now take his next best five seasons (ages of 27, 28, 29, 31 and 32) and you get one hr for every 12.32 at bats (199 in 2452 at bats)

Yes, Ruth and Gehrig’s best season’s translate to the equivalent to a 70+ HR in today’s environment, but those seasons did not occur when they were 37 years old.

The whole premise of the above article was how unlikely Bond’s season was for a 37-year old.

I don’t think this point can be over-stated.

The problem with this analysis is that it assumes conditions are the same. Clearly there are many more home runs now than in previous eras.

Any sort of record is always going to be unlikely. The odds of DiMaggio’s hitting streak are much worse than Bonds’ HR record as you calculated. Yet it also happened. Did he also use PEDs?

Roger Clemens best 5 year stretch is not ages 35-39. This time frame represents a bit of a low point in Roger’s fine career, and contain 2 of his worst seasons (based on ERA+ and innings pitched). It may, in fact, be his WORST 5 year stretch.

Clemens was certainly a better pitcher from ages 25 to 29 than he was from 35 to 39.

As to external factors you cite as possible causes for Bonds’ improvement (i.e. bad pitching, small strike zone, ball park (note:AT&T is a poor HR park), unbalanced schedule, etc.), why has Bonds seemingly been the only one to benefit (to anything close to the extent he has) from these factor?

Lastly, as to the claim that, “Oh, and he hit 73 in one year, and then his home run totals went back to about his average(during his SanFran tenure).” – I am afraid you are wrong again.

Bonds had the following HR totals ages 35-39: 49, 73, 46, 45, and 45 (average: 51.4 HR). Only once in his career, before or since, did he have 45 or more HR (46 HR in 1993). 1993-99 (SF years), Barry averaged 38.4 HR. Even if you throw out the 73 HR season, he averaged roughly 46 HR between 2000-2004, which is a 20% increase over the balance of his pre-alleged steriod SF career.

In closing, please check stats before making claims. It takes like 5 minutes. They can be found at baseball-reference.com.

Please, please read “Game of Shadows.” Please.

Also: citing Clemens as an example of someone defying normal aging patterns isn’t very convincing, considering he’s surrounded by his own cloud of steroid suspicion and was (allegedly) named in his teammate Jason Grimsley’s affidavit as a steroid user.

And nice analysis showing how people could think Bonds took steroids…….What?

Of Course people think Bonds took steroids; with what he did, it would be asinine to not consider steroids.

But, how about these other factors: The NL West terrible pitching & unbalanced schedule, McCovey Cove being perfect for Bonds’ swing, the smaller strike zone which gives pitchers little room for error, the fact that these days athletes have been getting better later in their age (Jerry Rice, for one, and a guy Bonds worked out with before the 2000 season).

Oh, and he hit 73 in one year, and then his home run totals went back to about his average(during his SanFran tenure).

I think he accidently took steroids in 2003, like he said. I can think that. You can think he took steroids before. We’re never going to convince the other of our opinion, so how about we stop talking about it?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6454

check it out

I would reccoment looking at Baseball Prospectus, it’s an online baseball statistics newsletter and they do a great article about a real statistical list for the greatest single-season HR lists and career HR lists. It does a better job of normalizing as many hitting factors across time as possible. It’s interesting.

Also, anabolic steroids were synthesized in the 1930s… so, we dont know if Mantle was using them or not. But in the end, it doesnt matter, becasue they weren’t made illegal until 2005, so even if Barry was juicing when he hit 73, the record should still stand.