It's not the juice

The long ball tourney before the All-Star Game was amazing; Sammy Sosa's first-round expedition showed he is the most powerful hitter in baseball today.\nAnyway, what I have to say only sort of involves Sosa, but he is a prime example of a trend: bigger, faster, stronger. And because of their talent and the unbelievable numbers some players are putting up in today's game, many observers of sport are crying foul.\nBaseball stands at a crux. Many believe the records broken in recent years should have an asterisk placed next to them because of allegations of the use of performance enhancing drugs.\nWith the game in the on-going labor dispute, the allegations of steroid use have put the game under immense scrutiny. I do believe players should be tested for performance enhancing drugs and those found guilty should face the music. Anabolic steroid use is illegal in this country. If Olympic gold medalists can be tested then why can't baseball players? \nBut I honestly believe if the Major Leagues do start testing the players, they will probably find out that far fewer of them are using steroids or other banded substances then what is currently being alleged.\nThe reason the record books have been massively re-written in the past few years can be boiled down to two major fundamental changes that can be reflected in the MLB and other sports.\nThe first major change is a new emphasis on strength training and proper nutrition among modern athletes. To compete in sports today, players have to be stronger than their predecessors of previous decades because of the emphasis on the weight room. Hence what was a feat of super-human strength in a bygone day is now a routine play.\nThe training and preparation that modern athletes put their bodies through was unthinkable as much as 15 years ago. Today even cheerleaders spend time pumping iron. \nAnother result is that the size of the athlete has increased due to the migration to the weight room. The 300-pound lineman was still a freak of nature as recently as 20 years ago. Now they are the norm, even at the smaller I-AA colleges. \nThe average speed of today's athlete is faster than it was in previous generations. The 4.4 second 40-yard-run is the yardstick for football speed and players with that speed more common than in years past. It would be preposterous to accuse all football players with that speed to be juicing.\nPlayers in baseball have undergone the same metamorphosis as football players. With the relatively recent emphasis on strength training and nutrition, athletes no longer have to rely on pure skill to play sports at a high level.\nThe other is the explosion in the talent pool of available players. When many of the original records were written, the Major Leagues were segregated. So in effect, they drastically cut the talent pool. Many of the best baseball players could not play in "the show" because they were the wrong color. \nThe era that today's players are measured against is the one that should have an asterisk. Racism kept some of the best American talent out of the game and isolationism left the best of the world's talent out of the playing field.\nThe two most obvious examples of great players kept out of the majors because of race are the Negro Baseball League star hitter Josh Gibson and star pitcher Satchel Paige. Josh Gibson's 84 home runs in one season is still 11 ahead of Barry Bonds' major league record and Paige was considered one of the best pitchers ever.\nToday's game has such a bigger talent base that keeps on expanding. First the big leagues were integrated starting with Jackie Robinson, then came the Latin players adding their talents to the game. Now talent from Japan and Korea is coming to the game and enriching it. \nBabe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and the rest of baseball's legends did not play the best talent that was around because the game was not integrated back then, and players did not prepare for the games as they do today. \nSo maybe we should putting the asterisks by their numbers.