Bert Blyleven: Hey, "taste" isn't a criterion.

The first known use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball was not by Canseco, but instead by Hall of Fame pitcher “Pud” Galvin who used the “elixir of Brown-Sequard"--made by draining a monkey’s balls--to improve his performance, a decision which yielded accolades from the Washington Post: “If there still be doubting Thomases who concede no virtue of the elixir, they are respectfully referred to Galvin’s record… It is the best proof yet furnished of the value of the discovery.”



More seriously, though, performance-enhancing drugs were widespread in baseball by at least the 1950s, particularly in the form of amphetamines. Pitcher Jim Brosnan first revealed the widespread use of amphetamines by baseball players in his 1959 memoir, recounting how players believed it gave them a physical and emotional boost during the grueling baseball season. And boy howdy were amphetamines popular, used by everyone from Hank Aaron to Willie Mays (who was reputed to have kept a bottle of “red juice”—a mix of speed and fruit juice—in his locker).

But it wasn’t just amphetamines—players were dabbling with nearly any drug or cocktail they believed could give them a leg up on the competition or quell their physical pain. Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford, for instance, was alleged by one teammate to use dimethylsulfoxide to fight is aches and pains: “you rub it on with a plastic glove and as soon as it gets on your arm you can taste it in your mouth. It’s not available anymore though. Word is it can blind you.”  And by 1970s, of course, everyone was on cocaine and Dock Ellis was (hilariously) throwing no-hitters while tripping balls on acid:




If amphetamines were widely believed (even if such a belief was false) to improve player performance in terms of reaction and hand-eye coordination, it’s worth asking what precisely the ethical distinction between Barry Bonds using anabolic steroids and Willie Mays using Hi-C from hell is.

This was my performance-enhancer back in my T-ball days. Laced with speed, of course.

But it would be reasonable to believe that steroids were also widespread in baseball well before 1988. Former pitcher Tom House has not only admitted to using steroids himself during the 1960s, but suggested it was a widespread practice throughout the major leagues and that “six or seven pitchers per team” were taking steroids or HGH: “We were doing steroids they wouldn’t give to horses. That was the 60s, when nobody knew.” Zev Chafets has suggested that, during the famous 1961 home run chase between Mickey Mantle (easily considered one of the ten greatest players of all-time) and Roger Maris, Mantle faded because of an abscess that developed on his hip after receiving a “vitamin injection” from a quack doctor who mixed steroids, amphetamines, multivitamins, enzymes, solubilized placenta, bone marrow, and animal organ cells.


Steroids were also known to be widely used in nearly every other sport throughout the 1960s. In 1969, a lawsuit by a former defensive lineman revealed that the San Diego Chargers gave their players—and sometimes forced their players to take—anabolic steroids and amphetamines in an attempt to enhance their performance. Indeed, steroids were casually placed on the training table along with amphetamines, pain killers, and sleeping pills. The use of steroids was so prevalent that, by the summer of 1973, both the Subcommittee on Investigations and the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency held hearings to determine the extent of drug use within American athletics.

Actually not about this year's Vikings team.

As Craig Calcaterra suggests, though, the legislators’ efforts were particularly ineffective with baseball, which they problematically wanted to hold up as a model to other sporting organizations, perhaps in part because of its association with ideals of American purity. In response to the initial investigations, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn created an educational pamphlet and issued a statement that announced the sport had “no significant problem” with drug use, which was enough to gain a commendation from the Subcommittee Chairman that “baseball’s drug program [is] the best and most effective of its kind in sports.”

But not everyone was satisfied with this assessment.When Senator Birch Bayh tried to get Jack Scott, the founder of the Institute for the Study of Sports in Society, to praise baseball's anti-drug initiative,Scott adamantly refused. Instead, he suggested such anti-drug programs were merely a coverup that fixated on drugs like heroin and LSD instead of those that were actually in widespread  use by athletes:  “Here, for example, is a book that is put out by the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The “Baseball vs. Drugs” and this is an education prevention program. There is not one mention of anabolic steroids in the entire booklet—one of the chief drugs athletes are using to help their performance."

So by the 1950s and 1960s, American athletics were saturated with a culture of drugs, which were widely available; admitted users have suggested they were in widespread use; baseball players were widely accepted to be using amphetamines and other newfangled elixirs to gain an edge. Is it really a stretch to believe some of the greatest players of the 1960s and 1970s may have been using anabolic steroids in addition to amphetamines? Would it even be possible that steroid use has declined overall since the 1960s, but merely become more effective? Lastly, what precisely is the ethical distinction between using drugs one thinks will yield performance-enhancement and using drugs that actually yield such enhancement?

I suspect such questions will be asked in upcoming years, as more and more people delve begin to challenge the romantic narratives of baseball's simple past. How will it change the way we think about baseball history over the past 20 years? It will be interesting to see if, and how, our analysis of the last thirty years begins to change.