1. Barry Bonds*
2. Hank Aaron
3. Babe Ruth
4. Willie Mays
5. Sammy Sosa*
6. Ken Griffey
7. Frank Robinson
8. Mark McGwire*
9. Harmon Killebrew
10.Rafael Palmeiro*
















*CHEATERS

eh...i fail to see how he cheated since whatever he did was not against the rules when he did it

but whatever

uh it was illegal?

c;mon now yall. his penis was so big he had to take roids to shrink it up so he could get laid, not see the ball better and hit the ball better.

Still doesn't make it against the rules of baseball.

So how about they call carry knives on the field and stab each other? it's not against the rules of baseball. God your arguing for the sake of arguing today is f'n stupid.

Except fighting is against the rules. Your lack of logic everyday is fucking annoying.

I'm almost positive that somewhere in baseball's huge rulebook is something that says illegal activities are against the rules.

No, it doesn't. There was no law in baseball against taking steroids until 2003 or so. No fines or suspensions from the MLB, but you could be prosecuted in federal court. There are a ton of things that are legal in baseball but illegal in everyday society, and vice versa. You can take a baseball and throw it 95 miles an hour at a player's groin and you won't be arrested. If you tried that in public you'd go to jail for assault. Same principle

This was posted by my friend on another board a few months back.

I remember so vividly the day that Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's streak.

My oldest son was an infant, asleep in my lap. I turned on the TV and watched the event unfold, and watched Ripken do his thing, give his speech when the game became "official," and I even welled up a little. I remembered the commercial where the dad was showing various things to his little baby, and grabbed a baseball and whispered reverently to the baby "...and THIS...is a BASEBALL."

So I propped the little guy up and showed him the TV and said "This is history, what we're seeing here. We're sitting here together watching something we'll never see again."

He was sound asleep, but the moment wasn't lost on me.

Never mind that my opinion of Ripken at that point was not very high. I always felt that Ripken was never the superstar everyone made him out to be; his top achievement was the mere act of being really lucky for a long time, taking advantage of modern medicine, and not getting the debilitating disease that Gehrig had. I felt he was unbelievably egotistical, insisting on making management decisions, traveling alone without his teammates, and even being so bold as to take pitch-calling duties away from his catcher and calling them from home plate.

I did not like Cal Ripken.

But none of that took anything away from the fact that he was breaking an unbreakable record. In the era of 162-game seasons, coast-to-coast travel, hyper-competitiveness, weight training, and baseball at light speed, Cal Ripken had played every game, every day, and played HARD. It was huge.

I felt similarly watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa embracing after McGwire broke the record. Even then, there was no question in my mind that McGwire was juiced up on steroids. He had gone from being a muscular but skinny kid to being a bloated behemoth with bad tendons and ligaments all over his body, barely even human anymore. But when the line drive shot into the left field stands, it didn't matter - he was TODAY'S player, playing TODAY'S game with TODAY'S rules and TODAY'S advantages (and disadvantages), and he managed to shatter a record that had stood for years and years.

Baseball, as a game, is rarely different from what it was in the 1890s. Sure, there have been some subtle changes, and over history there have been trends that have changed the style of play slightly, but essentially, it's the same game. What's evolved more dramatically than the game itself have been the things AROUND it. Society, for example, evolved to the point where dark-skinned people were permitted to play. Medicine evolved to the point where you could take a dead-armed pitcher, remove a tendon from his leg and put it into his arm so he could pitch another 10 years. I mean, would Tommy John be an "on the bubble" HOFer if he pitched in 1908? Of course not - he would have blown his arm out, and we'd talk about him the way we talk about Smoky Joe Wood today.

Nutrition has evolved as well. And weight training, which was once taboo in baseball, is now normal. Players take advantage of technology, biology, and whatever else they have at their disposal to get better. Does the fact that John McGraw didn't have a huge coaching staff make Jim Leyland any less of a great manager? Does the fact that Ty Cobb didn't have access to stacks of videotape make Rickey Henderson any less of a great base stealer? Does the fact that the 1954 Indians didn't have a team of advance scouts make the 1986 Mets any less of a great team?

I don't think so.

So yes, Barry Bonds injected his body with anything he could think of to make his muscles bigger. But he still had to step into the box and hit the ball 755 times. And he had to do it against pitchers who were equally doped up. And he had other things making it tough for him that Aaron and Ruth did not have. Babe Ruth never had guys like Bruce Sutter or Trevor Hoffman waiting to shut him down in the late innings. He didn't have to deal with relief specialists designed to come in and get one batter out. He didn't have to finish a game in Texas at 2AM eastern time, fly to Los Angeles and play an afternoon game the next day. He didn't have to have his joints take a pounding on artificial turf. He didn't have split-fingered fastballs, nose-to-toes curveballs, or nasty sliders. He didn't have 24-hour news and sports networks following him around, reporting on his every transgression. He didn't have twice as many teams in the league - and twice as many pitchers to get to know.

None of that makes Babe Ruth any less of a player, and in my mind, it makes Barry Bonds and his approaching record just as legitimate as Ripken, McGwire, Aaron, Gehrig, and Ruth.

I don't know how I'm going to articulate my position on this any better than above paragraphs. The game hasn't changed, but everything around it has. And because of that, I think today's playing field is just as level as it's always been. Almost every record in baseball will eventually be broken by somebody, whether they have a likeable personality or not.

So I'll watch Bonds blast #756 with my son, who is now 11 years old and better able to understand what he's seeing. And when the next guy breaks Bonds' record, we'll sit and talk about the day we watched Bonds break it, and we'll reminisce, and we'll talk about all the great baseball history that's happened between now and then, and how many great players we've seen. And of course I'll have to yammer at him about the great home run hitters from my childhood - guys like Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt - and the guys who came before them, like Killebrew and Robinson and Mays and Ruth and Gehrig.

Baseball will never change, and I can't WAIT for Bonds to break the record.

where does it say that fighting is against the rules? funny, i see bench clearing brawls where the game continues. you're a lousy devil's advocate.

steroids have been illegal since 1990. they're illegal whether you take them inside or outside the ballpark. no, it was not in the baseball rulebook at the time. the writers of the rulebook probably didn't think they'd have to put in a copy of state & federal law as 'baseball rules'.

and to you losers who think this was ok: if it was so ok and within the rules and honorable practice, how come these assholes won't come clean about it?

Am I the only one who thinks that Cal Ripken's record is nowhere near the importance of the all-time home run/hits/RBIs. I just think that playing in a whole bunch of consecutive games wasn't that big a deal, idk...

I am in full agreement. I've been saying for years he was actually detrimental to his team and selfish because you cannot play every game without a day off and be at 100% effectiveness.

They won't come clean about it because if they did, the HOF voters aren't voting them in. I don't blame them.

I see very little problem with ballplayers taking steroids. I believe in a level playing field, but the playing field is so skewed that ballplayers taking steroids to gain a competitive advantage is way blown out of proportion. Steroids is merely one way to gain an advantage over the competition. It is not the end-all advantage that people make it out to be. Every player has a different weight training program. I assure you the stars have much better trainers that they can afford to pay $100k a year for compared to the journeymen making $400k a year. That's a huge competitive advantage. West coast teams always have a competitive advantage over East coast teams because of the 3 hour time difference. Most West coast games start at 10:15 EST, meaning players aren't usually getting back to their hotels until 2 or 3 in the morning. If they have a day game at 1:05 the next day, they're at a huge disadvantage because they aren't used to the time change. There's another example. Unlike other sports, every baseball stadium is built differently. Should we discount David Ortiz's 52 homers because he plays in the left-handed-hitter-friendly Fenway? That's a huge advantage over someone like Hunter Pence who plays in a pitcher's park. I could go on for hours but you get the point. Steroids are only ONE form of a competitive advantage. Baseball is interesting because unlike other sports, there are so many variables to take in to account. Steroids is merely one variable. And coming from someone who took steroids while playing baseball in high school, I can assure you the advantage you gain is a lot lower than the ignorant public makes it out to be. Remember....steroids were invented to help people. So yeah, if the playing field were truly level - salary cap, every player having the same training regimen and taking the same supplements, all parks the same dimensions, etc - I'd be against steroids. At this point I don't give a shit because their effect on the game is entirely overblown.

However, people who say steroids have hurt the game of baseball are idiots.
Have the players been hurt? Nope, increased production leads to larger salaries.
Have the owners been hurt? Hell no. More power brings more fans into the park and sells more merchandise.
Have the fans been hurt? Not at all. Fans love love the longball. You'll get the baseball purist assholes who enjoy 1-0 pitcher's duels, but 95% of the fans want to see offense.

It pisses me off to no end when these lethargic old school dinosaurs say Bonds disrespected the game of baseball and it's purity by taking steroids. Reality check - this is a game whose history is filled with drunks, cheaters, racists, murderers, gamblers, mob ties, womanizers, violence, etc, in a league who didn't allow black people to participate until 1947. Stop living in Fantasy Land. Ty Cobb, a player so revered by baseball historians, was a fucking racist who slid spikes first into 2nd in an attempt to injure the shortstop. Babe Ruth was a drunk and a womanizer. Doc Ellis pitched on LSD. George Steinbrenner had direct mob ties in the 70's. Yeah, baseball was a Utopia of purity before steroids ruined everything. Horseshit.

but it's not a level playing field. steroids do have an adverse affect and they are illegal. maybe this is hard for you to understand, but perhaps there's a few players out there who don't want to use illegal drugs to better themselves.