player of that caliber might appear. Critics who have nothing but speculation and poor science to go on diminish their accomplishments. However, arguments over records are as old and as shallow now as they were back in 1961 when Roger Maris' record was marked with an asterisk because he played more games than Babe Ruth. Well, so did The Babe play more games than Ned Williamson and so have Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire played under a longer schedule than Maris. It is time to move beyond this dispute. The integrity of the game is not at stake every time a record falls. That is part of the game. MLB has a strong interest in maintaining its fans and its history. Moreover, the players have their own rights to their bodies and to their chance at history. Let the players and MLB work out their own solution to the performance drug issues. It is in their clear interest to do so and their interests align more closely to the fans than those of Congress. More importantly, there is no evidence to support a drastic law mandating testing. It took more than 80 years and more than 100,000 player-years of baseball for 5 home run hitters of the caliber of Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds to appear. We have been lucky enough to witness three of them in the past few years. To diminish their accomplishments based on speculations and rumors about steroids, as members of Congress and the media have done, have the facts and the science wrong and is profoundly ignorant of the statistical laws of human accomplishment. McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds are home run geniuses, not ordinary hitters on steroids; they are the Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven of home runs. Will another player of the prowess of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds ever appear again? Even greater performances are possible because the law of home runs has a long Paretian upper tail with positive and non-vanishing probability mass. However, the chances are small. The law of home runs says that the probability that Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs would be broken is 0.0109. Given more than 100,000 tries in nearly 80 years, it was almost sure to fall. Barry Bonds' record of 73 will be harder to break. According to the law of home runs, the probability that his record will be broken is 0.007206." For the bigots, the racists, it is the steroids-well those who think so are the dumbest asses on the planet, and the most deaf. In short, it ain't the drugs, it's the system, as things change the same players merely move up a few notches, as they have for the last 131 years. "How does all of this play into G W Bush? Racism, slander, misrepresentation, manipulation of circumstances and battle fields and every segment of society to their advantage-outlaws making "law" that covered them and no one else. We live I a time when ball games are fixed not by gamblers but by "officials" hired by the owners to shave and squeeze, so home teams can win and keep the suckers coming in. They manipulate outcomes right before the eyes of blind watchers of games, and they manipulate the outcomes of nations and people right before the eyes of men and nations and only a handful see, and hear, the end is near for justice, honor and light and the best of us will be taken before hell covers the earth. Ten years ago, I said the Anti-Christ is only a few years from the White House and his followers have now outnumbered the elite, the enlightened. Those who can neither hear nor see, run rampant and amok, among the sighted end the enlightened and life is about to take the land of milk and honey into a land of acid rain, hell fire and evil, unknown here in 4.5 billion years. The Fundamentalists were right and wrong. The end times are here, all right, but not for the people or the reasons they believe. "Even the party of the sainted Prophet FDR, who was indeed a human with common faults, just as was Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus), but none the less, a prophet who tried to overcome the Hun-Nazi-Fascist. He seemed to have succeeded, but only temporarily, but his party was overwhelmed with the evil and they to are headed, by the culture of death and lust for riches and the high life. All is now lost and all we without power can do is pray for the Seven Angels of Death and Righteousness, to come clean out the Huns and the DU-238, and cleanse the planet over the next 4.5 Billion years of the half life of the evil from hell brought by the dark angels of hell to the surface of the planet to destroy all that God created." Good Night and God Bless
