' roids or not? juan gonzalez edition

juan gonzalez was one of my favorite players growing up. he won 2 mvp awards and drove in the 27th most runs in history in 1998 with 157. for his career he hit 434 HR to go with a .295 average and over 1400 RBI. he also averaged 42 HR for every 162 games played. no too shabby.

case for: well canseco pointed a finger at juan. his HR numbers were huge during the steroid era, and they dropped off the face of the earth when testing began. essentially, his career ended with testing. now, in all fairness, injuries played a big role in his demise never playing more than 140 games after 2001. but injuries could also point to a history of using PEDs. steroids have been linked to making users more suspect to ligament and tendon injuries. also, hgh is thought to allow quicker healing from injuries. he won his second mvp award in 1998, the same year the NL MVP was also likely using them.

case against: he did hit 46 homers in 1992, the year before canseco became his teammate so its not like his power numbers came out of nowhere. injuries provide a perfectly reasonable explanation for his decline. it could be just a coincidence that it happened at the start of testing. a quick google search of "juan gonzalez charity" reveals that he does sell autographs for charity.

do you have anything to add? is juan gone guilty or not?

is this really possible?

so i bet you collect a specific player. its ok to admit it, most people do. i'd be willing to bet that over the course of the last year, you've spent at least $12.50 on one of that player's cards. it might have been a jersey patch or a low serial numbered autograph. chances are, if your player is a prospect, he won't even make it to the show.

now let's look at what you could have spent your money on. here is a beautiful game used jersey card of a hall of famer. i'm speaking about none other than teddy ballgame. this williams card sold recently for $12.50. that was the actual price too as the seller was offering free shipping. i'm kicking myself for not bidding on this one. I got caught up at work, and by the time i made it home, it was over.

'roids or not?

i'm going to start a little series called 'roids or not. i'll try to make a case for the player using roids and a case for the player not juicing. i'll let the readers decide. this is a democracy, so majority rules.

first up, bret boone. you may remember this ripped second baseman from his days with the mariners. in his career, he posted a .266 batting average, 252 home runs and 1,021 RBI in 1,780 games in 14 Major League seasons.

case for steroids:

from 1994-1997, boone had a 162 game home run average of 14. now, when you look at 1998-2003 that average jumped to 28. his 2001 season was truely remarkable 2001 season which included 37 HR, 37 2B, 141 RBI, and a .331 average. boone again put up big numbers in the last season of non-annonymus testing in 2003. that season included 35 HR, 35 2B, and 117 RBI. his numbers dipped in 2004, not dramatically but noticable. he only managed to play 88 games the following season with 7 HR. that was his last season. he went from 35 HR at 34 years old to out of baseball at 36. besides, have you seen pictures of the guy.

case for clean:
well, there are 2 arguments for saying that a player is clean. first, his numbers didn't change after MLB started testing. boone fails this one miserably. second, you have to prove that the guy has character, integrity, or morals. now how does one prove this? it's hard to say. you'd have to dig into his personal life pretty deep to get a true answer, but for the purpose of this writing, i think charity work or community work would make a good litmus test. i'm a pretty good google searcher, but i still couldn't find any news stories or articles about boone and his charity or community work. if anyone can find one, i'd be happy to include it in this defense.

so what do you think? juicer or not?
bret boone circa 2002 bret boone circa 1996

so i might have been a little off

so my $25 offer for the max carey cut auto might have been little off. but hey, i was closer to the price than the guy that wanted $200 for his copy. plus you have to consider that the above auction was for a carey numbered to 50. the $200 one was numbered to 72 if you didn't remember.

i figured it would go lower because there had only been 7 views of the auction with 2 days remaining. so i guess interest really picked up in the waning moments.

why pay more?

the bottom paragraph of my last post has inspired me to look for slabbed autos of hall of famers and older, deceased players. while looking, i ran across joe wood. now if you don't know about mr. wood, you can check his stats out here. his career winning % is right up there with the best of them. sure his number were accumulated right before the live ball era, but he never started more than 39 games in a season either.

smoky joe, as he was known, had a pretty good season in 1912. he posted a 1.91 e.r.a. and 34 wins. he also threw an amazing 35 complete games and had 10 shutouts that year. his autos can be had for less than the price of a blaster.

crazy buy it now prices

i've recently decided to change the focus of my collecting. i used to collect just frank thomas cards. the big hurt is on his last wheels career wise so i decided to find someone else to start collecting. i dabbled in dennis eckersley autos for a while, but i didn't like spending between $10 and $15 per card.

i settled on adrian gonzalez. he's the young slugging first baseman for the san diego padres. this has been a fun en devour. i scour ebay for autos going for under $5. i've picked up quite a few. i've also been putting together a rainbow from 2007 topps brands. i have pretty much every parallel except the red and red refractor from bowman and bowman chrome, the red refractor from topps chrome, and the superfractor from finest.

lately, i've been getting into pittsburgh pirates hall of famers. i've been focusing on relics and autos. recently i ran across a max carey cut auto with a buy it now(bit) or best offer(obo) price of $200. this just seemed ridiculous to me because the card was numbered to 72. its not a rare card! combine that with the fact that there is at least 278 other cut autos of him in other products. also, his slabbed psa/dna index card autos go for bit $20 which is essentially what a cut auto card is.

so i offered the guy $25 for the card. he was not too happy with me for the offer and wrote me that it was a waste of his time and he's blocking me from bidding. the real waste of time though, was putting the effort into writing that message. i have a feeling that he's going to wish someday that he took my offer. i'll post more on that later though.

should this be allowed?

so you buy '52 Mantle from a guy who says he bought it at an estate sale. you then go on ebay and create an account. after a few actual sales, you build a nice feedback rating with 100% positive feedback.

then you post the Mantle you bought for a one day no reserve auction. you tell the story about how you got it, and you make it very clear that you are selling it as a REPRINT. the bidding reaches $381 with just over 2 hours to go. the card sells, and is shipped out.

buyer recieves a $860 mantle reprint. you cancel your ebay account and open a new one. rinse, wash, repeat. i think i'm going to pass on this one.