Fisk missed the point (cont.)

Carlton Fisk hit 376 home runs during his Hall of Fame career with the Red Sox and White Sox. AP

Expansion: In 1961 the addition of two teams to the American League -- pushing the league from eight to 10 -- had a fairly dramatic effect on some individual performances. Roger Maris, of course, hit 61 home runs*, Norm Cash had his preposterously great year (later admitting that he corked his bat), Jim Gentile had his preposterously great year, Mickey Mantle hit his career-high 54 homers, Rocky Colavito hit his career-high 45 homers, Dick Howser had a rather spectacular rookie year, and so on.

*I don't mean to put an asterisk anywhere near Maris' record, but I did find it interesting that these were the pitchers whom Maris hit multiple home runs off of in 1961:

• 3 off Jim Perry (10-17, 4.71 ERA -- before he found himself)
• 3 off Frank Lary, who had a good year
• 3 off Pete Burnside
• 2 off Eli Grba, who had two vowels in his first name and one in his second
• 2 off Ray Herbert
• 2 off the 34-year-old, moderately effective Billy Pierce
• 2 off Gene Conley (11-14, 4.91 ERA)
• 2 off Russ Kemmerer
• 2 off Ding Dong Bell, who gave up 32 homers that year
• 2 off Bill Monbouquette
• 2 off Pedro Ramos, who, rather remarkably, led league in losses FOUR STRAIGHT YEARS. Consecutively, he lost: 18, 19, 18, 20. It is a unique achievement.

In 1962 the addition of two teams to the National League -- pushing the league from eight to 10 -- created a few huge years. Tommy Davis' remarkable .346, 27 homers, 153 RBIs, 120 runs scored was probably the most eye-popping of the bunch. He would lead the league in hitting again in 1963, but he never got within 10 homers, 60 RBIs, 45 runs of that numbers extravaganza. Stan Musial at age 41 -- and having not hit .300 since 1958 -- hit .330. Mostly, this was the case of a few pitchers' years -- Drysdale, Koufax, Bob Purkey, Jack Sanford -- having some big years.

In 1969 there was more expansion. And seven players hit 40-plus homers -- as many as 1968 (1), 1967 (2), 1966 (3) and 1965 (1) combined. In fact, 1969 was just one short of the record for most 40-plus homers seasons... and that record was set in 1961, the last AL expansion year.

In 1977 two teams were added to the American League. And the league hit 10 points higher and slugged more than 40 points better. Graig Nettles was the only player in 1976 to hit 30-plus homers; he hit 32. Six players hit 25 or more homers that year. But in 1977 nine players hit 30-plus homers, and 11 more hit 25 or more. The point is that expansion does change the dynamic.

And there was expansion in the 1990s. Colorado and Florida joined in 1993. Arizona and Tampa Bay joined in 1998.

Better bats and better equipment: The bats have the thinner handles, which apparently allows them to whip more. And the bats are solid now, dense, players don't have to bone them. Manufacturers layer them with coats of shellac. How many home runs would Hank Aaron have hit with these bats?

The better equipment can be something as simple as body armor (allowing batters to feel more confident as they crowd the plate) or as complicated as LASIK surgery. It is the new weight training techniques and legal supplements -- a player doesn't have to do steroids to become much stronger than he would have been 30 years ago.

There are so many other factors or possible factors. I don't know. What about the scouting reliance on the radar gun (perhaps pushing strong-armed pitchers with no command and subpar breaking stuff to the big leagues)? What about the ever-shifting sensibility of strikeouts (how many home runs would Gehrig, Kluszewski and Kiner have hit had they swung from the heels with two strikes and been willing to strike out 150 times?). How much of a factor was baseball's strategy shift from speed and defense to power (the demand for home run hitters will usually increase the supply)?

There are countless other things... it's always more complicated than people want to make it. The problem is that whenever you try to talk about the whole picture, people will think you're trying to downplay the evil of steroids. And this is just not a good time to be downplaying the evil of steroids. It seemed to me that people were beginning to come to grips with the Steroid Era, a time without testing, a time when I imagine hundreds of players cheated, when hundreds of players used some form of performance enhancer to help out in the workout room and help coax them through long seasons and give them some extra strength. But with the backlash against Mark McGwire, I sense that, no, we're not there yet. You can bet that players who used steroids won't be coming out to apologize any time soon.

And that brings me to the Carlton Fisk quote at the top of the post (which, by the way, was removed from the original story). I am a very big fan of Fisk's. I loved the way he played the game. I loved the toughness he brought to it. He was all ballplayer. But the quote really struck me, and not only because he got it completely wrong. The quote again:

"But this is the point I want to make: When you talk about steroids and you talk about what it means to the game, the three greatest home run hitters of all time -- Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, right? When they were 39 years old, how many home runs do you think they averaged? The three greatest home run hitters of all time averaged 18 home runs at age 39. Now, how many home runs did Barry Bonds hit when he was 39? He hit 73!"

OK, first, the numbers are all off. At age 39, Babe Ruth hit 22 home runs -- and and it isn't like Ruth was famous for keeping himself in shape. Willie Mays hit 28 home runs at age 39. Hank Aaron hit 40 home runs at age 39. So that's an average of 30 per player, not 18. Not close to 18. None of the three hit 18. And not only that: Carlton Fisk at age 39 hit more than 18 homers, too -- he hit 23.

He got the Barry Bonds thing wrong, too. Look, at any age, hitting 73 home runs is going to be an eye-opener. But, in fact, Bonds hit the 73 when he was 36 years old. At 39, he hit 45 homers -- a lot, absolutely, and the most ever for a player 39 or older. But it ain't 73.

So, the point that Fisk wants to make is based on entirely faulty information. Whatever. I guess the thing I wish is that old ballplayers -- especially great old ballplayers like Fisk -- would look a little bit deeper rather than falling into the "In my day, we had to walk uphill through the snow" act. Can't we have a conversation? Can't we talk about this without constantly expressing our own moral superiority?

Yes, players were using steroids, and that use of steroids does indeed -- as Bob Costas put it the other day -- make their numbers inauthentic. But let's talk about that for a second. Did illegal amphetamines that were apparently a part of every-day baseball in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s make those numbers inauthentic? I don't know. There is every reason to suspect that the Los Angeles Dodgers broke baseball's rules -- in letter and in spirit -- by raising the mound above the limits. Does that make those numbers inauthentic? I don't know.

And beyond cheating: Does playing in an all-white league make every number before 1947 inauthentic? And it's not like the league was fully integrated the day Jackie Robinson stepped on the field -- it took a decade or more, so maybe all numbers before 1961 are inauthentic. And the game did not really open up to Latin players until the 1980s -- just look at one country, the Dominican Republic. The only regulars from the Dominican Republic throughout the 1960s were the Alou brothers, Julian Javier, Rico Carty and Manny Jiminez (for one year). Even in 1979 there were only five regulars in the big leagues (Carty, Cesar Cedeno, Pepe Frias, Alfredo Griffin, Frank Taveras).

In 1985 alone there were 12 regulars -- including stars like George Bell, Tony Fernandez, Pedro Guerrero, Tony Pena and my guy Julio Franco. And of course the last 20 years, you have MannyBManny, Papi, Tejada, Vlad Guerrero, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Beltre, Alfonso Soriano, on and on and on. And these are just the hitters -- we're not even getting into Pedro and Bartolo Colon and so on.

So what is authentic? I am not defending those players who cheated -- they knew it was wrong, they knew why they were doing it, they knew -- but I don't even know who were those players and neither does anyone else. Was it 50% of baseball, like Ken Caminiti said long ago before he was bullied into backtracking? Was it MORE than 50%? Were teams complicit? Were people behind the scenes in baseball quietly cheering? Or, worse, were they putting subtle and perhaps even not-so-subtle pressures on players to get stronger, however necessary? And how much of what we saw was steroid-induced? Was it 90%? Was it 40% How much?

We don't know. And while some people seem endlessly interested in standing on soap boxes and shouting down at the cheaters who have been caught or have come forward for whatever reason, it seems like we don't want to know. Yes, the era may be defined by steroids, but it's like people don't want to hear that steroids were not the only reason that people hit a bunch more home runs. There are a lot of reasons people hit home runs.

For instance, there was a player, a really good player, who had never hit more than 26 home runs in a season. He was a good hitter but he was just not a 30-home run guy. And he was also a catcher, which meant that it was likely that his body had taken a terrible beating and had worn down.

But this is the point I want to make: When you talk about the three greatest power-hitting catchers of all time -- Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench and Yogi Berra, right? Well, there's Josh Gibson, of course, but we don't have his numbers. When the three power catchers (Piazza, Bench and Berra) were 37 years old, how many home runs do you think they averaged? The three greatest power-hitting catchers of all time averaged 11 home runs at age 37. How many do you think our guy hit? He hit 37!

Of course, our guy is Carlton Fisk. And I am not suggesting that he did anything illegal -- I am, in fact, entirely convinced that he did not do anything illegal and never would. But he had never hit more than 26 homers in his career. And he was a 37-year-old catcher -- no 37-year old catcher had ever hit even 20 homers before. And at 37 he hit 37 home runs because, well, baseball isn't always easy to reduce to a few indignant words.

See, there's a lot that goes into baseball. Stuff usually isn't black or white, up or down, left or right. It's complicated. Carlton Fisk, of all people, should know that. If it makes people feel better to shout "fraud" in a crowded theater, hey, it's a free country. But it seems to me there's already enough noise out there.