Joe Posnanski’s new book on Buck O’Neil:
has a passage on steroids on p. 240:
People were always surprised that Buck did not have strong feelings about how bad steroids were for baseball. He did worry about kids ruining their bodies, but the cheating part did not move him much. In the Negro Leagues, he had known players to bend the rules to win – they corked bats, spit on the ball, popped amphetamines, stole signals, and even loaded up on coffee for the caffeine. They wanted to win. “The only reason players in my time didn’t use steroids,” he would say sometimes, “is because we didn’t have them.”
It’s interesting to fit this into the larger timeline of steroid use: later on, we’ll see that as steroids became available, players began using them immediately without any systematic means. My book touches on that a little, and I’ll write more about Tom House’s comments here soon.
Also, I laughed reading O’Neil’s reaction watching Palmeiro’s congressional testimony: “He’s lying.”
David J Corcoran | 27-Mar-07 at 12:41 pm | Permalink
Just got the book. I haven’t read it yet ,I’ll do it tonight. I must say, though. When you rub the pages together with the book closed, it makes a noise. This is the loudest book I’ve ever seen.
David J Corcoran | 27-Mar-07 at 5:11 pm | Permalink
I’ve never seen an inside joke in a book before. But there it is, on page 46. Poor Jeff Shaw.
DMZ | 27-Mar-07 at 7:14 pm | Permalink
Yup. Congratulations, I hope you got a giggle from it.