The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed (16 page)

So what was the golden era of baseball? If the quality of baseball competition can be measured by talent dispersion, as I have argued, then we can use this information to roughly compare the competitiveness of baseball eras.
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One thing that is clear from Figure 6 is that each decade of baseball has been unique. In some decades offense is fairly uniform, while defense varies widely, and in other decades the reverse occurs. In terms of individual seasons, it might be possible to find particular years where the talent distributions are similar to the current era. To generate a measure of similarity, I calculated the squared difference of pitching and hitting talent dispersions of each year and compared it to the average talent dispersion since since 2000. A smaller difference indicates that the year is more similar, in terms of talent dispersion, to the current era.

Table 20 ranks the talent dispersion of seasons by similarity to the baseball of today. Because the 1990s are similar and could be argued to be part of the same era, I did not compare these years. Of the top twenty years most similar to the current era, six of those years are from the 1980s, which is no surprise, because of its proximity in time to the present. Again, it is clear that talent dispersions tend to be unique.

Compared to today, the 1960s’ dispersion of hitters is much greater and the dispersion of pitching is much lower. What if we wanted baseball today to be more like it was then? MLB could adjust rosters of pitcher/hitter compositions to alter the dispersion of talent playing the game. Increasing or decreasing the size of the league would not work in this instance, because while the dispersion of hitters would increase, so would the dispersion of pitchers. MLB would have to undertake a strategy that would treat each side of the game differently. For instance, if MLB wanted to dilute hitting talent only, it could expand rosters and limit the number of plate appearances any player can make in a season. More marginal hitters would enter the game while pitching talent would stay the same. I doubt anyone would want to do this; I’m throwing this out as theoretical possibility.

With a framework for measuring the competitiveness of baseball, comparing the league of today to any person’s golden era is now possible. And not only is this information useful for bar bets, but MLB can use this information to alter the talent pool of MLB teams to provide the baseball that fans demand. I am not proposing that MLB do a fan survey to determine the public’s favorite baseball decade and then manipulate rosters to do so. In fact, since the baseball of today is already at my social optimum, I have no incentive to push for any changes. What
we have here is information about the quality of competition in baseball over the history of the game. Now, when owners, fans, and blue ribbon panels get together, they have an objective metric measure of the effect of competition quality as a result of hypothetical changes in the structure of the game.

9

The Steroids Game

—RAFAEL PALMEIRO, TESTIMONY BEFORE CONGRESS, MARCH 17, 2005

LATELY IT SEEMS that if you want to ruin any discussion of baseball, just bring up steroids. The S-word is a wild card that moves otherwise sober discussion of athletic achievements to wild speculation. Players can be capable of everything with them, to nothing without them. In fact, we know very little about the potential impacts of anabolic steroid use on performance, but that has done little to curtail the discussions about threats to the “integrity” of the game. While steroids are very important drugs that help people who watch baseball, when players use them, the controversy starts. The same beneficial characteristics of steroids (strength building, increased healing, etc.) that make them so valuable to the medical profession are also helpful for athletes who seek these qualities to enhance performance. It’s when players use steroids as performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) rather than to heal ailments that fans tend to view it as cheating.

Most certainly there are other non-steroid PEDs available to players (e.g., human growth hormone, amphetamines, cocaine, etc.) but for this chapter I’ll use steroids as synonymous with PEDs, because these drugs are at the center of the PED controversy in MLB and have become a slang term for all PEDs. It’s the role of the economist to evaluate the incentives that govern PED use rather than the particular drug of choice, and the incentives that apply to steroids will apply generally to other drugs as well. The furor in the public, as the media portrays it, is because using steroids to boost performance is considered cheating. The connections to steroids, alleged and documented use, has tainted many careers of recent MLB players. In his book,
Juiced,
former AL MVP Jose Canseco singled out several players—most notably his former teammates Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro—of using steroids. Shortly after the publication of the book, both were called to testify before Congress regarding these claims.

At the time Canseco made his accusations, McGwire had retired from baseball. During the 1998 season, in which he hit seventy home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals to break Roger Maris’s thirty-seven-year-old single-season record of sixty-one home runs, McGwire received much criticism for his acknowledged use of an androstenedione dietary supplement. At the time, “andro” was a perfectly legal over-the-counter supplement—which MLB has since banned—and when ingested, its performance-enhancing qualities are dubious. But the fact that McGwire’s physique resembled a body builder’s raised suspicion that his unprecedented home run hitting was aided by steroids. At the hearing, McGwire refused to address Canseco’s allegations, and this was enough to taint all of his accomplishments for many fans.

Palmeiro, who was still an active player for the Baltimore Orioles, did not back down from his former teammate. He addressed Canseco’s allegations head-on by shaking his finger and declaring his innocence of all charges. Soon after amassing his three thousandth hit in the season after the hearing, Palmeiro failed a drug test that showed he had used the anabolic steroid stanolozol. The test result, and Palmeiro’s subsequent denials, became such a distraction that the Orioles dismissed him from the team at the end of the 2005 season. Though he did not retire, no team would sign him for the 2006 season.

The sagas of McGwire and Palmeiro tell us quite a bit about the feelings of the fans, media, and even former players regarding steroids. Two men who were once cheered by everyone as all-time greats are now stains on the game to some observers. It will be interesting to see how Hall of Fame voters treat these men when they become eligible for election. McGwire would have been a lock, and Palmeiro would certainly have had a good chance if not for the steroid controversy. My guess is that McGwire will make it because of his spectacular career and the fact that there are only allegations, and no positive drug tests, to pin any perceived steroid misdeeds on him. Palmeiro, on the other hand, will probably have a very tough time due to his somewhat lesser accomplishments—I’m not belittling his over three thousand hits and five hundred home runs, but he’s still no McGwire—and a positive drug test soon after his public finger-wagging. It’s clear that the S-word is distracting fans from the fun of the game.

Barry Bonds is another figure at the center of the steroid controversy. After already compiling a Hall of Fame career, Bonds raised his game to new heights in the twenty-first century. At the age of thirty-six, a time when many players’ skills are in steep decline, Bonds hit seventy-three home runs. In the following three seasons Bonds would belt fortyfive or more homers in each. Bonds’s new muscular physique led to whispers of steroid use. And soon the whispers grew into serious accusations when a federal investigation into the BALCO sports nutrition company found records of steroid use among many athletes, including Bonds. The book
Game of Shadows,
by two
San Francisco Chronicle
reporters, reveals secret grand jury testimony of several sources who fingered Bonds for use of steroids. Bonds claims that he’s innocent. The media and Congress placed pressure on Major League Baseball to “clean up” the game, and Commissioner Bud Selig immediately launched an investigation. Many sportswriters proclaimed that Bonds should not be in the Hall of Fame, despite his spectacular numbers. Ultimately, I think Bonds’s Hall of Fame chances will be determined in the courtroom. If Bonds is found guilty, I suspect he will not get into the Hall. Anything short of a conviction, and he’ll get in because of how good a player he was.

Steroid use infuriates fans and sportswriters. The phenomenon almost always provokes an especially emotional response. Why? For the sake of argument, let’s assume steroids do improve performance, even though there is not a lot of evidence on the subject. Steroids are then simply a way to improve performance, just like eating right, getting plenty of rest, and working out. These are qualities that we normally appreciate. Why do we view steroids so differently?

No one would contest that the nonsteroid methods of enhancing performance are morally illegitimate. One possible objection to steroids is that they are “unnatural.” If we’re purging the unnatural, let’s include a few other unnatural procedures in the game to see how we view them, following the logic that unnatural is bad.

First up is surgery, especially of the “Tommy John” variety. I don’t think anyone would argue there is anything natural about cutting off a piece of the body (tendon from the foot, forearm, or hamstring) and placing it on another part of the body (elbow). And some players come back from the procedure throwing harder than before the surgery. If your arm blows out, that should just be one of those breaks.

Also, Curt Schilling’s bloody sock performances in two games of the Red Sox’s 2004 World Championship postseason should be a cause for condemnation, not celebration. Before the games he had a torn tendon surgically stabilized so that he could delay the proper surgical repair until after the season. This is hardly natural.

What about cortisone shots? Players often receive shots of cortisone to affected parts of the body, which reduce inflammation and allow a player to play. Cortisone is actually a steroid hormone. It naturally occurs in the body, which makes it somewhat “natural”; however, delivering a high dose directly to an affected part of an athlete’s body to improve performance certainly is not natural. It was a cortisone shot that allowed Kirk Gibson to hit his game-winning pinch-hit home run for the Dodgers in the 1988 World Series.

Next, let’s get rid of laser eye surgery. Optometrists have corrected the vision of many players, including Greg Maddux, Bernie Williams, and Kenny Rogers. If God didn’t give you 20/20 vision, well that’s tough. Improving the vision of a player gives him an unnatural advantage over players with naturally good vision. In the past, players who suffered vision deterioration had to retire early. Why should things be any different now?

Maybe we don’t like steroids because ingesting performance-enhancers is something everyday people don’t do. What about caffeine, sugar, and nicotine? All are stimulants that can improve performance. NBA player Darrell Armstrong used to fuel his spastic play with coffee and chocolate. Do you complain to your boss that the guy in the neighboring cubicle is cheating because his reports are coffee-enhanced?

The general public tolerates these practices, which are clearly non-natural; therefore, unnaturalness of steroids is not the sole reason their use is deemed cheating.

Maybe we are concerned that steroids are bad for players’ health. While all of the adverse health effects of steroids are not known, some include: acne, aggressive personality tendencies (sometimes known as “roid rage”), enlarged heart, and increased cancer risk. However, some people argue, like Jose Canseco, that with proper supervision the health impacts can be minimized. These risks are no different from ones that Americans take every day. Many people engage in risky activities and occupations that we celebrate. For example, automobile racing is very dangerous, yet these athletes fill 100,000-seat raceways weekly. And standing sixty feet and six inches away from a man hurling a baseball in your direction at around a hundred miles per hour is, well, risky.

If fans are concerned about the health of baseball players and that is the reason they want to get steroids out of the game, banning tobacco and alcohol—certainly not performance-enhancers in the long run—would be a more effective strategy. So I’m not convinced that the health effects alone create the negative impression of steroids.

If it’s not the performance-enhancing element or the health effects, then maybe it’s a combination of the two. Alone, neither of these seem to matter much to fans. Players do a lot of unnatural things to their bodies to improve their performance besides using steroids, as well as do things detrimental to their health. But the fact that players might trade their health for performance, which is something that many players might not want to do, then creates a problem. Why do players use steroids even when there are health risks to doing so? Having Tommy John surgery might help a player get back in the big leagues, but it’s not going to cause many healthy players to opt for the surgery. Steroid use choices, however, influence other players, which means it’s no longer just a personal freedom issue for individual players. The decision to take steroids is dependent on other players’ steroid decisions.