The use of steroids by a Major League Baseball slugger can produce only modest improvements in muscle mass and bat-and-ball speed but has the ability to boost home run production by as much as 50 percent.

This finding was revealed by a study by Tufts University physicist Roger Tobin, a specialist in condensed matter physics with a long-time interest in the physics of baseball.

From News-Medical.Net:

Tobin reviewed previous studies of the effect of steroid use and concluded that muscle mass, the force exerted by those muscles and the kinetic energy of the bat could each be increased by about 10 percent through the use of steroids. According to his calculations, the speed of the bat as it strikes the pitched ball will be about 5 percent higher than without the use of steroids and the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat will be about 4 percent higher.

To determine the ultimate impact on home run production, Tobin then analyzed a variety of models for trajectory of the baseball, accounting for gravity, air resistance and lift force due to the ball’s spin. While there was considerable variation among the models, “the salient point,” he says, “is that a 4 percent increase in ball speed, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, can increase home run production by anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent.”

Tobin remarked that the home run explosion coincides with the dawn of the “steroid era” in sports in the mid-1990s and dropped significantly when Major League Baseball instituted steroid testing.

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According to a study by Tufts University physicist Roger Tobin, usage of steroids by a baseball slugger offers a distinctive ability to boost home run production by as much as 50 percent. Steroids’ usage may, however, produce only modest enhancements in muscle mass and bat-and-ball speed.

Tobin, who is presently working in the capacity of a specialist in condensed matter physics with a long-time interest in the physics of baseball, remarked that the explosion in home run coincides with the “Steroids Era” in sports. The study was supported by the facts that while Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season stood for 34 years, players hit more than 60 home runs in a season six times during the period 1998-2006. The fact that there was a drop in the home run surge quickly to historic levels after initiation of drug testing by Major League Baseball also strengthened the claims laid down in Tobin’s findings.

From Bio-Medicine.Org:

According to Tobin, the explosion in home runs coincides with the dawn of the “steroid era” in sports in the mid-1990s, and that surge quickly dropped to historic levels in 2003, when Major League Baseball instituted steroid testing.

While the increase in home runs has been clouded by suspected use of performance-enhancing steroids, many have wondered why home-running hitting would be particularly vulnerable to performance enhancement. They have also asked if it is even physically and physiologically plausible that steroids could produce effects of the magnitude observed. The answer to both questions, says Tobin, is “yes.”

The study has provided definitive answer to the questions surrounding home runs clouded by suspected use of performance-enhancing steroids in the recent times as it was found that the increase in home runs is attributed to a change of only a few percent in the average speed of the batted ball. The change, as much as 50 percent, can reasonably be expected from the usage of steroids by baseball sluggers.

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Everyone knows which Major League athletes took anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Now everyone wants to know who should be held responsible to the obvious deterioration of the reputation of baseball all over the world. Personalities such as Jesse Ventura think that Bud Selig should take the blame. Ventura was the former governor of Minnesota. On top of that, he was also a professional wrestler. According to Ventura, pro wrestling faced its steroid issue by sacrificing Vince McMahon, chairman and CEO of the WWE, who was almost imprisoned for the faulty steroid policies they had. Ventura wonders why Bud Selig should be exempted from the same faith. Selig is the overseer of baseball and the captain of the ship. He should be held liable to the mistakes those under him make.

Of course, Bud Selig isn’t too happy with people blaming him and is quite fed up with it. In a recent interview, he admitted that he didn’t want to hear the public saying that the commissioner should have done this or that.

From ESPN.com:

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig told Newsday in a Monday phone interview. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism.”

“The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible,” he said, adding, “I honestly don’t know how anyone could have done more than we’ve already done.”

Selig is quite proud of what he has accomplished throughout the years. It had been worse years ago and he had done what he can given what was available to him. Selig said that he still would have done the same things if things were to happen all over again. There are better anti-steroid policies now and baseball has gone such a long way. As for the case of Alex Rodriguez, it is true that he might not have known but it should be something that everyone should take a look at and learn from.

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“Does greatness always come with a price? Can only someone with nothing to lose tell the whole truth? The play follows the turbulent careers of three very different teammates in baseball’s steroid era whose clubhouse secrets bring them under federal scrutiny.”

The above is the plot of the new play entitled “Back, Back, Back” by Itamar Moses. It will be shown at the Manhattan Theater Club at Stage 2 at NY City Center on Nov. 18.

The off-Broadway play tackles the controversial duo of American pro baseball circa 1990s – homerun kings and steroids. It specifically focuses on two former baseball bigwigs Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, plus the lesser known Walt Weiss. All three were former teammates at the Oakland Athletics.

Here’s a review of the preview performance of the play by Steve Kettmann, former baseball beat writer and ghostwriter for Jose Canseco’s tell-all offering “Juiced”. Excerpts from the article published at Daily News.

The play is a fictionalized inquiry into the strange saga of former Oakland A’s teammates Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. The daring and talented playwright tosses in a third teammate, the lesser known shortstop Walt Weiss, as a pretty good device to get some of his own points across.

…the play offers what about no one else has: A fully imagined moral response to the pressing question of how the steroid era in baseball happened and what it meant. That is what art is for. That is what it does. I’m still trying to figure out if the gents did not know that there was a real Jose Canseco who gave the world a real book called “Juiced,” that shot to No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and precipitated congressional hearings, all thanks mostly to Canseco’s naming of his former teammate, McGwire, as a steroid user and his vivid description in the book of jabbing McGwire in the ass with a steroid needle.

The notion of an imagined conversation between Canseco and McGwire about why one of them wrote the book that would kill the Hall of Fame chances of the other is, to any real sports fans or to anyone who has grappled with the baseball issues of recent years, deeply fascinating and irresistible. For sheer creative bravado and raw courage, I think we owe young Berkeley, Calif.-born playwright Itamar Moses an extended ovation. And I defy anyone to question the man’s ability to imagine his way to truth that others have missed.

McGwire never confessed to steroid use but admitted to have used steroid precursor-androstenedione when it was still an over-the-counter supplement.

His impressive performance in the field has been under scrutiny since he has been linked by Canseco to performance-enhancing compounds. Canseco has repeatedly said in his book and in his interviews that he had personally administered his former buddy with steroids.

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