Skip to main content

Numbers on Steroids: Roger Maris

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you. This week it's throwing a curve ball and looking at All Time Great Yankees. Players that we know did not take steroids to see if this gives a defense to any of the players 'convicted' by Numbers on Steroids.

What better Yankee to breach first than Roger Maris, the man that had a 3 year peak and came out of nowhere to knock off Ruth's record.

Averages Say: What's with the Mountain Top?

At Bats Per Home Run Says: To infinity and beyond.

Explaining It In 90s Steroid Terms

If Roger Maris played in the 1990s people would be screaming from the mountain tops accusing him of cheating. The two years of 1960 and 1961 are light years ahead of his other numbers. During his peak in 1961 his slugging percentage was .620 and his At Bats per Home Run dipped below 10.

To throw more fire on the damnation, his final five years starting in 1964, when he was just 30, started a continual downward slope. If these numbers ever aligned with the 2004 start of drug testing he would have already have been convicted by the public of using. Just see Sammy Sosa.

The Verdict

I don't think designer steroids were all the rage in the 1960s, so Maris serves as a key example of a player who can have multiple years which are way out of whack from the norm. Granted many of his seasons post 1961 were plagued by injuries, but still his stats serve as a barometer that you can't fully convict someone just because of his numbers.

Perhaps He Would Have Taken Them If They Were Available in the 60s

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is an ill-informed article. The statement that Maris might have taken steroids if they'd "been available" is absurd. Dr. Ron Zeigler was promoting steroids use by American Olympic athletes, particular weightlifters, in 1959.

http://www.steroidsinbaseball.net/overview.html

An Op-Ed in the New York Times accuses Mickey Mantle of using steroids and amphetamines in 1961.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/opinion/20chafets.html

Roger Maris was plagued with hair loss towards the end of 1961. That was attributed to the stress of intense media pressure, but is also a known side effect of steroids use.

http://sportsci.org/encyc/anabstereff/anabstereff.html

There is no "proof" that Maris used steroids, but there is considerable circumstantial evidence that it's possible.

Migratory Redbird

Popular posts from this blog

Lou Holtz is the Homer / Annoyingly Delusional

As my buddy Joe and I always joke, if Notre Dame was suiting up against an all Jesus team, aka a team made up of 55 Sons of God, Lou Holtz would probably still pick Notre Dame to win by a touchdown. So of course this weekend when I'm watching Sportscenter and they have him and fellow old man Corso making predictions, Lou picks ND to beat Michigan. Not that big of a deal, Michigan is a big question mark this year, but of course than Lou says that Notre Dame will win 11 games this year. This is the same Notre Dame that lost to a service academy last year. And just when you thought the douchy homerism was going to end ESPN asks which BCS school is going to be the biggest surprise team in the country. Any guesses to whom it was? I'll give you a clue it was another team he coached. If you guessed South Carolina you would be a winner. Next up on Lou's prediction watch, the Jets win the Superbowl, NC St. wins the ACC, Arkansas dominates the SEC West, Minnesota wins the Big

M E T S = Mercifully End The Season

Do it before David Wright gets Hurt!

Ranking the New York Jets Historical Helmets

There's no way you can't go with the Helmet they won the Super Bowl in. You just can't. Next, I really don't understand why they don't where the helmet with the Jet as their throwback uniforms. That helmet is awesome. Then I'm going with the Helmets from the 80s because it's the classic feel and the white face mask is 10 times better than the black one. And the rankings continue until you get to... The Titans Helmet. I hate everything about those Titan uniforms. The Helmets are boring and the colors are GOD awful. Navy blue and Mustard? What the hell is that. Disgusting. If they wore those unis when I was a kid I'd probably be a Giant fan, and be much happier with my life in football.