After the Mitchell Report, after Bonds fatigue, this brand of skepticism and anger was the mainstream position when it came to performance-enhancing drugs. If it isn’t the current default stance of the typical baseball fan, it’s mighty close.

i spend an hour or two a week browsing r/baseball and this is completely, dead, 180-degree wrong, at least when describing that demographic.

i don't know what the 'average' baseball fan thinks, i don't even know who that is anymore. as far as i can tell from going to games, the average baseball fan is a fat family of four who like the loud music all the stadiums play and don't actually know what's going on down on the field. my best approximation of what that "baseball fan" believes is: i'm a brewers fan, so i forgive ryan braun, but i hate david ortiz for taking steroids. etc

It’s not natural for a human being to ingest substantially more calories than they need for the purposes of bulking up. Forcing 8,000 calories into your system every day to build muscle mass isn’t good for you.

that's interesting, because when lance armstrong was doing this at his peak (and yes, of course, he was also on steroids), he was perhaps the fittest man on the planet.

and on top of all that brisbee throws in some hilarious alarmism about creatine. great.

ultimately at least this article isn't complete apologetics and makes the correct and obvious point that all baseball records for the rest of time are cheapened. steroids didn't save baseball, they did their best to ruin it for those of us who love baseball and numbers equally.

Just know that it’s far, far too reductive to look back at McGwire and Sosa with disgust. At the time, they were the absolute best.

no. here's wins above replacement, 1998:

1. Kevin Brown 9.1

2. Alex Rodriguez 8.5

3. Roger Clemens 8.1

4. Barry Bonds 8.1

5. John Olerud 7.6

steroids, steroids, steroids, steroids, olerud. be honest, what do you know about john olerud? maybe you'd know more if it weren't for bonds, rodriguez, clemens, mcgwire...

pretending sammy sosa doesn't exist is exactly the right move and brisbee should too