Frank Thomas Hurt By MLB Steroid Era

<header class="canvas-header">Frank Thomas says he was 'the most hurt' player by MLB's steroid era</header><header id="tgt1-Lead-0-HeadComponentTitle" class="canvas-header"></header>

Jack Baer,Yahoo Sports•<time class="date Fz(11px) Mb(4px) Fz(13px) C(#9ea2af)" datetime="2018-07-15T03:02:04.000Z" itemprop="datePublished" style="color: rgb(158, 162, 175); font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 4px;">July 14, 2018</time>


As far as most baseball players would go, Frank Thomas had an amazing career. The Big Hurt played nearly his entire career with one franchise, where he is now beloved, and he retired as the White Sox all-time leader in home runs (448), runs (1,327), RBIs (1,465), on-base percentage (.427) and slugging percentage (.568). He was a two-time MVP, a five-time All-Star and a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

But even with all that glory, Thomas might have deserved more. He’s well-known as one of the few sluggers to come out of MLB’s steroids era with a clean reputation, and many wonder how he would have been remembered if he had played his entire career on a level playing field.

Thomas has long been one the biggest critics of his colleagues who took performance enhancing drugs, but he took it a step forward in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. The 50-year-old Thomas claimed he was “the most hurt” player in the steroid era.

You’d think some pitchers might have a claim to the title of Player Most Hurt by the Steroid Era, but Thomas certainly has a point when you consider which players rank ahead of him statistically.

Where Frank Thomas ranks in MLB homers of the 90s

Here are MLB’s total home run leaders between 1990 and 1999.

• Mark McGwire, 405
• Ken Griffey Jr., 382
• Barry Bonds, 361
• Albert Belle, 351
• Juan Gonzalez, 339
• Sammy Sosa, 332
• Rafael Palmeiro, 328
• Jose Canseco, 303
• Frank Thomas, 301
• Matt Williams, 300

Other than Griffey and Thomas, the top 10 is made up entirely of known cheaters. You have McGwire (admitted steroids user), Bonds (admitted steroids user) Belle (no steroids, but he was caught with a corked bat), Gonzalez (linked to steroids and named in the Mitchell Report), Sammy Sosa (tested positive for steroids and caught with a corked bat), Palmeiro (tested positive for steroids) and Williams (linked to steroids).

When you look at those leaders, it’s very easy to see where Thomas is coming from. There’s no way to know what that list would like if no MLB player ever touched performance enhancing drugs, but it must be a bitter pill to swallow when you look at that list and see only cheaters and Ken Griffey Jr. ahead of you.

Well if memory serves me well, it was these performance enhanced players that SAVED MLB. Its real easy to sit here now and say, oh baseball would have been fine regardless, and thats because its almost impossible to picture how bad attendence was not just at games but even the attendance of those home in front of their televisions! Talk of folding franchises, and advertisers pulling out, you had to live it and be there to know the seriousness of it all, and im not saying anyone got together and said hey, lets save the sport by juicing and blowing peoples minds with the long ball. However thats what happened, call it destiny, fate, or dumb luck, but baseball was just merely pitch and catch boring prior to those guys using androstine lol and on the cusp falling apart!

During this era as well, it was also the very beginning of the "sensationalism" era, where television being worried about their talking heads losing viewers to the internet news outlets all over the place, decided that every story no matter how rediculous, needed to be covered 24 hours a day, with reporters camped out in front of the players homes, etc... So, it was just the perfect timing with all the various issues coming together at once! I mean by the time they got to poor old Roger Clemons, i think most of america picked up on the absurdity of it all, which actually worked against the original cause of cleaning up baseball! You do not need senate hearings on he said she said like Clemons trainer injecting him in the home bathroom, and all the other nonesense! A SENATE HEARING.....think about that!

Before the Sensationalize everything era, and world news following Kfed and Britney Spears, guys juiced just as much, and the team mates knew, the coaches knew, and the owners knew :George Bush, and no one gave a shit.

I'll admit Other guys shouldnt have to break the law in order to keep up with you in professional sports! Now on the other hand, if steroids, werent illegal, and one guy used them to get better and one guy didnt, then thats tough shit on the guy who didnt! Its not about them not wanting negative side effects and all that bullshit, its simply due to the law. So yeah, your cheating if using steroids professionally against guys not willing nor should they be willing, to break the law!

The real problem is steroids being illegal in the first place and how insane it is that they are scheduled along the lines of hard core drugs, when even the AMA disagreed with this back when they were being put up for scheduling.

Im a proponent of all things performance enhancing for mature adult who know how to use it responsibly, so that doesnt bother me. But kids, or anyone under 23-24 have no business using them.

and Again..Professionals athletes shouldnt need to break the law to compete at the same level as those who are breaking the law! whether thats using steroids, or anything else banned like this.

I really don't have a problem with steroids in sports. My main problem with steroids in baseball is the people, like the writer above, who decided that Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey, Jr. were clean. I think Griffey used and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Frank Thomas did, given that he's the biggest baseball player ever. This notion that every single steroid user has been outed in one way or another is silly. I think that basically everyone used and that there must have been several who were never caught.

And my other issue is that Frank Thomas was freakin' huge! So, if McGwire needed steroids just to become the size that Frank Thomas was naturally, is that really cheating or just evening the playing field?

Steroids in sports do more to level the playing field than if they aren't present. There is no such thing as "level" in biology. There are ranges of normal, but nothing is equal. Performance enhancers can bridge gaps between the genetically blessed and the not so-blessed.

And the only thing hurting Frank Thomas is his stupid fucking commercials. They should kick him out of the HOF for those things.

Good points! I couldn’t imagine a guy crying foul over the guys who got caught that passes his records when all along he was doing the same shit! That would take a special kind of asshole

There’s a lot of guys supposedly hurt by the steroid era. But I find that most of these a highly based on characters. Guys with good character generally get a slight biase. As far as who got the advantages from PED‘s it’s unclear really because we all know of different routes one can take. Frank was a damn good player but was he better than the Dale Murphy, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Tim Raines and Jeff Kent’s of the world. These guys was damn good players but just fell short and Fank made the Hall. So I don’t think he was screwed over by it.


Team MeccaGear!

Are the guys that tested positive for narcotics, heroin, cocaine, and the like eliminated from the HOF consideration?

Isn't it a bit ironic that Frank Thomas is selling "test-boosters" in these commercials?

NAIR said:

Isn't it a bit ironic that Frank Thomas is selling "test-boosters" in these commercials?

Click to expand...

Yeah, you'd think if he hated steroids so bad, he wouldn't want to be anywhere near testosterone products. Hahaha.