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Just how long have steroids been a part of baseball?

According to Tom House, at least 35 years.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2052364

Quote:

Former major league pitcher Tom House used steroids during his career and said performance-enhancing drugs were widespread in baseball in the 1960s and 1970s, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday.

House, perhaps best known for catching Hank Aaron's 715th home run ball in 1974 in the Atlanta Braves' bullpen, said he and several teammates used amphetamines, human growth hormone and "whatever steroid" they could find in order to keep up with the competition.

"I pretty much popped everything cold turkey," House said. "We were doing steroids they wouldn't give to horses. That was the '60s, when nobody knew. The good thing is, we know now. There's a lot more research and understanding."

House, a former pitching coach with the Texas Rangers and co-founder of the National Pitching Association near San Diego, is one of the first players to describe steroid use as far back as the 1960s.

He was drafted in 1967 by the Braves and pitched eight seasons for Atlanta, Boston and Seattle, finishing his career with a 29-23 record and 3.79 ERA.

House, 58, estimated that six or seven pitchers per team were at least experimenting with steroids or human growth hormone. He said players talked about losing to opponents using more effective drugs.

"We didn't get beat, we got out-milligrammed," he said. "And when you found out what they were taking, you started taking them."

House said he gained almost 30 pounds while using steroids, blaming the extra weight for contributing to knee problems. He said the drugs helped improve recovery time and conditioning but did not add velocity to his fastball.

"I tried everything known to man to improve my fastball, and it still didn't go faster than 82 miles per hour," House said. "I was a failed experiment."

House said he stopped using steroids after learning about the long-term harm they could cause.

"I'd like to say we were smart, but we didn't know what was going on," he said. "We were at the tail end of a generation that wasn't afraid to ingest anything. As research showed up, guys stopped."

Here we have a pitcher saying that they were using HGH, steroids, and just about whatever they can get their hands on back in the 60's and 70's. How long were they using it for before then? To people who have complained about steroid use and how it has effected the game, does this change your outlook in any way? Isn't it possible that Hank Aaron took performance enhancing drugs too?

It's not surprising, the East German Women's Swim Team was clearly using performance enhancing drugs in the 70s. If the East Germans had them... they were readily available everywhere else.

It still doesn't make them right, and I still consider it cheating. But it does make some of the records coming up stand firmer because it's no longer comparing apples to oranges. They all cheated...

But if I hear that Lou Gehrig or some of theother early greats used 'em.. I will cry..

I'm pretty sure Abner Doubleday cleared their use at the very beginning.

I don't think they were really developed until the late 50s/early 60s, so Gehrig should be OK. I'm sure players have always used some kind of performance-enhancing drug though.

So House had a retort yesterday where he basically said: 'did I say steroids? silly me, i meant amphetamines, or something.'

Sure you did buddy, I'm sure your phone wasn't ringing off the hook the last few days with pissed off ex-players

Bud Selig knew the guys were using steroids, he chose not to do anything about it. After the strike in 1994, they needed something to get people to come back to the game. The homerun chase, did just that, it's all about the bottom line to these guys.
Conseco and his overblown ego, ratted on the other players - just to try and sell more copies of his new book "Juiced", what a dick. I hope one of the steroid induced players takes a bat to his head.
Personally I think it's time for new leadership in the MLB, Selig is past his prime, he can no longer (if he ever did), look out for the best interest of baseball. It took him 12 years to ban the use of steroids in baseball, after they were already illegal to use, at all, 12 years! Isn't that breaking the law? Kind of like betting on baseball? Get rid of Selig and let Rose in the Hall Of Fame.

Bodybuilders could and did get them in the late '60s and early '70s. They were (and are) legally available in Mexico, and were not hard to smuggle across in Tijuana in the old days; back then, all customs cared about was marijuana and heroin. If bodybuilders could get steroids, ballplayers certainly could -- or more likely, their trainers would.