My apologies for the epic block quote fail.

I am not saying that he is guilty until proven innocent, simply pointing out that you can’t have it one way and not the other. Certainty is not justified simply because it is supported by public opinion. And I did not say steroids specifically, I said performance enhancing drugs. (Although out of steroids and HGH, he would be far more likely to have used steroids. You can increase strength without necessarily increasing size with certain steroids, while the opposite is true of HGH.) I say that assuming someone is guilty without proof is as valid as assuming they are not guilty without proof in this instance. This is not a court of law- the concept of innocent until proven guilty exists to protect citizens from the possibility of tyranny. None of us would like our rights taken away unless there is verifiable proof that we have broken the law. However, discussions about public perception are not equivalent, because our personal opinions cannot necessarily take away someone’s rights. Barry Bonds might disagree with that, but I do not think you can argue that anyone has a “right” to play in MLB, no matter how good they are. I do think that the fact that he was forced out of the league despite still being one of the top 20 hitters in baseball, and the public’s acceptance of that, is a far greater tragedy than Griffey’s. But he still cannot claim the right to play.

“Nobody is comparing Griffey to others who played in an era in which he didn’t.”

People often use players from other eras in the PED discussion. It tends to come up. I did not mean to imply that anyone here did specifically, I was simply bringing it up as a thought experiment.

“I’m, pretty sure that people don’t frown upon steroid use in baseball, because they pose health risks to players. They frown on them, because it gives the players who use them a competitive advantage over the players that don’t.”

Why is the line drawn at this particular issue? Why doesn’t it include weight lifting? Why doesn’t it include surgeries? Why doesn’t it include legal supplements? LASIK eye surgery is a good example. It has ample risks associated with it, enough risk that you are not seeing every single player get it despite the fact that in aggregate, it would improve their vision. There is no guarantee that improving a player’s vision in this way would improve their ability (just like HGH!), but it seems likely. Don’t the players that have had LASIK done have a competitive advantage relative to those that have not? It can improve vision to greater than 20/20. There is a dissonance here that makes me think that there is something else at issue in these debates other than the competitive advantage angle. I do not claim to know what it is, but I think the idea that a player would be forced to do something that could have potentially harmful side effects in order to stay employed is one of the stronger arguments against PED use, so I used that one as an example.

I think the injuries he’s sustained throughout his career are proof enough that he wasn’t using steroids.

I do not think he has done them myself. If I had to bet I would put money on amphetamine use, but not steroids or HGH. But I think that in the absence of proof- positive tests, negative tests, admissions- being certain that he has not is as ridiculous as being certain that someone else has. In either case, there are generally less than a handful of people in the world who know for sure, and we are probably not among them.

Throwing is about leverage, elasticity, and durability, not necessarily brute strength. For example, I don’t think Clemens was ever able to throw harder in his later years than he did when he came up.

The important effect would probably be taking away PA against replacement level pitchers due to improved recovery times.

I have actually become so used to arguing against people who react without thought in the steroid debate that I have become like them myself. I thought it was odd to see what I had perceived on LL- I should have listened to my doubts and paid more attention to the chart.

Bravo.