A Bright Light in a Shadow of Steroids

[sarnell2]

...with all the recent steroid talk, it's nice to show our appreciation for some of the players who played fair, but had their status overshadowed by the insane numbers of the cheaters

i found this article about frank thomas and i think it's worth checking out: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... HMSPS1.DTL

[AdvRider]

Good piece. It's been fun watching Thomas do pretty well this year. 43 23 62 .246. Too bad the BA isn't higher, but ...

The A's definitely got a lot of bang for their $500,000 bucks. If it wasn't for Thomas, pretty good chance the As wouldn't be in first place IMHO.

[hoopitup21212]

Still Thomas is a question mark also despite the article

[Snakes Gould]

yeah, how can you determine who was playing fair and who wasn't? you sure cant go by positive test results

[stevekahuda]

Its nice to read an article about a superstar who doesn't have a question mark hanging over his head. Think of all the money Giambi took from him when he beat him out for the 2000(?) MVP. I forget what the terms were, but it kept Thomas's diminished skills clause in his contract and cost him a fortune in bonuses. I'd be pissed.

[The Loveable Losers]

I'm not saying Thomas has used steroids...in fact I hate the speculation about players. But you really can't speculate about who was clean either. I mean honestly...Palmeiro wagged that finger in front of Congress and no one thought anything other than the fact that he was a great force against steroids...and then he tests positive! Juan Rincon and Rafael Betancourt certainly didn't fit our preconceived picture of steroids users either. Just as I think it's unfair to speculate about who was not clean I think it's impossible to speculate about who was clean. Even David Eckstein could be using...maybe it takes steroids for him to bulk up to his 5'7" 165 pound frame. The fact is that we just don't know. What we do know is that lots of players were using, that it was probably at least 10% of players if not more and that it's a damn shame. Baseball should have cleaned this up a lot earlier.