PURITY RING | Pissing Off Baseball Purists with Bower | Episode #001

Wait, wait. Where's my Where's my props? I need my paper props here. You know, the ones that have the list of who made it into the hall. Now, let's roll with this. Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? Attention. I've just been handed an urgent news story. There we have it. The decision has been made right here. As of this recording, the Baseball Hall of Fame has announced the results of the Baseball Riders Association of America voting, a winter tradition that ESPN's David Schoenfield says has become as much fun as shoveling wet, heavy snow that sits atop a layer of super slick ice. Yeah, it's a blast. Hey, can we cue the hall of Fame debates? Hall of Fame debates are no longer about who is a better baseball player, but rather weighing those transgressions voters are willing to look past and whose they won't down the left field line. Is it enough? Gone. There it is. 62 single season homerun King swung high in the air and the deep left center that falls got a chance. Gone number 64 for Sammy Sosa. Can you believe it? There's a high risk.

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The 30 player ballot is headlined by some huge names in their 10th and final year on the ballot. Like Kurt Schilling. He struck, came out, and there it is. Number 300 for the second consecutive year for right hander Kurt Schilling Roger Clemens. Clemens has set a major League record for strikeouts in a game. Barry Barnes deals Hitler,

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as well as some notable newcomers like Alex Rodriguez. Breaking story coming to us from SportsIllustrated.com saying that they have four sources telling them that one of the greatest players in the game, maybe not the best. Maybe if the best playing right now tested positive for steroids. There is the headline. They are saying that Alex Rodriguez, currently of the New York Yankees, tested positive for steroids in 2003. Again, four sources, anonymous sources, are reporting this to them. This would be a major development in the world of sports. And Big Poppy, David Ortiz hard hit and

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Big Poppy as a quick refresher. In order to gain enshrinement into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a player needs to be named on at least 75% of the turned in ballots from eligible BBWA members. In order to avoid falling off the ballot, a player needs to get at least 5% players are eligible to remain on the ballot, a maximum of ten annual voting cycles. That means Kurt Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa will all either be voted in or voted out of a chance to be in Baseball's Hall of Fame. It's their final chance. And the result making it into the 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame is wait up. Before we get to that, what did those writers, the evaluators think was going to happen? Who did they think was going to make it into the coveted Baseball Hall of Fame? And what were some of the reasons that baseball writers say they seemingly cannot vote for any of those four players to get into Cooper's Town. On to the prediction,

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Matt Snyder of CBS Sports said, It looks like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have a chance to get to around 65% of the vote. That's not enough to get them in. Kurt Schilling got 71.1% of the vote last year and was trending toward induction this year, but he publicly made a show of asking off the ballot, and it's cost him showing gets right to the point. Finally, quote, I will not participate in the final year of voting. I'm requesting to be removed from the ballot. All deferred to the Veterans Committee and men whose opinions actually matter and who are in a position to actually judge a player. I don't think I'm a hall of Famer, as I've often stated, but if former players think I am, then I'll accept that with honor. Man, this is a hell of a lot for a guy who doesn't even think he's a hall of Famer. He said it in the past and he's saying it again right now. I'm not a hall of Famer. Good. Case closed. We can all keep moving. It looks like he'll fall well shy of induction. Snyder went on to predict Sammy Sosa got 17% of the vote last year, which was his high watermark, and he might get up into the 20s this year. Still, that isn't close to 75%. These four are mentioned together because it's their 10th and therefore final stint on the ballot. All four will not appear on the 2023 ballot. Tyler Kepler of the New York Times correctly points out that a vast collection of artifacts at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Dozens of items from the careers of buried Bonds and Roger Clemens are included. There are bats and helmets used by Bonds, spikes and caps used by Clemens, and much more. Those players are essential to the history of baseball, and the Hallowed Museum tells their stories. Prior to Tuesday's announcement, more than 160 writers roughly 45% of the expected electorate had publicly revealed their balance. A Twitter account that compiled the results, run by Ryan Thibado has counted slightly less than 75% of the ballots for both Bonds and Clemens.

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The reality, though, is that riders who keep their votes private have been much less likely to vote for either player. Last year, Bonds and Clemens just barely cleared the 50% Mark. Among that substantial voting bloc, both players have been stuck between 59% and 62% overall in each of the last three elections. That number may be higher this time, but it will likely be well short of the required 75%. The reason, of course, is that both players are strongly tied to performance enhancing drugs. Baseball writers are given these guidelines. Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the teams on which the player played. Tyler Kepler of The New York Times so aptly points out, this is the So called character clause that has complicated the reckoning of the steroid era and will continue to do so for many years. Now that Alex Rodriguez is on the ballot for the first time, I didn't think they were steroids. That's again, part of being young and stupid. It was over the counter. It was pretty basic and it was really amateur hour. I mean, it was two guys. We couldn't go outside. We couldn't ask anyone. We didn't want to ask anyone. We went outside team doctors, team trainers. It was two guys doing a very amateur and immature thing, and we probably didn't even take advice. Back to the predictions the most likely candidate to be elected this year is David Ortiz, the celebrated Boston slugger who's been named on nearly 84% of public ballots, sitting on 499 home runs, Ortiz to right field, back of Sosa. Looking up, it is gone. David Or Keys, the newest member of the 500 club. Big Poppy, the greatest clutch hitter in Red Sox history, adds to his resume with number 500. But Big Poppy carries baggage of his own from the steroid era. We begin tonight with a Red Sox shocker. The New York Times is reporting that beloved Boston slugger David Ortiz tested positive for performance enhancing drugs back in 2003, along with then teammate Let me take you back. The year was 2003. Nelly Diddy and Murphy Lee were shaking their tail feathers all over the charts. Then came a positive test when baseball conducted survey testing without penalties that was supposed to have remained anonymous. In fact, both Manny Ramirez and Big Poppy David Ortiz, the sluggers who helped the Boston Red Sox end an 86 year World Series Championship drought and capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs, in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results. So Poppy's positive test was somewhat of a shock, especially after these statements about the baseball testing policy. I know that if I test positive, I'm using any kind of system. I know that I'm going to disrespect my family, the game, the fans and everybody. That same year, pitcher David Wells stated that 25% to 40% of all major leaguers are juiced, meaning on steroids. Then in 2005, former Oakland A slugger Jose Canseco said on 60 Minutes, I don't recommend steroids for everyone, and I don't recommend growth hormones for everyone. But for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I've experimented with for so many years that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It could make a super athlete incredible. Just legendary. David Ortiz made ten All Star teams all after 2003 and never tested positive again. His case could mirror that of Avon Rodriguez, known to many as Pudge, the 14 time All Star catcher who was named as a steroid user in Jose Canseco's book back in 2005. Pudge takes a front door breaking ball high in the year to left it is into the first row and then showed up at spring training looking noticeably slimmer. Those factors deterred some voters, but ultimately weren't enough to keep Pudge out of Cooperstown. He made it in on his first try in 2017 with 76% of the ballots. And that's where this podcast begins,

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because some of baseball's most cherished storylines of the past decade have been tainted by performance enhancing drugs, including the accomplishments of record setting home run hitters and dominating pitchers. The steroid era has tainted decades worth of athletes, stars of the sport and reduced their homer hitting no hit throwing names to those of lowlife drug peddlers who deserve absolutely zero consideration for hall of Fame induction, let alone becoming human beings. Because they made the most evil. They had us baseball fans cheering for their lives. They abused us. They made us cheer them on, rally around one monster of a hitter. It's also the batter. He's won for two and he sends a rocket deep Tor left. Back goes, baby. Hit the track against another monster hitter when Sammy Sosa went ahead for 1 hour and the home run chase 1 hour. Sosa when I had 48 to 47. McGwire claims he does not get motivated by what Sosa does get. Two more home runs before the end of the game. They go ahead 49 to 48 just to see who would break the iconic sports record. Swan on felt a deep toy left. No doubt about that, baby. We are tied. Hama Choir is at number 48 and do so while tainting the purity of the sport. Swahad Belton in the center field, Judson back at the track, at the wall, McGwire has number 49. And that's the point of this podcast. Purity. Or perhaps more accurately, perceived purity. There's no guilt in baseball and it's never boring, which makes it like sex. There's never been a ball player slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Makin Love is like hitting a baseball. He just got to relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under. 250 unless he had a lot of RBIs. There was a great love man up the middle. What purity? What kind of godlike spin are you trying to throw on this hanging curveball? Baseball is, as award winning actress, talk show host and Liberal leaning rule breaker Tallulah Banks had once labeled herself, baseball purists have been against many of the things we now consider commonplace in baseball. The Wildcard back in 2012, the new rule allowed two teams a chance to make it to the divisional series. Two Wildcard teams from the American League and National League face off in a winner takes all game that marks the start of the post season. Like life, things in baseball change they have for decades. And like life, the game evolves way back in 1893, the rules were changed for a pitcher named Amos Rusie. Think of him as the Noah Syndergard  of his day. He was throwing so hard and frustrating the hitters to such a degree that the decision was made to move the pitching mound back from 50ft, where a hurler could conclude his pitch prior to the addition of an actual slab to the 60ft six inches it is today. Joel Thurman at the New York Post back in 2017 asks those purists who want to leave the game alone when they hearken to wanting the game to be the way it used to be, does that mean they want to return to a 50 foot mountain? Do they want to restore a game in which no one of color was allowed to play, when all travel was done by train, when uniforms were all wool, when no games were televised? A point Thurman makes Crystal clear pretty much the only constant in the sport of baseball is lamenting a better product in a bygone era. If you take the Good Book and you take a good look. Hence the first baseball game. First baseball game. Alexander Cartwright is the father of baseball. In 1845, he developed the basic rules of the game as we now know it. On September 23, he organized the Nickerbocker Baseball Club of New York. The members of the club traveled to Hoboken to practice the game under his new rules at Elaysian Fields. On October 6, 14, members of the Nickerbocker Club took part in the first baseball game. The two sides battled for three innings, with Cartwright's team losing eleven to eight. Between October 6 and November 18, the club played at least 14 more intra squad games in Hoboken, with some practice behind them. The Knickerbockers were ready for their first game against a rival team, and on June 19, 1846, at the Elysian Fields, baseball was born.

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Yet in the Sporting News, December 31, 904, Henry Chadwick wrote, the fans of that time, the 1850s, were opposed to any and all changes. They wanted to have the game played as their Daddy.

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Walt Whitman in the late 19th century and Ring Lardner in the early 20th century weighed in on this calamity. There have been broadsides at too little offense in the 70s and 80s, the 1870s and 80s if you're scoring at home and too many. Homers. Lardner, in fact, wrote about his personal drift from the game because of the frequency with which Babe Ruth generated long balls. I said, I'm going to hit the next pitch ball right past the flying point. Well, good Lord must have been with me. Adding to this mix was Malcolm McClain, reprinted for the Sporting News in October of 1913. This is a historic fact. Every innovation in baseball has been bitterly fought and finally adapted. There's nothing more anti American than the designated hitter. Al Qaeda is more anti American than anything this country was found out in a celebration of our individual freedoms. The designated hitter puts the team's collective success over that of the individual can't that. Don't worry. Let's have somebody else do that part of your job for you so we can all win together. It's another name for that. Leo communism. Enough with the old guys with bad mustaches jumping to modern day philosophers. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said the death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past, no matter how good it was. And I say it's the same for the hall of Fame, which, by the way, you might want to sit for this is filled with cheaters.

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What's that shit on your chest, Chris Co bar doll badge yourself. Any one of them will give you another two to three inches. Drop on your curveball. Of course, if the arms are watching me close, I just drop a little jalapeno inside my nose, get it running. And if I need to load the ball up a little bit, my nose. You put snot on the ball. I've got an arm like yours. I got to put anything on it I can find. Someday you will, too. That's Eddie Harris from the movie Major League. Now, he may have been a fictional character in the baseball classic, but that's pretty damn accurate. Players will do anything to gain an edge to have an advantage over the competition. George Brett is just overhead, and Billy Martin and the Yankees want the back. Cheating has always been a part of baseball. They might be going to call George Brett out. Look at this. Brett is out. And Damon Mad, he is out and having to be forcibly restrained from hitting late on fire. Tim McClellan. Jose Martinez is holding Brett. Bobby, I've never seen this in my life, whether it's Hank Greenberg in the World Series champion Detroit Tigers having Scouts sit in the center field bleachers to steal signs or the Houston Astros doing the exact same thing, or Gaylord Perry making a career out of the aforementioned spitball. Then the other thing that Gaylord did is he put it in the view of his neck because they would always come out and he put his head down and he'd take off his hat and look at his hair and he'd hide it. It would be right here in his neck. But it's just a matter of putting a place to hide the Ky water. Petroleum jelly. An illegal baseball pitch in which the ball has been altered by the application of a foreign substance such as saliva or Petroleum jelly or Ky jelly. Countless other pitchers brought sandpaper to the mound to alter the ball and look. Plenty of ball players took the original steroid to the major leagues. And you say, I got to stay here. What do I need? Oh, I need some of this shit right here. It was decomille, better known baseball as greenies and fetches. I didn't know that the stimulants would enhance your performance. It gives you the impression that you are throwing hard, sometimes pinpoint control, breaking off curve balls that you've never seen before. You go in to tune with what you're doing and you zeroed in. You like what they call in the zone now, and sometimes you feel before the game, if you're warming up, say, oh man, I don't have shit on the ball. I don't know what's going to happen and go out there and throw a hell of a game. This podcast is designed to bring you their stories, the ones that baseball purists either forgot or just use as a highway to recalling the good old days of the sport. Chunk, you know, when it was pure baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, but back in 1889, for example, pitcher Pudd Galvan became the first baseball player to be widely known for his use of performance enhancing substances. Galvan was a user and vocal proponent of the elixir of Brown Cicard, a fancy name for testosterone taken from live animals, a testosterone supplement derived from the testicles of live animals such as dogs and guinea pigs. What kind of crazy fucking job is that? You talk about dirty jobs with Mike Row. Mike, I'd like to see you get testosterone out of the guinea pit anyway. Did that actually work? I don't think so. It was probably a placebo effect, but it certainly was testosterone. Pudd was elected into the hall of Fame in 1965, and he was baseball's 1st 300 game winner. So as you can imagine, when word got out, the press said, Gee, this Brown cigar stuff looks good. I hope our local Nine uses it. Fast forward to World War II. Both the Allied and access powers systematically provided amphetamines to their troops in order to improve soldiers endurance and mental focus. After the end of the war, many of those returning troops attended College, and when they did, they applied their knowledge for the benefits of amphetamine use, first to College sports and then to professional sports, including professional baseball. Now we have some big names, some of whom have plaques on display at the hall of Fame in Cooperstown that not only admitted to using but possibly benefited from performance enhancing drugs to make their careers become hall of Fame careers, but to make their records become historic. To the Purists, the ring of baseball purity that alters and shifts from generation to generation. This is what they're willing to accept for the love of the game. That's the purity ring. That's what we're here to dispel and spotlight baseball's honest truths and more than a few rumors in our upcoming episodes of Purity Ring. Wait, wait, hold on. I forgot. And the 2022 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame class to be inducted includes David Ortiz, the only player voted in by the Baseball Riders Association of America's voting tally. He was the only member of the class to surpass the 75% threshold required for entrance to the BBWAA ballot. Barry Bonds Roger Clemens, Kurt Schilling and Sammy Sosa all in their 10th and final year on the ballot failed to hit the 75% Mark and are now off for the record. Big poppy ranked in with a 77. 9% of baseball rider votes. That's it for episode number one of Purity ring. And if the names Doc Ellis, Mike Schmidt, Willie Mais or Ted Williams ring a Bell, they just might appear in purity ring. Pissing-off baseball purists one episode at a time for purity ring I'm Mike Bower.

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The Purity Ring podcast is a production of real guy radio 2022.