[jtur88]

First, steroids was not the only thing that changed from the Ruth>Maris era. Bonds et.al. would have hit fewer homeruns if pitches were called strikes up near the armpits, so they couldn't golf everything that was near the strikezone. That really is a huge factor---any hitter can get much more bat speed at the knees than at the letters. Also, league expansion might have watered down the quality of the mediocre pitchers, but that is arguable.

Second, are you contending that Bonds ability to make solid sweet-spot contact with such a high percentage of pitches, and swing at so few outside the strike zone, is attributable to steroids? I stated with maximum clarity that steroids made a difference in the distance that Bonds could hit a ball---how can you say I pretended that did not happen? What made him hit so many balls on the sweet spot? Steroids?

Sabermetricians have been telling me for years, on these boards, to ignore my own senses.