FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Before the 1947 season, the Major League record for most home runs by a team in one season was 182. It was no wonder fans were in awe of the '47 Giants that belted an amazing 221 dingers that year. That was the first time any team hit 200+ homers in a season but it was not to be the last.

Those numbers were not duplicated very often however for the next decade. Only three other times during the next ten years did a team manage this feat. The '53 and '55 Dodgers broke the mark as well as the '56 Reds. The American league did not manage to break thru or over the mark until the mighty Yankees of '61.

After the '61 Yankees, several teams surged past the 200+ mark during the next 30+ years. Only twice during this time span however did more than one team manage to accomplish that number in the same year. In 1985 the Orioles and Tigers broke the 200+ home run mark and then in 1987 five teams surpassed this mark. However, it was three more seasons of drought that no team broke over the 200 record.

In 1991 the Tigers led the Majors with 209 and then another three year slump with the highest number only reaching 182.

Nineteen-ninety five maybe the year that everyone looks back to as the beginning of the "Steroid Era" in baseball. Two teams, the Indians and the Rockies both surmounted the 200 mark and from that point on Major League Baseball has never failed to have multiple teams eclipse the 200 mark.

 It took forty-eight years to have the 200 home run mark reached 20 times but in the last 15 years it has been done 89 times and still counting.

In my first blog I wrote that I believe in "innocent until proven guilty" and I still do. But I can see where there are baseball purist that believe something is rotten in the locker rooms of major league teams.

I really hate for the non-abusers of Performance Enhancing Drugs that they should fall under the dark cloud hovering above the ball parks and stadiums where the thirty teams play in the Majors and all the hundreds in the minors. And yes, I said minors. We are kidding ourselves if we think this is only in the "Big Show". I am NOT saying anyone in the minors is guilty of using but the stigmatism filters down.

Any kid moving up now that hits a legitimate towering shot to center field is instantly going to  have his strength questioned as to natural or enhanced. If he is built like Arnold and runs like Deion, is it natural or enhanced?

The numbers I posted are from the MLB historical stats site. You can go look as I did and compare all you want. And no one is talking about doubles and triples that help career OPS+ stats, we are only talking Home Runs. Maybe I will get around to digging up the dbls and tpls some day but for now, I am too depressed just comparing the Home Runs.

I still believe. I am just not as certain in my belief. Please, someone convince me that it is just from watered down pitching and additional strength training.