"There is no game that is more obsessed with numbers, and in baseball there is no number bigger than the count for home runs," says Randy Roberts, professor of history. "The sport will never change from wood bats to hitter-friendly aluminum bats because a switch would probably dramatically inflate batters' number of hits and home runs.
"Steroids also undermine numbers, and doing so undermines the game."
Roberts says only once before in baseball's history has the game been so tarnished. In 1919, many of the Chicago White Sox players were accused of throwing World Series games for gambling purposes. Those players were banned for life. As a result Major League Baseball installed its first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, he says.
Now, baseball has appointed former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids in baseball. Bonds will be a focus, and the final report will be made public.
Roberts is a regular guest on the History Channel's "Reel To Real," which shows a movie based on a historical event and a related documentary. He also has appeared on shows for PBS, ESPN, HBO, CBS, NBC and ETV.
Last year, Roberts appeared in a Ken Burns documentary, "Unforgivable Blackness," on boxer Jack Johnson. Roberts also is author or editor of "The Rock, the Curse and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports," "Pittsburgh Sports: Stories from the Steel City," "John Wayne: American," "Heavy Justice: The State of Indiana v. Michael G. Tyson" and "Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam 1945 to 1990."
Source: Purdue University, by Amy Patterson Neubert
Related stories:
Gulf Coast braces, flees as deadly Gustav takes aim at US (Update)
More than a million people fled Louisiana as killer Hurricane Gustav on Sunday roared toward New Orleans, a fragile US coastal city still deeply scarred by the devastating 2005 Katrina storm.
New evidence implicates humans in prehistoric animal extinctions
Research led by UK and Australian scientists sheds new light on the role that our ancestors played in the extinction of Australia's prehistoric animals. The study, published this week in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, provides the first evidence that Tasmania's giant kangaroos and marsupial 'rhinos' and 'leopards' were still roaming the island when humans first arrived. The findings suggest that the mass extinction of Tasmania's large prehistoric animals was the result of human hunting, and not climate change as previously believed.
Cognitive problems associated with diabetes duration and severity
Individuals with mild cognitive impairment appear more likely to have earlier onset, longer duration and greater severity of diabetes, according to a report in the August issue of
Archives of Neurology.
Researchers probe geographical ties to ALS cases among 1991 Gulf War veterans
Researchers from Duke University, the University of Cincinnati and the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center are hoping to find a geographical pattern to help explain why 1991 Gulf War veterans contracted the fatal neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at twice the normal rate during the decade after the conflict.
Scientists identify genetic cause for a type of childhood epilepsy
Imagine “blanking out” of consciousness up to 200 times daily while you’re learning in a classroom, playing baseball, taking ballet lessons or riding a bike. This is a common occurrence in the life of a child with childhood absence epilepsy (CAE). The condition is associated with frequent “absent” seizures where the patient’s consciousness is impaired leaving the child staring blankly ahead not aware or responsive for up to 10 seconds at a time.
New studies reveal surprises about deep sea corals and their past
New research shows that the second most diverse group of hard corals first evolved in the deep sea, and not in shallow waters. Stylasterids, or lace corals, diversified in deep waters before launching at least three successful invasions of shallow water habitats in the past 30 million years. This finding contradicts a long-established theory that suggests corals and other marine animals all evolved in shallow water before migrating into deeper habitats.
Solving solar system quandaries is simple: Just flip-flop the position of Uranus and Neptune
Quick: What’s the order of the planets in the solar system? Need a little help? Maybe the following mnemonic rings a bell: “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Up Nine Pizzas.” It’s useful for remembering the order of the planets today, but it wouldn’t have been as useful in the past, and not just because the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to “dwarf planet” last year.
Numbers follow a surprising law of digits, and scientists can't explain why
Does your house address start with a 1? According to a strange mathematical law, about 1/3 of house numbers have 1 as their first digit. The same holds true for many other areas that have almost nothing in common: the Dow Jones index history, size of files stored on a PC, the length of the world’s rivers, the numbers in newspapers’ front page headlines, and many more.
