I appreciate the faciousness of your entry and I "get it", but other than taking the familiar rigtheous indignation stance of the average baseball fan who has been somehow ethically and morally wronged by the alleged use steroids in our "most sacred sport", do you have any scientific or concrete statistical evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that steroids in fact make a player hit the ball better, farther? I'm all ears if you do.

Steroids, alone, cannot increase the performance of a player. That is, steroids need a grueling workout regimen coupled with a determined user to allow the player to increase muscle mass and athletic ability. These are performance enhancing drugs. Track and fielders use designer drugs in order to increase their overall performance events.
Conversely, speed does not need the aforementioned necessities in order to be effective. Rather, the user needs only to pop a pill.
Regardless of the benefits of these drugs, a level playing field must be established in order to maintain a valid statistical foundation.

Regardless of the benefits of these drugs, a level playing field must be established in order to maintain a valid statistical foundation.

Fair enough, but...

Steroids, alone, cannot increase the performance of a player.

They don't? The argument has been and continues to be that steroids and steroids alone are to account for the alleged rise, specifically, in home runs. Absolutely, players have to workout to achieve the desired results, that's a given.

Moreover, if we are to build a "valid statistical foundation", while including extemperaneous factors such as steroids to level the playing field across the time of baseball, then we have to account for such factors as video-taping at bats, newer, more technological wood composites in bats, lower pithcing mounds, reduced ballpark sizes (a very BIG factor), advances in physical training, medical techniques that allow players to recover from devasting injuries (think Tommy John suregry), advances in vitamin therapy, lineup protection (Bonds had MVP runner-up Jeff Kent hitting behind him and a Rich Aurillia who hit 37 HRs in front of him) league expansion and a subsequent depletion of the player talent pool and, hell, even a good warm spring and summer across the nation will make the ball fly farther.

So, if we really and truly want to level the playing field, then we'll have to do away with videotaping, 1950s-era bats and when a guy's labrum tears, that's that, his career is over. No surgery, nothing. Now I'm being facetious of course, but you see how arbitrary it becomes to say that steroids alone are the source of the problem.

My deeper point is: There are a host of other factors that positively must be accounted for before saying steroids and steroids alone are to account for the increase in home runs.

Food for thought: Ichiro broke the hit record (off my friend, no less). That hadn't been done for 60+ years. And guess what? Like Bonds and his 73 HRs, Ichiro hasn't come close to having 262 hits since. Yet where's the talk about the freakiness of his achievement? Steroids? Not a whisper. Do I think he is? No. But is a freaky statistical year possible? Absoutely. Trouble is, and most people don't consider this, Bonds' numbers, specifically his OPS and SLG percentages, were building up to a possible monster for many seasons prior to 2001. Long before he was alleged use of taking steroids.