Reflections of a Baby Boomer

The Mitchell Report has initiated a lot of discussion about what should happen to records and awards given to players who are mentioned in the report. Perhaps that smacks of McCarthyism: if they were mentioned then they must be guilty, so punish them! Confiscate their awards. Put an asterisk next to their names in the record books. That’s a bad idea just on the grounds that we’d have to constantly hear people mispronounce the word as “asterik.”

I have a better idea.

Rather then punish anyone for taking steroids, let’s reward those who didn’t! I have a modest example here of how it could work. Look at the best homerun hitters over the years before the “Roid Age” began (as best we can tell the late 1980’s). Let’s add to their best season homerun totals, figuring if they took steroids they’d have had even better production in their best year. I propose a system that gives fifteen more homeruns in a given year for those who hit over fifty homeruns in a year twice in their careers. I give twelve homeruns to the others. This is my attempt at leveling the field. Using this system, look at who is number one. Surprise!

Here’s a table showing my top ten.

	Name	Ave*	Hi	Bonus Pts	Projected Hi
1	Babe Ruth	46	60	+15	75
2	Jimmy Foxx	37	58	+15	73
3	Roger Maris	30	61	+12	73
4	Hank Greenberg	38	58	+12	70
5	Ralph Kiner	41	54	+15	69
6	Mickey Mantle	36	54	+15	69
7	Willie Mays	36	52	+15	67
8	George Foster	29	52	+12	64
9	Cecil Fielder	35	51	+12	63
10	Harmon Killebrew	38	49	+12	61
10	Lou Gehrig	37	49	+12	61
10	Frank Robinson	34	49	+12	61
10	Andre Dawson	27	49	+12	61
10	Ted Kluzewski	26	49	+12	61

* From BaseballReference.com

Compare my list to the actual list.

Putting them together gives us this revised list of the top ten single season homerun leaders.

There it is, a totally fair, honest and objective assessment of the top ten single season homerun leaders (tee hee). Punishment and asteriskism is negative thinking. This is positive thinking. Yeah! Think positive, Sen. Mitchell!