All the walks Teddy Ballgame took and the Williams Shift, leads me to believe he was at worst third all time as far as feared hitter.
I'm not as hard on Bonds because I think it's a little hypocritical. Yes there is more testing at the MLB level than in the past. But how about the fact that 75-80% of college players are on roids all through school...and anyone who doesn't believe that is simply naive. Bonds was juiced out of his mind at a time when everyone else was too. It is what it is
Then no great players after say, 1985-1990?
Did all of them juice?
I believe so.
Junior? Pujols? Jeter? Ichiro? Rickey?
I think Rickey may have been too early, but he failed the exact same number of tests that Bonds failed, so it is possible. And he was in Oakland for the Bash Brothers, so I don’t believe he gets a pass.
Come on man, I'm old but let's not lose our heads here. Ted Williams retired before I was born.
You don't really need to have a failed drug test to suspect steroids. Look at Bonds in his Pittsburgh days and his SF day. He went from an athlete to The Thing from Fantastic 4. Same with Clemens. Junior never went through that radical body transformation. Jeter and Ichiro never had muscle bound bodies. I think a lot of players had enough sense to stay away from that poison
You know WHY Bonds (allegedly) did PEDs? Because it was legal in the game and the game was blatantly celebrating those who were using it.
That's what makes this poll interesting. I go back and forth and admit I kind of overlooked Cobb because he doesn't have the eye popping homerun totals. But honestly if you had him number one I wouldn't have a problem with it. The prime years of his career were in a little different era, before Ruth made the home run a thing and Cobb flat out dominated it offensively. But even without the raw power numbers he was leading the league in avg,obp,slg,ops,ops+. Add in his aggressive baserunning and he scored and created runs like no one else in the early 1900s.
Not only was he a beast, he has been done SUPER-dirty by the history books thanks to Stump and Alexander.
Yeah personally I didn't consider anything that may have been written about his off the field life in any history books but if some people have they probably should reconsider because some of it has been shown to be inaccurate. And it really has nothing to do with the title of top player in history.
I mean....probably 75% of the guys in the Majors today did them in college, many since HS. Does doing them for 3-4 years and then stopping when you get to the Show absolve you?
Steroids made MLB's banned list in 1991. They were never legal
It's a shame they didn't have the foresight to put Old Hoss on an innings limit back then. He was only able to go over 400 IP in 3 different seasons after that........
Cobb was not the monster Stump and Alexander made him out to be. Was he enlightened on race relations, not really. But what was to be expected from a white male from rural Georgia born 11 years after the Civil War?
